Dead Pony Club

[The Epworth Brewer]

Currently at the dry hopping stage. I upped the recipe to 23 L but actually ended up with 25L @ 1040SG. The only difference from the Brewdog PDF recipe is the yeast. I used a pack of NBS West Coast that I already had. It dropped it to 1012 in four days. I left the dry hop quantity the same as for the 20L batch. I've never dry hopped with this amount of hops before (187g) and it took some quick thinking to get the hops to sink. In the end I jammed the bag under a paddle and wedged that under the lid. I think 5 days should be enough and then cask, with just 2L in bottles.
PeeBee, how is yours going? You should be ahead of me.

[PeeBee]

... PeeBee, how is yours going? You should be ahead of me.

Ha. No need to rub it in! I'm scheduled to start tomorrow as it has been way too hot to get going earlier. The water has been prepped in my vessels for a week or more - can't think that should hurt though?

[The Epworth Brewer]

23 Litres in the King Keg tonight. I had 25L but after 5 days the dry hops have supped 2 Litres of it!
It smells exactly as it should so just a case of waiting for it to clear and condition. It's going to be a long couple of weeks.
Picture shows the spent hops. If this is from just 25 Litres Brew Dog must have a lorry load to get rid of every time they brew it.

[PeeBee]

I'm beginning to worry that the two "Hop Spiders" I purchased may not be up to the job. The "Spiders" are 300mm x70mm dia., hops (whole hops, I think I'll move to pellets for dry hopping next time) amount to 380g (I've 42L fermenting). Are they going to fit? Should I start a sweep stake?

Looking at the volume of spent hops in the photo above tells me to fragment the hops in a liquidiser before they go in.

[PeeBee]

001.jpg

23 Litres in the King Keg tonight. I had 25L but after 5 days the dry hops have supped 2 Litres of it!
It smells exactly as it should so just a case of waiting for it to clear and condition. It's going to be a long couple of weeks.
Picture shows the spent hops. If this is from just 25 Litres Brew Dog must have a lorry load to get rid of every time they brew it.

Dry hopping got delayed but should be done today. Two reasons: Fermentation was a bit persistent, FG is now 1.003 (discussed this on another forum, I'm not the only one experiencing this with Extra Pale Maris Otter) and secondly I'm waiting for a replacement food processor to arrive today as the old one expired yesterday (like you I'm using whole hops, but "milling" them before they go in). All those dry hops are not going to fit in my "hop spiders", so half of them are just being bunged in free.

With a 92% attenuation I doubt I'm going to have a clone of Dead Pony Club, but should be interesting.

[PeeBee]

Hops in. 390 grams (in 42L, fermented in a conical). Half milled and in spiders, half lightly rubbed and chucked in.

Not a procedure I cared for. Lots of opportunity to introduce unwelcome bugs. And the loose hops will contain a lot of air (and therefore oxygen): I didn't stir them in and I am just hoping they will quietly become "beer-logged" and sink (the spiders aren't heavy enough to sink on their own either). I need to work on a less hap-hazard method of introducing dry-hops, using hop pellets has already been identified as achieving a more desirable technique. If must use whole hops the commercial technique of using "slurries" seems to have possibilities?

[The Epworth Brewer]

On that pic of my spent dry hops the Citra and Simcoe were leaf but the mosaic was pellets, as you can tell at the top of the pic.
I must say that although I was a bit concerned as more and more hops are only available in pellet form, especially as people were talking about whirlpooling. But if you buy the nylon hop bags with finest mesh, they keep the pellets inside very well. I also tie a fine hop bag to my taps when running off just to collect anything that has slipped through.
A few years ago I lifted the lid off the secondary fermenter and to my horror the hop bag, containing leaf hops, was floating on top and resembled a nice blue cheese. But the ale was still perfect. I stopped syphoning before the mould followed through of course.

[PeeBee]

Kegging day. But didn't go to plan. When I lifted the lid on the fermenter I wasn't met with a "blue cheese" (thankfully!) but a big pile of very dry dry-hops. The hop spiders were floating a bit high too. I patted the hops down below the surface and slapped the lid back on. Will try again tomorrow. Not as straight-forward as I'd thought this dry-hopping lark.

Beer has picked up a strong lychee flavour despite the inadequate dry-hopping. I hear "lychees" a lot talking about American hops. Trouble is "lychees" don't get a mention in the Dead Pony Club descriptions.

[Jambo]

the one thing Brewdog don't give you is the timing and temperature for the dry hopping. I was thinking of doing it for a 4-5 day secondary ferment.

There is some guidance on p17 of the 2017 DIY Dog PDF, in the Punk IPA recipe - 14 degC for 5 days. Although on the Punk recipe page, I take it to mean that they use this method generally.

Dry hopping got delayed but should be done today. Two reasons: Fermentation was a bit persistent, FG is now 1.003 (discussed this on another forum, I'm not the only one experiencing this with Extra Pale Maris Otter)
...
With a 92% attenuation I doubt I'm going to have a clone of Dead Pony Club, but should be interesting.

Wow - what yeast did you use? I'm thinking WLP051 could be worth a go? Less attentuative than most, I've got it going on a batch of another hoppy brew just now, it does kick out some disconcerting sulphur aromas during primary but they subside...

[PeeBee]

...

Dry hopping got delayed but should be done today. Two reasons: Fermentation was a bit persistent, FG is now 1.003 (discussed this on another forum, I'm not the only one experiencing this with Extra Pale Maris Otter)
...
With a 92% attenuation I doubt I'm going to have a clone of Dead Pony Club, but should be interesting.

Wow - what yeast did you use? I'm thinking WLP051 could be worth a go? Less attentuative than most, I've got it going on a batch of another hoppy brew just now, it does kick out some disconcerting sulphur aromas during primary but they subside...

US-05, dry, hardly exotic. The conclusion (in the forum - I wasn't the only one experiencing this) was the Extra Pale Maris Otter had something to do with it (but probably just a blip).

[WalesAles]

I hear "lychees" a lot talking about American hops.

PB,
I didn`t know Lychees could talk!

WA


Sent from my other Sofa

[PeeBee]

...
PB,
I didn`t know Lychees could talk!
WA

I said "about", not "to". If my tomatoes thought I was talking to hops there would be trouble.

Thankfully sinking all my (expensive) very dry dry-hops is resulting in a flood of different flavours appearing in the beer. And that doesn't include "off-flavours" from mucking about too much with the beer (not yet anyway).

[The Epworth Brewer]

I don't know what's happened to mine. The wonderful DPC aroma that was present from the spent dry hops is somewhat toned down in the ale and the flavour is a bit too harsh/less fruity than it should be. Early days yet I suppose. I'll leave it alone for a couple more weeks and see if it improves. If it doesn't then I won't be repeating the recipe. I can brew something as distinctly average as this with a fraction of the hops.

[PeeBee]

I don't know what's happened to mine. The wonderful DPC aroma that was present from the spent dry hops is somewhat toned down in the ale and the flavour is a bit too harsh/less fruity than it should be. Early days yet I suppose. I'll leave it alone for a couple more weeks and see if it improves. If it doesn't then I won't be repeating the recipe. I can brew something as distinctly average as this with a fraction of the hops.

I'm just kegging mine at this moment (having time out for a coffee). The hops have been fouling the racking arm of my fermenter and as with you the hops appear to have supped a vast quantity of beer. Brewing with this amount of dry hops certainly needs some thought - that's more thought than it got given this time around. And the beer is relying on the dry hops; I bottled a drop prior to dry hopping and the base is pretty mundane (what more can be expected from that ingredient list). I've added finings because, like before, that US-05 yeast is a bit powdery (another way of saying as murky as soup).

I'll have a week or so before sampling anything like the finished article.

[The Epworth Brewer]

What did I say about leaving it a couple of weeks? SWMBO is away overnight, and with Jon Hiseman's Colosseum Live cranked up to full volume the Dead Pony is coming to life. It's just about crystal clear, the harshness has disappeared and the fruitiness is shining through. It's definitely going to be a midnight+session, with some Wishbone Ash lined up next.(Ah, the good old days, sigh!) Get a grip, you're 66 years old now!
But seriously(for once). If you are considering trying this recipe I would recommend you don't barrel it. Most of us who have tried Dead Pony Club will have done so in bottle or can, and I would say it's a drink that suits bottles rather than cask. If you go for cask you will certainly recognize the distinctive DPC aroma. But maybe it loses that little something on draught. Just my rambling thoughts. Looking forward to what Peebee has to say on it.
Now I'll just Ramble On.