texasgeorge

Recipes 

I think I'm at the point where I'm ready to tackle recipe formulation. Due to space limitations, I'm only doing a partial mash. Here's the idea:

George's Clusterfuggled ESB
According to BeerSmith: OG 1.052 (estimate), FG 1.015 (estimate), ABV 4.9% (estimate)

5.00# Light LME
2.00# Pale 2-row
0.50# Crystal 60L
0.25# Biscuit Malt
0.25# Dextrine / CaraPils

Grains in a mesh bag in cold water, bottom heat to 156F for 45 minutes. Pour 156F water through a strainer into the boiling brew pot, dunk the grain bag into 170F water to rinse (a few times). Add water to brew pot to total 5.75 gal, bring to boil, add extract, bring back to boil and add 1/3 oz Burton Salts.

Hop schedule as follows (BeerSmith says 42.3 IBU):
1.00 oz Cluster Pellets (7.0%) 60m
0.50 oz Cluster Pellets (7.0%) 30m
0.50 oz Fuggles Pellets (4.5%) 30m
1.00 tsp Irish Moss 15m
1.00 oz Fuggles Pellets (4.5%) 2m
Contemplating:1.00 oz Fuggles Pellets (4.5%) dry-hop in secondary.

I'm leaning towards WLP013 yeast for its ability to draw out the hop flavor, but will hear arguments to use WLP005 instead. I've never used either yeast, so I'm very open to suggestion.

Further, since this is my first start-to-finish creation, I'm open to any other suggestion you might have. Hence the name, I'm set on using these particular hop varieties.

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6.5 Gallon Primary: Empty
5 Gallon Secondary: Empty
Bottled & Drinking: Holiday Ale, Pale Rye Ale, Bridgeport ESB Clone project v1.0
Bottled & Conditioning: Michael Richards' NOT Racist Ale
Best of 2006: All Saints' IPA, Six-Malt Amber Ale, McClelland's Irish Red Ale
On Deck: English Honey Bitter, Chocolate Stout, House Pale Ale

Ivan Lendl

Recipes 

hey...looks good. The biscuit is kind of odd for an esb, i would just up the crystal to 1-1.25 lbs. and get rid of both the biscuit and the carapils...

definitley dry-hop! do a 1/2 ounce if your weary, but id throw in the whole shebang!

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Primary: empty
Secondary: empty
Bottled: Barbarian IPA
Up next: Configuration 9

cweston

Recipes 

My $.02...

I agree that .5 lb crystal seems a little light for an ESB.

I'd go with WLP002 or WLP005.

The BU:GU (42/52 = .81) seems OK for an ESB. According to Daniels, 12 NHC second-round ESBs averaged a ratio of .86. That seems kindof high to me (I think of an ESB as a very balanced beer), but homebrewers do tend to be hopheads, afterall.

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Primary: none
Secondary:
Bottle conditioning: Robust Porter
Drinking: Saison Dupont clone, tripel
Coming soon: Columbus APA, Rich Red ale