Extract ESB-Any Suggestions?

Hey guys, I'm gonna brew an ESB this weekend. I pulled the following recipe from Papazian and bought the ingredients.
5.6lb muntons plain light DME
3/4lb crystal 60L
2.5oz fuggles boiling
1oz fuggles finishing
s-o4 or us-05 yeast
Just curious if anyone has any suggestions, hop schedule, late addition, etc. Also in Papazian he mentions fermenting between 60 and 70F for 3-5 days then move to 50 degree for clarifying. Has anyone used this method, and how long should I expect that clarification to take. BTW I've been consuming a fair amount of Ska brewing ESB. Anything close to that would be amazing.

After sitting down to a recipe calculator I changed my recipe to this:
7lb total,muntons light dme(2lbs late)
1lb crystal 60l
1oz cascade 60min
1oz willamette 60min
.5oz fuggles 5min boil
.5oz fuggles 2min post boil
just curious if anyone has a comment on the hop use. will be brewing after hunting this afternoon.

Come on, there has to be somebody out thats an esb fan.

Well, I'm English so an ESB has to be a Fullers ESB.
As regards your malt, I prefer the original recipe. It should come out with an OG of about 1.056 (assuming a 5g batch). The revised recipe would come out with an OG of 1.070 which IMO is too high for an ESB.
The original recipe called for 3./4 lb crystal 60., and the adjusted recipe called for a full lb. I like to keep my crystal down to 1/2 lb, but using DME 3/4 lb should be OK. I wouldn't like to exceed that.
As for the hops, I use about an oz of Northern Brewer or Target for a bittering addition, and 1 oz EKG at 15 minutes, and 1 oz EKG at flameout. If you cant get good quality EKG, then US Goldings ae perfectly acceptable. Fuggles or Willamete are definitely inferior for the late hop additions.

-a.

Wonder what I did wrong? I used the hopville calculator punched in 7lb which gave me a OG of 1.053. Any ideas?

mgull said:

Come on, there has to be somebody out thats an esb fan.

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I'm a big ESB fan. My only comments are that for this style, the yeast is very important. I'm sure Nottingham (SAF-04) is fine, but I've had consistently great results with Wyeast 1968. If you have a LHBS, the extra few dollars for liquid yeast can make a big difference for this beer.

Also, commercial english ESBs always use flaked maize (corn) as part of the grain bill. I am no expert with the extract equivalents, but I'm sure one of the gurus here can help out with an appropriate substitute.

mgull said:

Wonder what I did wrong? I used the hopville calculator punched in 7lb which gave me a OG of 1.053. Any ideas?

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I think you probably used LME instead of DME.

-a.

I've had two batches of ESB so far, and neither has turned out the way I had intended...

for each I did full boil on my LME and I believe it fubar'd the hops utilization. Next time I brew an ESB I will do late extract addition and see if that clears up my issues.

I thought I might have used lme as well, but unfortunately not. This is a cut and paste from the hopville calculator. Is there another calculator I should check out?

% LB OZ Malt or Fermentable ppg °L Late

63% 5 0 Munton's DME Light 34 5 ~
25% 2 0 Munton's DME Light 34 5 Y
13% 1 0 Muntons Crystal Malt 60L
Batch size: 5.0 gallons
Original Gravity
1.053 / 13.1° Plato
(1.047 to 1.055)
Final Gravity
1.014 / 3.6° Plato
(1.012 to 1.015)
Color
11° SRM / 22° EBC
(Copper to Red/Lt. Brown)
Mash Efficiency ?
75% edit

The calculator is wrong.
The 34 after the malt name is supposed to be the extract potential in points per lb per gallon.
All dry malt extracts have approximately the same potential.
If you look at Beersmith, the potential for DME is specified as 44 PPG.
If you look at Promash (which is what I use) the potential is listed as 46 PPG
If you look at http://hbd.org/uchima/tech/extract.html, the potential is listed as 45 PPG
I checked out the potential for a number of extracts (both dry and liquid) in Beercalculus, and they all seemed rather low to me, (but I didn't check all of them). Muntons Light DME was the only one that was way off.
I sent an email to Todd querying this.

-a.

Try the recipe again.
Todd fixed the problem, which I think is pretty damned good customer service.
You should now get a more realistic OG.

-a.

I didn't see this addressed earlier, but I would drop the Cascade and try and stick to English hops like EKG even when bittering. That would give you a beer closer to style. English Fuggles and/or EKG would be great for your late additions.

Thanks for all the help.

Checked out the calculator, all seems good now. Thanks again, you guys rock. Don't hold it against me, I'm gonna use the hops I have now. Due to both time, and money constraints(very limited budget)I have to make due with what I have. My next ESB will definitely use include the hops/yeast mentioned.

I'm not going to complain about you using the hops you have. I've just finished brewing an ESB with Willamette (A US relative of Fuggles), so I'm doing exactly what you are doing. I would have used EKG, but when I opened the bag, they smelled terrible, and I'm going to dump the whole 1# bag. Hopefully, this years hops will be better than last year, as I have about 3 lbs of very poor quality hops from last year that I will dump as soon as I can get some replacements.

-a.