Bitter recipe

I was thinking about brewing up an English bitter and have been looking at several different recipes. Is there a typical ratio of primary grain to crystal malt addition? Also, I've seen a couple of recipes that use Maris Otter malt--what are my options as an extract + grain brewer to get similar final product? One recipe that I was tossing around used Maris Otter, crystal malt, challenger hops, with an OG of 1.036. Any suggestions for extract + steeped grains? Thanks.

Marc

mbreen01 said:

I was thinking about brewing up an English bitter and have been looking at several different recipes. Is there a typical ratio of primary grain to crystal malt addition? Also, I've seen a couple of recipes that use Maris Otter malt--what are my options as an extract + grain brewer to get similar final product? One recipe that I was tossing around used Maris Otter, crystal malt, challenger hops, with an OG of 1.036. Any suggestions for extract + steeped grains? Thanks.

Marc

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I'm pretty sure Morebeer sells a LME that is 100% Maris Otter. I'm sure it's more expensive than their "standard" extracts, but I don't know by how much.

If you have either Clone Brews or Beer Captured, both of those books have clone recipes for several English Bitters. That's give you a good idea of the typical crystal amounts, hop profiles, etc.

Bitters recipes are pretty simple and only require small additions to make a noticable difference in the final product. From what I have come across, up to 1lb of crystal for 5 gallon batch is the norm. Using brewing sugars also seems to be a common practice. I tend to stick with milds but would apply the same principals to bitters. I like to use higher kilned malts as a base but balance it with an addition of corn sugar but never more than 10% or roughly .6lbs. This gives me more depth but still light in body. It is not hard to over power a brew starting with a 1.036 gravity when adding speciality malts. If you don't like the idea of using sugar, you should have good results with something as simple as light extract with a 1/4lb of crystal.