English Ale Recipe - Please Critique

This is a clone of a Hogs Back traditional English ale, and I was hoping you guys would give me your opinions on this. Will this make a decent best bitter?

Original AG recipe:

Hogsback Traditional English Ale
5.5 gallons
49 IBU
12 SRM
OG 1043; 4.2% ABV

9 lbs Maris Otter
0.75 lbs Crystal 60
1 oz Fuggles @ 60
1 oz Goldings @ 60
0.5 oz Goldings @ 10


Extract recipe:

Hogsback Traditional English Ale
5.5 gallons

5 lbs. Golden Light DME
0.75 lbs. Paul's Crystal 60ºL
2 oz Kent Goldings AA 4.5% @ 60 mins
0.5 oz Kent Goldings AA 4.1% whole leaf @ 10

Wyeast 1968 London ESB Ale

- Steep crystal in 1/2 gallon water for 30 mins @ 155ºF
- Sparge bag with 1/2 gallon water @ 155ºF
- Add water to bring volume to 1.5 gallons, bring to boil
- Take off heat, add 5 lbs. DME, 2 oz. Kent Goldings pellets (bittering hop)
- Bring to boil, add irish moss at 45 minutes, Kent Goldings leaf (flavor hop) for last 10 minutes
- Cool wort with IC, rack to primary, bring volume to 5.5 gallons
- Pitch Wyeast 1968, airlock and wait!

So far, so good? Everyone around is out of fuggles, but since it's the bittering hop, I thought Kent Goldings was a good choice.

Also, I am thinking of doing a smaller amount of corn sugar or DME for lower carbonation, aren't a good number of true English best bitters a bit undercarbed? Thanks for the help.

Eskimo Spy said:

So far, so good? Everyone around is out of fuggles, but since it's the bittering hop, I thought Kent Goldings was a good choice.

Also, I am thinking of doing a smaller amount of corn sugar or DME for lower carbonation, aren't a good number of true English best bitters a bit undercarbed? Thanks for the help.

Click to expand...

EKG and Fuggles are pretty fungible in a beer like this, yeah. As long as your IBUs are measuring up, you should be fine either way.

I primed my ESB with 2 or 3 ounces of corn sugar, I forget which at the moment. There's a zillion priming calculators that give style guidelines for amounts of priming sugar.

Eskimo Spy said:

Also, I am thinking of doing a smaller amount of corn sugar or DME for lower carbonation, aren't a good number of true English best bitters a bit undercarbed? Thanks for the help.

Click to expand...

No. They are properly carbed instead of being overcarbed.
If you're bottling, I'd keep the priming sugar down to about 4 - 4.5 oz corn sugar. If kegging, about 3 oz. (These are for 5g batches).
Both recipes look good. Absolutely no problem with replacing Fuggles with Kent Goldings, and the yeast is the best there is for a special bitter.

-a.