Extra Special Malt vs Special B

I have a bunch of Special B, but I've got a recipe that calls for Extra Special Malt. I've heard that ESM is Briess's answer to Special B so they're pretty much interchangeable.

Am I good just using Special B, or is Extra Special Malt that much different?

Edit

Did some searches and a couple people posted that it was not the same as special B.

I was told they are marketing it as a Special B replacement... but it doesn't matter because Briess is garbage anyways.

z987k said:

I was told they are marketing it as a Special B replacement... but it doesn't matter because Briess is garbage anyways.

Click to expand...

Well that's constructive. Thanks.

Briess' version is typically a little lighter, by about 10L, but they are similar. If you are brewing a Belgian, I think SpecB is a little more true.

It's actually for a Doppelbock. I'm doing the clone recipe for Bell's Consercrator from an old issue of Zymurgy. It's 3.2% of the grain bill.

The description of ESM is "Burnt sugar, woody, prune flavors" and that describes perfectly what I was tasting last time I had this beer. Kind of weird considering it's such a small percentage of the bill, but nonetheless, I wanted to make sure I'm as close as possible.

I just had to substitute Extra Special for Special B in my Quad recipe as my LHBS dude says he's having a hard time finding Special B now. I did notice it's about 20L different (Extra Special ~ 130L whereas Special B ~ 150L). Hoping they're close, so we'll see....