Opinions on an ESB recipe, please

Hey All,

A friend and I are about to brew an ESB, and we were wondering what everybody thought about our recipe. I'll get right to it without further adieu:

8 lbs pale malt
2 lbs amber malt
2 lbs 10L crystal

1 oz Northern Brewer (60 Min)
1 oz E.K. Goldings (30 Min)
1 oz E.K. Goldings (15 Min)

And one of the british bitter yeast strains from white labs.

I'll reply here though I read the post in the AG forum. No double posting please...

Traditionally, English bitters have about a pound of demerara sugar or some molassess in them.
Other than that, I'd say you have a good recipe there. I get only about 34IBU, though so you may want to up the NB hops, another half ounce will push it up to 47IBU and probably help balance the high amount of crystal malt.

Agreed, my ESB is in the upper 40s/near 50 IBUs and had a good amount of crystal in it. It's a tasty beer, nice and bitter, yet not over the line as far as ESBs go.

My only comment would be that 2 lbs is a lot of crystal malt.

Thanks for the responses, people. Yeah, I remember having about 50 IBU in Promash, so maybe i had 1.5 oz NB at the beginning of the boil. Does everybody think that the crystal is a bit much? Perhaps i could substitute a half pound or pound extra pale malt and go with only 1 or 1.5 lbs crystal?

Steve973 said:

Thanks for the responses, people. Yeah, I remember having about 50 IBU in Promash, so maybe i had 1.5 oz NB at the beginning of the boil. Does everybody think that the crystal is a bit much? Perhaps i could substitute a half pound or pound extra pale malt and go with only 1 or 1.5 lbs crystal?

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I'm really not sure, given that it's 10L crystal, so it's going to be very restrained in terms of carmelly sweetness. I think something like Carastan (more like 55L) would be more typical for an ESB, FWIW.

FWIW, when I made my ESB, I basically just wanted to use up some light crystal I had, I used 12 oz of 20L and 8oz of 10L, with 3oz of chocolate, just for a bit of color and just to be different. My turned out well, but a lesser amount of a more moderate crystal like cweston says wouldn't be a bad idea either.

I hear ya. I've been reading "Radical Brewing" by Mosher, and he suggests getting your malty flavor from a greater amount of lighter grains rather than a smaller amount of darker grains for english beer. I was just hoping that the amber malt will fill in on the flavor end, and that is in the mid-fifties for color. But then again, my forte is leaning towards belgian beer nowadays, so I'm certainly not claiming any kind of expertise with this style.

I say dry it up with some brown sugar or - shock horror - flaked corn.

Looks like a little too many specialty grains, especially light crystal, although thats entirely up to you. I take your point about adding more lower darkness grains, but you'll be adding alot of dextrins. However you could mash low to componsate or drop the Ph or, or, or....

Steve973 said:

I hear ya. I've been reading "Radical Brewing" by Mosher, and he suggests getting your malty flavor from a greater amount of lighter grains rather than a smaller amount of darker grains for english beer. I was just hoping that the amber malt will fill in on the flavor end, and that is in the mid-fifties for color. But then again, my forte is leaning towards belgian beer nowadays, so I'm certainly not claiming any kind of expertise with this style.

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Do what you want--I'm just a geek for these kinds of conversations. Don't misinterpret that as trying to tell you what to do. I wasn't aware that the amber malt was that dark.

cweston said:

Do what you want--I'm just a geek for these kinds of conversations. Don't misinterpret that as trying to tell you what to do. I wasn't aware that the amber malt was that dark.

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Conversations like this are great, it's too bad there isn't a way to email beer to each other. That would make for a great conversation, live comments on sampling other's beer. Even if it is only quarter to ten in the morning.

cweston said:

Do what you want--I'm just a geek for these kinds of conversations. Don't misinterpret that as trying to tell you what to do. I wasn't aware that the amber malt was that dark.

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Hey, no problem. I definitely appreciate the comments and feedback, and your input was certainly the type that I was looking for. I was just trying to explain the reasoning behind the grain bill. I brew with a friend of mine, and we alternate beers. On one session, I'll contribue the recipe, and on the next session, he'll contribute the recipe, and so on. If I were creating this recipe, I'd probably adjust the grain bill to something more along the lines of:

9 lb pale malt (2-3L)
2 lb amber malt (~50L)
1 lb crystal malt (50L)

With a hop schedule similar to my above recipe. Hey, come to think of it, i think we had 50L crystal in the above recipe instead of 10L, but I have to go back and look to be sure.