Does this recipe look tasty?

[Jq1n]

Ok, so I wanna brew an English pale ale and I found a recipe on this site for Honkers ale and added some biscuit malt to it. I've never created a recipe before or modified a recipe so not sure what things taste like looking at them on paper.
The recipe is for a 4 gallon batch

5lb British two row pale
1lb American victory
.5 lb British crystal 60L
.5 lb biscuit malt.

.5 oz fuggle at 60
.5 oz Willamette at 25
.5 oz fuggle at 25
.5 oz Willamette at 15

OG 1.045
Fg 1.011
Abv 4.4 but will be a smidge higher cuz of biscuit no?
Srm 10
There was no yeast mentioned. I have a pack of Nottingham left over (ordered two by mistake). I'm not cheap so will buy more yeast if it won't do for this.

I want something with a lot of body and taste. Will this do it? I like Honkers Ale by Goose Island and Pompous Ass by Great Lakes so want to make something similar. Opinions are appreciated. I know everyone has one. 😀

 

[giraffe]

Victory and biscuit are different maltsters version of the same thing. At like 20%, thats a bit much. Id halve them in total, and add more pale malt. Other than that it looks like a english bitter. I might move some of the 25 min hops up a bit closer to the end of the boil to get a bit more flavor out of them, but thats optional. Id mash around 154.

Nottingham will work, though in the low gravity bitters you might want to experiment with a more estery yeast.

 

[m00ps]

agreed. way too much specialty malts

 

[Jq1n]

This is why I ask! Not that experienced with this sort of thing. Fantastic. Thanks. Anyone else? Anything else I can add to add more body, maltyness etc? Will def move one hop addition.

 

[HollywoodTK]

Personally, it looks a little heavy on the biscuity malts. 14% Victory and 7% Biscuit, that will be pretty bready, I imagine. If that's what you are going for, then do it up! Otherwise, I'd up the base malt, and drop to either Victory or Biscuit only and use maybe 8-10 oz (personal preference).

I'd also do:
.5 oz first wort hop of fuggles
.5 oz Fuggles at 30
.5 oz Willamette at 30
.5 oz Willamette at flame out

Though I don't use Willamette often, so I don't know how that will work, but I suspect it will be a light hop touch.

I'd mash around 153 or so
Notty will be fine. Search around, there are numerous english yeasts which work well for bitters.

 

[meatcleaver]

for playing around with recipes I use this http://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/calculator/
if you want more body & malt character I'd make the beer a bit bigger, an og of 1.050+

 

[SLFcentralOH]

I like that your experimenting with your recipes. Im a new brewer and only on my 9th brew. Before I started brewing I vowed to never follow anyones recipe and design everything from the ground up based on ideas from multiple recipes and style guidelines. So, take what I'm going to say with a grain of salt.

I did an ESB a few months back. Mine had a 1/2 lb of Victory and the bread crust flavor is the most up front flavor I get. So, I definitely agree with what the others have said and recommend you drop the Victory and/or Biscuit way down (Probably just stick with one).

As others have said Notty will be fine for this beer. For my first 3 home brews I used Notty (Irish Red, Amber Ale, and Blonde Ale.) the only one I didnt like the Notty in was the BA, because I was looking for something that BMC drinkers could drink and I think Notty wasnt helping me out there. I ended up using S-04 for my ESB.

I went 1oz of EKG at 60 min. and 1oz of Fuggles at 40 min. the reason for this strange schedule was to get the IBU just where I wanted it. In retrospect I should have worked in a much later edition to give something to balance out the bread crust.

My grist consisted of:

6lb pale malt
1.75lb flaked corn
1lb white wheat malt
1lb C60

I will go ahead and explain the corn and wheat, because I know someone will be wondering... The name of my brewery is Scratch Grains Brewing. I feed my chickens scratch grains which consist of...you guessed it barley, wheat, and corn. This particular ESB was designed to be one of my "scratch grain series" beers. I do not do this in all my beers. This is one beer I should have left it out of but it didn't hurt anything.

I mashed at 153 as others have suggested and am generally happy with the results of this bready but still balanced beer with still a little bite of bitterness from the hops.

OG 1.053
FG 1.011
ABV 5.6%

BTW I have tried Honkers Ale. My recipe is more on the malty side than this beer. Your recipe should be a little closer if you back way off on the victory/biscuit and replace with base malt.

 

[Jq1n]

Very helpful. Thank you very much. I'm going to adjust accordingly.

 

[Jq1n]

What's bready-er Victory or Biscuit?

 

[HollywoodTK]

Ideally you should take a taste yourself. Though they are basically different versions of the same thing, some report differences between the two. Look up the grain descriptions online from various maltsters to get an idea of how they relate. There's lots of discussion online regarding these two malts.

 

[m00ps]

What's bready-er Victory or Biscuit?

IME, melanoidin