Hi everyone. Long time lurker who has gleaned an untold amount of information from this board and greatly appreciates all of the knowledge that the collective group has. I’m currently living in Uganda and have my brewing equipment with me (including my kegorator, CO2 was surprisingly easy to source here).
I’d like to brew a batch of beer to have ready for the holidays and new year. As I already have three high octane brews on tap (cider, porter and IPA) I’d like to brew a session ale like an ESB. As it takes several weeks to get mail here, ordering online is out of the question, so I need to use what I have at hand, which includes: 2 row, 1 lb caramel 60l, 8 oz each of aromatic and biscuit, 2oz Northern brewer, 1oz kent goldings. For yeast, I have Mangrove Jacks’s Burton Union and Nottingham.
Brewing equipment: Denny’s cooler mash-tun, 7gal kettle. How does this tentative recipe sound?
8lbs 2 row
8oz caramel 60
8oz aromatic
Northern brewer 1oz at 60 mins
Northern brewer .5oz at 15 mins
EKG 1oz at 5 mins
I’m not all that familiar with aromatic malt but from what I see online it should work well to bump the complexity a bit. I’d maybe consider using the whole lb of c60 but again, without more knowledge about how the aromatic is going to affect things maybe not.
I think overall you’ve got a good starting point there.
Looks pretty good to me, but I’d be tempted to use the Biscuit instead of the Aromatic if you want something more ESB-like. Aromatic is like a deeper Munich-like flavor, while Biscuit is closer to a richer/toastier Maris Otter-like flavor.
Also, If it were my beer, I’d move the EKG’s to a hop stand, but that’s just my tastes. The hop bill still looks pretty good as-is.
hop stand is when you add hops after the boil but while the wort is still hot. if you add them right after the flame is turned off you get some bitterness and tons of flavor and aroma. if you chill to < 170*f you can minimize additional bitterness while adding lots of flavor and aroma.
However for a traditional ESB I’m not sure a hop stand is right. still be tasty beer just not totally stylistically correct. The style is still supposed to be about hop bitterness and malt flavor with a nice dry hop character.
Agreed, but with only an ounce of EKG’s to work with a hop stand may help get some of that hop character you’d miss out on by not dry hopping. I fully admit my palate is skewed, but only an ounce/5 gallons in a hop stand shouldn’t be enough to move you into English IPA range.
Another option is to skip the late hopping with the EKG’s altogether and save them for dry hops.
I thought about that as well but with plain 2 row a bit of more characterful base type malt can make a huge difference in a relatively small malt forward beer like this.
Do you think you could gain enough character from a longer boil? Or pulling some and reducing it a la Skotrat’s Traquair House Ale? I think I’d almost rather give that a try.
As far as yeast, I’m not familiar with Mangrove Jack but I’ve not heard anything very good. Nottingham is solid, if not one I particularly care for.
I’m sure you would get more character from that but more of a caramel thing which there will be plenty of with the c60. I like the way dark munich adds a bread crust/biscuit thing to beers like this and I was thinking the aromatic or biscuit might get the OP that kind of character but as I said, I’m not real familiar with either of those malts.
FWIW, I’d never add Biscuit or Victory along with MO because I think it’s kind of redundant - MO is toasty and biscuity to me. But being stuck with 2 row for an ESB I’d definitely add .5 lb biscuit to get a little of that character.
Thanks for your ideas! If I didn’t have the c60, the method of reducing a part of the wort sounds really interesting and is a method I’m going to try with the next single-malt beer I attempt. 40 or so all-grain batches in and the learning never stops.