Brewed a SMASH ESB today using all Munich malt and Northern Brewer hops.
10 Gallon batch
19 lbs. Munich malt
2 oz. Northern Brewer FW
1 oz. Northern Brewer @ 60 min.
1 oz. Northern Brewer @ 10 min
1 oz. Northern Brewer @ 5 min.
Mash at 152
RO Water treated with Gypsum and Calcium Chloride
Yeast is SafAle 04
OG 1.058
mmm…malt bomb
What are the IBUs on that bad boy? I only brewed an all Munich once and it turned out pretty good. I wish I had upped the IBUs to balance it a bit more though.
Being a malthead, I am salivating.
Let us know how it goes.
Yeah, I’m sure it depends on the recipe, but I’ve found that somewhere around 30% Munich or higher it really starts to compete with the hops.
It’s funny how different everyone’s idea of an ESB seems to be. I can’t picture calling a beer an ESB without some dark English Crystal malt and a whole bunch of EKGs. But regardless, this sounds like a tasty brew.
+1. I’m sure it’ll be good. I think I used 92% MO , 8% English C60 , EKG all the way last time.
It was coming in right around 55 IBUs according to BeerSmith. I also followed Martin’s Burton on Trent water treatment. I guess I’ll see how it comes out. This was for our brew club’s Iron Brewer contest we do each month. Given a certain ingredient and told to make a beer. This one was Munich malt and only a single hop.
NO! Not the Burton water I hope. The Pale Ale water profile is much less extreme than Burton water.
The other thing I can see in this recipe is that it may end up more like an Alt. If the hop aroma is low and the Munich malt comes through and the beer dries out well, the beer could be Alt like.
With respect to well hopped beers, I agree that the malt can clash with the hopping. That is why a very simple grist is used in a typical American Pale Ale. Hopefully that won’t be the case here.
Oops! Well crap, seems I messed this up. Yes I used the Burton on Trent water from the most recent issue of Zymurgy. I guess my thought was the water profile would help to accentuate the hops and balance out the Munich malt, but never having brewed with entirely Munich malt, I guess I didn’t think things through. It is fermenting away in the basement @ about 62 degrees. I guess I’ll know in a few weeks what I have and will take this as a lesson learned and brush up more on my water treatments.
I’d style it after tasting the finished product.
Good idea. I guess it won’t turn out to be what I was thinking but at least it will be beer… 
Oh, that’s too bad. I guess you didn’t actually read the article about the fact that the local water was typically diluted naturally to a less mineralized condition. The Pale Ale profile just happens to be similar to that diluted Burton groundwater.
I didn’t catch that in the article, but when I look at Burton’s profile I think Yikes! High numbers. I plugged it into my computer and realized, that can’t be right. Went with light n hoppy instead.
+1 to the Pale Ale profile. Works very,very well.
It’s a conundrum. Seems like you have to start somewhere. But I think at the end, this is the way to go. One might start out thinking one style and discover it’s perfect in another.
By the way, styling isn’t just for competition in my opinion. Its kind of a common language so folks know what to expect. If a pub was selling a spectacular Helles under the name of Belgian blond, the customer might be disappointed. Beer is great, but everyone hates it.
The nice thing about homebrew is you don’t have to order $15k worth of labels before you know what it is LOL
I did realize and read that they had to dilute the water. I guess what I didn’t look at were the actual specs as far as concentrations, i.e. I need to study water chemistry more and download your program. What I did to my water was from the recipe you had in Zymurgy where you state “To produce a mineralization level popular in Burton pale ales, increase the additions to 4 tsp gypsum and 1 tsp calcium chloride in 8.5 gallons of water.”
Since I was starting with 17 gallons of water I just doubled these amounts.
Do you think Fullers when you think ESB? If that is the case, they use London’s water utility water and add gypsum to get the Ca and SO4 up. They say that on the tour, and you can see the bags of gypsum by the HLT. What they don’t say is the level they get the SO4 to. IIRC John Keeling says to get he Ca to 100 ppm.
If you used the recommendations from the recipe, you are fine. That already assumes a dilution and not the full Burton strength.