While working a shift at my LHBS my co-worker and local homebrew hero inspired me to brew an ESB. He suggested using Maris Otter and no more than 10% golden naked oat with EKG. I’ve never brewed an ESB, and this recipe sounded deliciously simple. So, I’m sitting here and plugging it all into Beersmith, and I noticed that the SRM seems too low - it bugged me so I found this…
The brewer, Josh, mentions crystal malts and I have access to some good local c-40 and c-60 (It really puts Breiss to shame). It bumped it up to 8.4 SRM (style guide line is 8-16). So, I have a recipe that looks ok to me - I’m trying to be more thoughtful about creating recipes this year so I thought I’d throw this out to the wolves and see what I can learn.
Batch Size: 6gal
Efficiency: 72%
8lb Maris Otter
.5lb C-40
.5 C-60
.5 Golden Promise
First Wort 60min 1oz EKG
15min 1oz EKG
5min 1oz EKG
Whirlpool EKG
West Yorkshire Ale Wyeast 1469
Haven’t found a water profile yet, but I’ll use distilled/RO
My friend/co-worker suggested naturally keg carbonating which sounds interesting.
Golden Naked Oats is a type of Crystal malt, so I wouldn’t add more Crystal malts in addition. In general, adding Crystal malt to hit a target color isn’t the best option. Add whatever amount/type of Crystal to hit your target flavor, then make up the color difference with a dark roasted malt, or brewer’s caramel if you have access to it.
I like Crystal in my ESB recipes at about 5-7%, although you can probably push it to 10% if that’s your preference. 1469 is an excellent choice for yeast, and I think your hop schedule looks pretty good, too.
I think a good ESB needs Crystal. Fuller’s and Bass use it, so why wouldn’t we? I like the recipe above. I just think it will fall short on specific gravity. You’ll need a whole lot more than 9.5 pounds of malt in 6 gallons at 72% efficiency to get up towards like 1.055. More like 12 pounds. I’d increase just the base malt, leave the half pound each of the crystal malts. Then add a touch of any dark roasted malt as color adjustment. That is all.
There is an ever growing thread at homebrew talk dot com about Fullers ESB with much of the information coming directly from Fullers head brewer and past head brewers. I remember John Keeling saying it was 95% pale ale malt and 5% crystal 150. Hops were Target for bittering and in the last minutes they used Northdown, Challenger and Goldings. ESB was dry hopped in the fermenter.
Keep in mind that is how John Keeling knew it during his time at Fullers. The recipe has evolved and snapshots of brew logs show a slightly different grist.
I’ve only done an ESB once. I used Maris, Crystal 60, and just a bit of Crystal 120 to get the color. It came out quite well. I ended up taking part of the batch to a homebrew competition (the type where you get to serve your own beer to people). I didn’t win anything with it (as usual :D), but got a lot of positive feedback.
@Homebrew_kev - In your description about the how the recipe came together, you mentioned Golden Naked Oats. But in the grain bill you have Golden Promise. Was one of these a mistype?
Adding specialty grains for the sole purpose of achieving an SRM is not good practice, in my view. Your flavor/aroma target- desired outcomes other than color- should drive your ingredient choices I think. British bitters can be all over the place in terms of color & still be accurate representations of the style.
Based on old podcasts from 2009/2010 on the Brewing Network program “Can You Brew It”, Fullers ESB is 14 SRM, and Fullers confirmed they use a tiny amount of chocolate malt to achieve the color. They use about 5% dark crystal malt.
In the days of old 100-200 years ago (and maybe even more recently), the Brits have used black invert sugar and “brewer’s caramel”, which IIRC was like a black taffy, to darken the beers.
So, they are absolutely NOT squeamish about making color adjustments if/when desired.
fullers ESB recipe posted above is right, except it is colour adjusted with brewers caramel.
my favourite bitter, just a bit below an ESB, is ruddles county. id say its similar to the outline of whats posted here
90% pale ale or maris otter, 5% very dark crystal 5% sugar
but they use bramling hops. if you can mix in a small amount of some berry/dark fruit hops along with the standard british hops it really pushes it over the edge into highly memorable territory.
Even with an extraction rate of 30 points per pound per gallon, that grist is going to yield a lower gravity than one would expect from an ESB. I second Eric’s recommendation. I specialized in British beer styles for over two decades. British bitter obtains most of its color from brewer’s caramel or a small addition of black or chocolate malt. I plan to use Blackprinz malt to color my British bitters in the future.