Help with an ESB recipe (extract)

[Penghu Brews]

I have some East Kent Goldings and Fuggles and wanted to try to create an ESB, preferably something close to a Kentish ale. I've only previously brewed APAs and was looking for a bit of advice on quantity and schedule of hop additions and steeping grains to brew a balanced beer where the malt and more subtle English hops can both shine through. I have some caramalt to use for steeping. I'll be brewing my usual quantity (3 Gal) as that's what my set up and equipment best lends itself to.

Any and all advice welcome (just don't tell me to go All Grain ) Cheers!

 

[balrog]

May I humbly suggest a quick peak here on this forum in the recipes section for something that tickles your fancy? If it is all grain, just ask, and several will step in to help convert to extract/steeping recipe.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/forums/homebrew-ale-recipes.62/

Filter by style, like "Strong Bitter"

 

[downzero]

Beersmith is your friend with regard to bitterness, it'll allow you to make adjustments. Generally bitter recipes are a bittering charge at 60 minutes, sometimes of EKG and other times you'll see a bittering hop like Target or Challenger at 60 minutes with one later addition (15 minutes) of EKG. The thing about Beersmith is it'll be easy to see where adjustments to your quantity and alpha acid percentage change your final beer's IBU. Bitter is a malty style so the importance, from my perspective, is that the bitterness needs to balance out the alcohol percentage, so you'll want to adjust your bitterness based on strength. There are three styles of bitter in Beersmith, Ordinary, Best, and Strong. The styles have substantial overlap and my primary goal in developing my bitter recipes is to have an appropriate level of bittering for the alcohol content/gravity.

With regard to the grain bill, bitter is 90% Marris Otter and 10% crystal malt. Use darker crystal if you want it darker or a mix of different kinds of crystal if you want different flavors. You can add an ounce of chocolate malt if you want the color. There are malts like biscuit that will give you a bit of that doughy flavor, but I think you'll find that the Marris Otter will do that anyway. If you're using regular pale malt instead, a few ounces or a half pound of biscuit can replace that missing biscuit taste. I would imagine the same is true if you substitute pale extract for the Marris Otter. I haven't brewed extract for years so I have no idea if Marris Otter derived malt extract exists. Use Beersmith to get the OG you want and keep the ratios close to the 90/10 and you'll be good.

You may not want to hear it now, but this is a type of beer for which "going all grain" by getting yourself a brew in the bag setup is perfectly suited. Ordinary bitter is below 4% ABV. Such a beer can likely be brewed in a 5 gallon batch with 10 pounds or less of grain. The savings on malt extract for even two brews will pay for the bag if you already have a large enough kettle for your batch size. If you're already steeping specialty grains for your extract brews, you already know how to brew in a bag. All grain might seem intimidating if we're talking about a 20 pound grain bill to make a barleywine, but where you're already going to be steeping 2 or 3 pounds of specialty grains to make this beer anyway, this is a perfect opportunity for you to mash another 7 pounds of grain by the same process and get away from the extract.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Bitter is a malty style

That's interesting given that it's the only beer named after a hop flavour!

The point is that British beer is all about yeast, water, hops, malt and carbonation all contributing to the whole, each balancing the other without overwhelming them. But I'd agree with you that BU:GU is a useful way of thinking about them, personally my tastes are more northern and so prefer BU:GU in the 85-90% range, but southern beers can be more like 70-75%.

bitter is 90% Marris Otter and 10% crystal malt. Use darker crystal if you want it darker...I haven't brewed extract for years so I have no idea if Marris Otter derived malt extract exists.

Almost no bitter is 10% crystal on its own, in fact commercial ones tend not to go much above 5% without some sugar to balance it out. Fuller's use 7.2% light crystal without sugar in their main partigyle and to my taste that's about as high as I'd want to go, a lot of northern bitters only have 2-3% (or none at all). There may be commercial examples out there using 10% crystal with no sugar, but I'd regard them as extreme examples.

Don't use "flavour" ingredients like crystal to colour beer - one reason North Americans end up putting stupid amounts of crystal in bitter is that they fail to realise that most of the colour is added via small amounts of caramel or black malt. Use the amount of the right crystal you need to get the flavour right, then either don't worry about the colour or use colouring agents. Look at these photos of Landlord - it's paler than some southern ones but it gives you some idea.

I've certainly seen Otter extract in the UK, but it's not common, and frankly I don't think you'd see much advantage. Remember that Otter is a pretty rare variety of barley in British brewing, it's loved by homebrewers and some microbreweries but most commercial brewers aren't prepared to pay the premium for a 60-year-old variety that is horrible to grow.

I have some East Kent Goldings and Fuggles and wanted to try to create an ESB, preferably something close to a Kentish ale.

If the requirement is for a strong bitter (ESB is a specific beer from Fuller's, not a style) and Kentish then Bishop's Finger is the obvious benchmark. We know from Shepherd Neame's allergen list that it has barley but no wheat or maize. Anecdotally their core beers use only pale malt (ordinary, not fancy stuff like Otter), crystal and syrup. So it's probably something like pale malt with 8% crystal and 10% syrup.

I believe Bishop's Finger has Target for bittering to 40 IBU and Goldings as late additions, say an ounce at 10 minutes and an ounce as dry hop. Ah - for 3 gallons maybe reduce that a bit, but you can't really go wrong with Goldings as a dry hop in any quantity... But for a generic southern English ale you can't really go wrong with Fuggles (although it's not a personal favourite) in there somewhere, and it's not essential to use a British hop for bittering if you have something higher alpha kicking around.

 

[downzero]

That's interesting given that it's the only beer named after a hop flavour!

Bitter is not named after its "hop flavour." It is named because people asked for "bitter" instead of "mild." Bitter is not really all that bitter at all compared to actually bitter styles. Many recipes for bitter don't even have late additions, suggesting, at least to me as an American, achieving proper hop balance without any particular hop flavor is actually more important. I'm far from the expert on recipe development but I have probably looked at more bitter recipes than any other style that originates outside of North America and I've brewed a few; my post was intended to express trends more than regional British nuance. I suspect by your post that you're more familiar with regional variation than I could be.

Certainly the other points you make--that sweetness varies, not to over do it on crystal malt, etc., I share your sentiments as to most of those points. I don't think there's a drastic difference between 5 and 10% crystal and I'd also agree that some kind of sugar is part of many bitter recipes to dry the beer out and achieve the goal OG. Bitter also occupies an interesting space within beer because there are several different "styles" even by BJCP guidelines, so there can be substantial variation on what people prefer within the broad category of "bitter."