On Friday I will be brewing my first English Pale Ale / ESB ever. After closer to 30 batches of mostly American-style beers, I will join a couple of friends (Ingemar, Marcus N and Rasmus) over at a friend’s place (Marcus L), where we will be brewing and drinking some nice beer. Marcus L doesn’t have any brewing equipment of his own yet, so we will be brewing a stove-top BIAB, using a mixture of equipment that us guests are bringing with us. I designed the recipe (see below) for 15 litres of ESB hopped with East Kent Goldings, and hopefully it will make a tasty beer. Looking at other recipes online, most ESBs seem to have a simple malt bill with 90-95% pale ale malt and 5-10% Crystal malt, so went with something similar. I used three types of crystal malt for some complexity and a large hop addition late in the boil for some nice hop aroma. I have no idea what kind of efficiency we will be getting, so calculated the ingredients using a pessimistic guess of 55% efficiency.
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The list of beers we will be drinking is nice as well, and it includes 4 of my homebrews, which will all have tasting debuts, and 10 commercial beers. The list is:
- Bret, you’ve got it going on – 100% Brett IPA
- Meowing Monk – Belgian Blond
- Nightly Serenade – Imperial Porter
- Black Lodge – Imperial Stout
- Alesmith IPA
- Alesmith Old Numbskull
- De Molen Hel & Verdoemenis 666
- Kernel India Pale Ale Black
- Kernel India Brown Ale
- Mikkeller From Via To 2011
- Mikkeller Red/White Christmas
- Mikkeller / Cigar City Swinging Harry Tropical Quad
- Port Brewing Mongo IPA
- Three Floyds Amon Amarth
I will be posting a report, along with pictures, both over the brewday and with tasting notes. I’m already looking forward to Friday!
By the way, Unexpected Predator (my homebrewed American Strong Ale / IPA) got a great review over at Reittausblogi (unfortunately only in Finnish). I’ve really liked the beer myself (only a couple of bottles left), but it’s sweetening up a bit as it ages, and would maybe have liked a bit more bitterness to back up the sweetness. Otherwise a really nice beer, that I would recommend to anyone wanting to brew a hoppy, bitter and malty strong ale.