Today we brewed up a large batch of ESB, and for once everything went quite smoothly. We used a simple malt bill of 91% Maris Otter, 6.4% Crystal 100 and 2.7% Crystal 300. We tried conditioning the malt before crushing it, and it had a huge effect on the flow rate through the malt bed! Will definitely continue conditioning the malt before crushing it in the future! The mash went smoothly, and at the end of the day we managed a 74% overall efficiency, resulting in 44 liters of 1.058 wort. We hopped with East Kent Goldings, Styrian Goldings and Fuggles to around 42 IBU (more weight on bitter hops compared to aroma hops). For the yeast, we again chose some Wyeast 1318 London Ale III slurry from a previous fermentation. It will be very interesting to see how this one turns out!
[beerxml recipe=http://beer.suregork.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/k04_esb.xml metric=true cache=-1]
I’m planning on brewing an ESB as well and my first draft was almost identical to your recipe. I will use Nottingham yeast and perhaps make a 0-5 min hop addition. Have you had the change to try this brew yet? It would be great to hear your impressions on this!
Still waiting in the keg, but based on a taste sample it seems quite promising. Aroma is mostly caramel and floral hops, while the flavour has some nutty and earthy tones as well. Slight yeasty (hopefully that was only because of the sample from the bottom the keg) and with a moderate bitterness. A late hop addition would probably be a good idea, as I think the beer is missing something to make it really stand out.
Pingback: Suregork Loves Beer » Blog Archive » Small homebrew update