Nothing fancy here but I couldn’t help but want to toss in something to differentiate it from what is a really simple category.
Floor-malted Maris Otter: 83%
C-40: 3.8%
Special B: 3.8%
Chocolate Malt: 2%
Progress and Goldings hops at 60 and 10 to 31IBUs (.80 Bitterness ratio).
1/2lb dextrose near the end of the boil
British Ale II Wyeast
Thoughts, questions, comments???
Why add dextrose?
Umm, good question. To dry it out a bit? I have a half pound on hand? Daniel’s book told me to? The Innkeeper is a good bitter and it has it? I don’t really know, I guess I could just mash a tad lower and get the same result. Especially if it’s only in a small amount. I’m assuming you don’t think it’s necessary? Makes sense. This is why I post these things.
I don’t often brew light English beers, but I use WLP007 as a house yeast and it’s very attenuative and I don’t like thin, low-ABV beers, so I don’t use sugar myself. But if it’s in a recipe you like, nothing wrong with it.
Well, now you have me second guessing myself which I think is good. I don’t really brew low gravity english beers either which is why I was posting this so I’m not sure. I guess I need to think about what I want the end product to look like a little more before just following a recipe or book.
What O G will you shoot for?
I brew an ordinary bitter with M O and 6% crystal 35 and 4% victory bittered with challenger and some goldings at the end that’s pretty good.
I really want something I can drink a lot of so around 4.25% ABV.
Looks kinda like a mild recipe. classic English bitters are usually really simple. Base malt, some crystal, and torrified wheat. Still looks good though, just depends what you’re going for.
Personally I would skip then sugar. But theakstons bitter uses sucrose in the boil.
I say go for it. Should be good
Yeah, now that I look at the two it is kind of bordering the lines of a mild. Oh well right. It’s technically a little stronger in alcohol and bitterness than a Mild should be and on the low end of the color spectrum of a Mild.
I brew quite a few low gravity English style beers and I am usually trying to trick the drinker (me) into thinking that the beer is really bigger than it really is. My main trick is using a yeast strain that doesn’t attenuate all that well (I like WLP02 personally). The other thing you can do is mash a litte hotter. Probably my favorite bitter is what I guess I’ll call a “Tweeked London Pride” clone. That stuff has an O.G. of about 1.044 and it always comes out great (and yeah, you can drink alot of it at one sitting). The main problem us Americans have is that we are used to beer with an O.G. of around 1.050 so some of the lower gravity stuff tastes watery to us. Also, try to keep the carbonation low, highly carbonated beer always comes off as thinner.
This weekend I am however going in the oposite direction. I’m doing an English IPA with an O.G. of about 1.065 so I’m going with WLP07 and I have also added some flaked corn to the grist to thin it out a bit. I want the beer to come off like a quaffer however I will need to be careful with this stuff because one could get into trouble quick with a beer like that. 
Well, since I wrote the recipe that way I decided to say screw it, I’m going with my initial intuition and am going to do it that way. This one is actually pretty much done fermenting and started at 1.040 and was done to 1.010 the other night. The initial gravity sample tasted great which I feel is important to say because I often time do not like the taste of room temp, bitter sugar water that is a pre-fermentation gravity sample.
However, the sample taken the other night tasted a tad cidery. Maybe a bit citrusy, almost lemony??? I don’t know, my ability to describe tastes is sometimes lacking. But it tastes a bit like the SMaSH beers I did with EKG hops which I obviously used in this beer too. Has anyone got kind of a ciderish quality from EKG before. Maybe I need to try it again to better define it.
Edit above: I think cidery wrong, possible lemon which I’ve gathered can sometimes be contributed through EKG so I think I’m good.
I have been doing this hobby for about 25 years and frankly, you are a better man than I if you can taste a cooled wort and get any idea at all what the finished beer will taste like. Hell, I always taste the fermented stuff when I transfer it to secondary and the best I can do is tell if there is a serious infection going on or if the beer is under attenuated. The unfermented wort just tastes like sweet liquid with some wierd bitter stuff thrown in to me.
Lol, I don’t think I’m a better man than you because I don’t think I really get anything out of it. As a matter of fact I’m not sure why me and all my brewing buddies still do it. I’m sure it was just something we did years back on our first brew because we wanted to try it and haven’t stopped. I guess I always just assumed this as common practice.
