English Bitter, Its A Challenge...help !

[locost]

Thanks!

I must admit its the quest for good Bitter that got me into this game in the first place!

 

[Trough Lolly]

I agree with MAH - 95% Maris Otter and 5% Crystal with hops and yeast to style for the first batch. If she and you both enjoy that result and decide to brew more, then you can look at flashing it up with non-standard adjuncts like Munich malt, etc.
That's the great thing about beermaking (nearly said brewing!!) - you can experiment from a "standard" recipe and make a beer that is unique to your palate.
Cheers,
TL

 

[Sean]

10% Crystal is certainly the absolute max. 5% is pretty typical. No crystal at all(straight pale malt) is also unusual.

It's all about adding subtle complexities (leave the in-ya-face stuff to the brewers of APA's ).

Absolutely.

With the hops it's a similar story. Good quality hops, usually Golding and Fuggle, are used to give a nice bittering, with good flavour and aroma. The trick is to be balanced. By their very nature a Bitter should be just that, but not to the extent of some American hop monsters.

Indeed, some bitters are not very bitter at all.

Very few traditional examples rely on a single hop variety though - a good blend of hop flavours is part of the usual profile.

In theory these are very simple beers, because they rely on so few ingredients, but in practice they can be quite difficult because you can't hide your mistakes behind a huge malt bill or hop schedule. It can be a bit tricky not to make a one dimensional beer when you are only using 2 grains and a single variety of hops with an OG of 1.038.

Very true, though (as I said) one shouldn't really be using a single variety of hops.

 

[Vlad the Pale Aler]

Jeez, can we get we get past Fullers esb.
Its an historical fact that they cant make a decent beer south of Watford.

 

[Guest Lurker]

Watford, or the Watford Gap?

 

[JFF]

All I can say is THANKS to everyone.

I'm not sure whether it was the mention of the word ....
1. English(wo)man
2. Challange
3. Honour

That extracted such a response ... but I am very grateful to everyone that has contributed.

What will I do ... well MAH has convinced me that simplicity might be the key. I might end up taking a trip to the brew shop to pick up a few more hops anyway, Doing the stocktake made me realise I was empty on some counts which is not a situation I want to be in. (Northern Brewer as a staple bittering hop, Mittlefruh as a new recruit, Golding to add to the Fuggle for this little task)

Thanks heaps again and cheers.
JFF