Brew day - ESB - 10/28/17

Clear wort. Beautiful copper color.

I've really cut back on brewing in the last year. That's because I decided to cut back drinking to weekends only (not always successful), I don't seem to have the same amount of interest I once had, and there are just so many different good commercial beers to buy.

But every once in awhile I get the itch to brew again. This time it came after thinking about Goose Island Honkers ale. I drank this beer years ago and recalled liking it. Maybe not as much as my favorite beer back then -- Boulevard pale ale -- but still a tasty beer. I stopped drinking it after I really got into craft beer four years ago. I'm not sure I specifically avoided it so much as I sort of forgot about it. I was so busy trying farmhouse ales and sours and the latest iterations of the IPAs that I just didn't ever buy it. And until recently I couldn't remember the last time I even saw it on the shelves.

It's still around, though, minus the elegant packaging, and sporting the new in-your-face, bold block-letter, hip (surely AB-designed) labels. I'd seen it in the last six months or so, but it was old, so I never bought it. However, recently I found some fairly fresh bottles -- bottled August 2, 2017 -- so I bought a single, followed by a six pack. I can't say for sure whether it's the same beer that I remember. Could it be because it's brewed by AB now? Could it be because I have more beer knowledge now, and whatever residual memory I have the beer back in 2010 is outstripped by the realization that the beer tastes like English hops? (I didn't even realize until very recently that the beer is an ESB). Is the beer actually the same? Either way, it's a solid beer and deserves more credit than it receives.

In the last year and a half, I've taken a strong interest in the original beer styles. There's a reason they've endured, and a reason why they've been assigned "styles." It's because they're good.

So Honkers Ale and English bitters in general were on my mind in advance of this particular brew day. I got a smack pack of Wyeast 1469 at my local shop and tried a beer that the owner had brewed with it. It was good. A guy in my homebrew club had brewed a tasty beer with it as well, and I had made a note of it. So I had my yeast. From there I constructed a recipe, actually based on an ESB recipe I had created in Brewtoad shortly after I started using that software nearly four years ago. I don't think I ever brewed the beer though. After modifying the recipe, it doesn't really resemble the original one.

I used 2-row, crystal 60 and crystal 80. The crystal malt is pretty old. Over three years old in fact. Same with the Fuggles and EKG hops. Admittedly not the best start to a great tasting beer, but I went with it anyway.

Brew day went smoothly. Beautiful copper, clear wort. OG around 1.052; volume around 5.25 gallons. I pitched a smack pack that swelled maybe 3/4 of the way. Pitching temp was in the upper 60s or so, but fermentation didn't really take off until the next day. Ambient temp in my house was around 60-62. Fermentation was well udnerway by the next afternoon.

I kegged the beer on November 10. I also bottled five beers, each with 1/4 tsp table sugar. FG was at 1.010.  Despite the relatively low temperature, the yeast produced a lot of fruity esters, which it is known to do. I'm impressed by the flavor, but it is nothing like Honkers Ale (not that I was necessarily trying to emulate that beer). At least the sample from the fermenter wasn't. Maybe after it's clear and carbonated it will more closely resemble it. It is hard to tell where the hops begin and the esters end, and vice versa. I don't have a lot of experience with these hops, particularly with an expressive yeast like West Yorkshire. Also, this yeast is not flocculent at all, despite what Wyeast has to say about that. The beer was very cloudy going into the keg. Which probably also explains the very small yeast cake. I had expected it to be much more substantial, given how vigorous the fermentation with this beer was. The krausen seemed to keep growing and growing. It even began to creep up into the airlock. A creamy krausen hung around for several days as fermentation completed.

Speaking of things not necessarily to Wyeast's specs. This yeast attenuated at 80%. That is well above what Wyeast indicates (67-71%). Therefore, the abv on this beer is around 5.5%. I had been aiming for 5% or under. This is something to keep in mind when designing recipes with this yeast.

After being in the kegerator about five hours, I opened the keg again and added gelatin (1 tsp of gelatin in a 1/4 cup of water heated to 150 degrees). I set the PSI around 30. This beer should be ready to drink pretty soon.

https://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/esb-403.