ESB on tap!

My pal Pete and I started brewing together last fall, and we have several batches under our belts now. Being that we're both fans of hoppy beers (IPAs, ESBs), we've been focusing on those.

In March, we took on an ESB that has turned out terrific (we also did a pilsner at the same time that is ok, but not outstanding). Actually, we brewed a double batch of the ESB (one for Pete, one for me) and we decided that one of these we would dry hop with extra hops (more on that in a moment). We have been doing extract brewing, simply because its easier and faster and I'm kind of lazy.


Here's the original ESB Extract Recipe we used:
6 lbs - John Bull English Light Malt Extract syrup (or can use Extra Light DME)
1 lb - Crystal Malt 60L (crushed)
Hops:
1 oz - English Northern (boiling for 60 min)
1 oz - Fuggles (.5oz for 40 min, 0.5oz for 30 min)
1 oz - East Kent Goldings (finishing for 15 min)
Yeast:
Wyeast 1098 British Ale liquid yeast

Bring 1.5 gallons to 160degrees, steep grain for 20 minutes, then remove. Add 1 gallon water, bring to boil, add extract and boiling hops, complete remaining hops additions.

Cool in ice bath, add to 3 gallons of water in fermenter.
ABV: 3.5%-4%

We decided to make some changes to this original recipe:
Added 1oz of Fuggles hops for 35 min (instead of splitting in half, remember: I'm lazy)
Steeped grains at about 185degrees for 20 minutes instead of 160 (opps)
Fermented for a week, then dry hopped after 1 week of fermenting with Vanguard hops? (I had the hops in the freezer from this winter. I actually am not sure what they are, but I think they were Vanguard)

Dry hopping is simply adding uncooked hops to the fermenter during different stages of fermenting.  Normally, I think I would do this when racking (transferring) to a secondary fermenter, but we had 3 batches going at once, and I was out of containers.  So, it just went in the original fermenter.  If I weren't lazy, I would have used the hydrometer to measure the specific gravity (SG) to tell me when in the fermenting process we added it, but I am lazy, so I didn't. I have to admit that I was a bit nervous about introducing uncooked hops to the beer, for fear of contaminating the whole batch with bacteria from the hops, but everything I read on blogs of varying reputation told me not to worry about that.  So, I took a swig of homebrew, ripped open the hops package, another swig of homebrew, popped-open the fermenter and sprinkled the hops over the top of the fermenting beer.

The downside to my laziness with the hydrometer is that I also have no idea what the alcohol level ultimately is, but it seems like its pretty close to the 3.5%. I am not normally THIS lazy...

As it turns out the ESB+dry hops batch is, by far, both Pete and my favorite. It's got a lot of variety in flavor and a very strong floral-hoppy aroma but I would say it's not significantly more bitter than the original recipe without the dry hopped bonus.

Now that Pete and I have a recipe that we like, I am going to see if we can make the successful switch to full-grain.  Then I believe we're going to work on our consistency in results. Since we like this beer we planning to use the full-grain as a good base recipe to do some experimenting. We're going to see what we can change, refine, distort, and concoct.

Oh who am I kidding, we'll be experimenting long before we try to get any consistency....