This post is one in a series following five brewers limiting themselves to a select set of ingredients and brewing several beers each with only those ingredients. The goal of these limitations is to push creativity and to see what can be done within the confines of a single set of ingredients. More about this concept can be found here. The ingredients chosen for this project were Maris Otter, White Wheat (malted), Light Munich, Amarillo, Nugget, WLP810 San Francisco Lager and WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast. The brewer must use all ingredients (with the exception of choosing one yeast strain). The rest of this series can be found here.
Author: C. McKenzie
After producing what I thought was a fairly decent but by no means spectacular beer with my first go at brewing within the set of limitations we’d put in place, I wanted to try my best to really push for something interesting and that might not be an obvious style choice given the list of ingredients. Thinking through some of my favorite styles, I knew the fact that I only had Maris Otter, Munich, and Wheat to work with would limit my choices in terms of any darker color and the toasted or roasted flavors that come with the more highly kilned malts. Several pale ales, IPAs, and wheat beers had already been brewed for this project, so I eliminated those from my list of possibilities. I’d already brewed a lager within the given limitations, so I wanted to do something that was more of an ale style this time around. Ultimately, I decided to try to replicate an ESB using the limited set of ingredients.
Recipe
Having Maris Otter as a malt to use seemed fortuitous enough, but there were some serious things I had to take into consideration if I wanted to have this beer taste anything like an ESB. The first item I had to take into account was that something was glaringly missing from the malts I could use: crystal malt. A hallmark of the style, I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to go about achieving the characteristic malt profile of an ESB without crystal malt.
This limitation alone seemed to preclude the possibility of brewing this style successfully, but as I continued to ponder my options, I remembered reading a blog post recounting a beer style that makes use of an oven to bake the mash instead of the standard infusion mash. The author indicated that the resulting beer had a toasty caramel flavor, which makes sense, as after conversion, the sugars would continue to be heated to and above the temperature required to caramelize them. While keptinis (the farmhouse beer style mentioned above) is made by placing the entire mash in the oven, I realized that I could bake only a small portion of the mash in an attempt to replicate the caramel flavors of a crystal malt. I decided to take 10% of the malt (the amount of crystal malt I would normally use in an ESB) and set it aside for a baked mash. I also decided that this portion of malt should be made up solely of Maris Otter instead of being a mix of the malts.
The biggest issue potentially solved, I turned my attention to the lack of English yeast strains and English hops in the ingredient choices. Though I’ve not yet used WLP090 San Diego Super Yeast, everything I’d heard and read about it indicated that it was a very clean yeast—which would not provide the esters typically produced by English yeast strains and desired in an ESB. WLP810 San Francisco Lager Yeast was, well, a lager yeast; however, my mind began to turn back to a rye brown ale that I made with WLP810. I fermented that beer at the top of the optimal temperature range for that yeast, and to my surprise, that beer turned out with a decent level of esters (and was absolutely delightful, by the way). This made me wonder if, although a lager strain, WLP810 might get the job done in terms of the desired esters if I fermented it at the top of its range. After this idea, I also realized that this strain attenuates and flocculates similarly to most English yeast strains, whereas WLP090 attenuates a bit more (but is apparently highly flocculent as well). This solidified my unconventional yeast choice—yes, an “ESB” brewed with lager yeast.
The lack of English hops bothered me the least since Nugget is generally earthy, woody, and sometimes floral, much like many English varieties. In fact, on one hop-based website I looked at, Nugget is listed as an appropriate and good choice of hop for an ESB. Amarillo, on the other hand, is more pungently and distinctly American as a hop variety. That said, I wondered if the peach, apricot, and orange notes I tend to perceive in Amarillo could very well make up for any lack of esters if WLP810 didn’t perform in the same way that I had previously experienced when using it at higher temperatures. Granted, the fruity characteristics of Amarillo are quite different from the fruity character of esters produced by English yeast strains, but I thought it might be a somewhat comparable substitute if done correctly. I decided to lean more heavily on Nugget for the hop flavor in the beer, but I chose to dry hop with Amarillo to add some fruity aromas—not to mention that a small charge of dry hops is appropriate for the style.
All of these workarounds and choices resulted in the following recipe:
- Mashed at 151°F
- 80% Maris Otter (8 lbs.)
- 10% Maris Otter (1 lb.) baked at 450°F for 2 hours
- 5% Light Munich (0.5 lbs.)
- 5% Wheat (0.5 lb.)
- 80% Maris Otter (8 lbs.)
- Boiled for 60 min.
- 0.5 oz. Nugget (60 min.) at 13.3% AA (24.4 IBUs)
- 0.25 oz. Nugget (15 min.) at 13.3% AA (6.1 IBUs)
- 0.25 oz. Nugget (5 min.) at 9.3% AA (2.4 IBUs)
- Pitched WLP810 San Francisco Lager
- Fermented at 65°F
- Raised temperature to 67°F on day 5
- Raised temperature to 69°F on day 7
- Raised temperature to 70°F on day 8
- Dry hopped
- 1 oz. Amarillo for 7 days
- OG: 1.057
- FG: 1.014
- ABV: 5.6%
- Kegged and burst carbonated
Brew Day
This brew day was a little different than most of my other brew days in terms of logistics. I’ve been brewing on Friday evenings after work recently, and I wasn’t initially sure how long to bake the mash in order to get the sugars to caramelize. The blog on keptinis that I referenced above indicated that the mash was baked for quite a long time (6 hours), and I didn’t have that much time in my evening. Frankly, I also didn’t want to run my oven for that long since we were experiencing temperatures in the upper 90’s the week that I brewed this. After some research on the temperature at which sugars begin to caramelize, I decided that 2 hours in the oven would probably suffice since I would only be baking a small portion of the mash.
I poured out 1 pound of Maris Otter into a loaf pan and added 1 quart of water. I then put the pan into the cold oven and turned the temperature up to 450°F. I chose to put the mash into the oven while it was cold so that it would heat up slowly and still hopefully undergo saccharification before the enzymes were denatured by the heat. Once this portion of the mash was heating up, I went to my garage and mashed in as usual with the remaining grains, ensuring I had enough room at the top of my mash tun to add the additional pound of malt that was baking at the moment.
After 2 hours, I checked on the baking mash and saw that the top was somewhat browning, but not to the extent I wanted. There were some darker syrup-like sugars stuck to the sides of the pan, but I wasn’t sure the mash as a whole was as caramelized as I’d hoped. So, I turned on the broiler for a few minutes in an effort to expedite the browning on the top of the mash; this turned out to be a terrible idea. The top very quickly went from brown to black and smoking. I quickly pulled the mash from the oven and then frantically fanned a dish towel in front of my smoke detector, hoping beyond hope that the loud beeping hadn’t woken my sleeping children.
Thankfully, my kids somehow stayed asleep, and I took the baked mash out to the garage to add to my mash tun. I scooped the baked mash into the tun and stirred it around gently to mix it in without disturbing the bottom of the grain bed.
I then drained my mash tun, and after a couple batch sparges, I had my desired pre-boil volume of wort. I began the boil and added hops at the times noted in the recipe.
After the boil, I chilled the wort with my immersion chiller and took a gravity reading. I ended up couple points higher than expected, but nothing outrageous. As I gathered my wort, I pulled off about half a gallon of wort into a small carboy and added my yeast to that while I moved the carboy with the rest of the wort into my fermentation chamber to finish cooling.
Once the wort was at my desired fermentation temperature, I pitched the vitality starter and let the yeast do its thing. Fermentation was a little sluggish, and I thought the beer looked mostly finished when I added my charge of dry hops. Fermentation continued after this for longer than expected, so my dry hops were added for several days longer than I had planned for them to be in contact with the beer.
Once I was certain the beer was finished fermenting, I kegged up the beer and burst carbonated it. This beer took quite a while to drop the least bit clear (though it never did fully, and I’ve found that beers made with WLP810 really taste significantly better once the yeast drops out of suspension, so I didn’t even really start drinking this beer in earnest until a few weeks later.
Tasting
This beer was golden and fairly cloudy. Despite a decent time of cold-conditioning, the yeast never dropped out completely. This beer had a large white head with excellent retention.
The aroma of this beer was fairly muted. Initially, there was a decent amount of peach aroma from the dry hop, but there was also a large yeasty scent that made me give this beer a few more weeks to condition. By the time I sat down to take notes, the dry hop aroma had largely faded, but so had the unpleasant overly-yeasty character. What aroma there was had a hint of peach but was mostly earthy and bready.
The flavor of this beer was earthy and herbal. A pleasant bread-like character was present and prominent, and there was just a hint of caramel sweetness. Unfortunately, there was also something that I can only classify as “lager” to the taste. It’s a flavor I’ve not yet been able to identify, but it’s a distinctive flavor that I get from almost all lagers (including well-made and well-respected commercial examples). In fact, that flavor is the main reason I don’t like lagers, and it therefore drives me crazy that I’ve not been able to place exactly what that flavor is over the years. It’s also a flavor I’ve not gotten when using WLP810 in the past, so I was surprised to see it crop up in this beer.
Overall, this was absolutely not an ESB or even a good imitation of the style. Actually, it wasn’t a very great beer either. I was rather disappointed at how this turned out not just because it wasn’t super delicious (though also not a dumper), but also because of the fact that the baked mash didn’t impart the character I wanted it to.
In retrospect, I think I did several things wrong. The first thing was choosing WLP810 as my yeast. When I chose this yeast for the character that I’d gotten before from it (the esters and not-at-all-lager quality in the brown rye ale I used it in), I quite honestly forgot that San Francisco Lager Yeast tends to emphasize the malt character over the hops. That malt-forward character and thus muted bitterness was not appropriate for the style (even if it was a pseudo-ESB to start).
If I were to brew this beer again using the same ingredients, I wouldn’t.
Ok, jokes aside; if for some reason I ended up brewing this beer again I would absolutely increase the length of time the mash spent in the oven. I don’t think that the time I let it bake for was sufficient to get enough caramel flavors to come through. I also would rearrange the hop schedule to add a little more bitterness and not use as much Amarillo in the dry hop. Though a delicious hop, Amarillo really just did not work in this beer.
If I were to brew this beer again with no restrictions on ingredients, I would absolutely use an English yeast strain, use caramel malt instead of the baked mash (though it could be fun to try that again in the future and ensure it spends sufficient time in the oven), and not use Amarillo. I might still use Nugget, but I would opt for EKG or Fuggle over Amarillo for an ESB. I tried to pull off some fruity notes with it to make up for the lack of esters, and it just didn’t work.
Recipe Comparison
Note: Some disparity in IBU contributions for flameout and whirlpool additions will exist in the chart below due to variation in recipe calculator software amongst contributors.
| Beer 1 | Beer 2 | Beer 3 | Beer 4 | Beer 5 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Style | Hoppy Wheat | Pale Ale/Lager | IPL | NEIPA/IPA | Munich Lager |
| Maris Otter | 34.4% | 50% | 50% | 82% | 30% |
| Light Munich | 5.5% | 25% | 41% | 7% | 60% |
| Wheat | 60.1% | 25% | 9% | 11% | 10% |
| Hop Addition 1 | 28.7 IBUs Nugget (60 min.) | 41.3 IBUs Nugget (First Wort) | 21 IBUs Nugget (30 min.) | 41.8 IBUs Nugget (First Wort) | 24.4 IBUs Nugget (60 min.) |
| Hop Addition 2 | 5.5 IBUs Amarillo (5 min.) | 5.8 IBUs Amarillo (15 min.) | 23 IBUs Amarillo—30 min. Whirlpool | 4.8 IBUs Amarillo (20 min Whirpool at 170F) | 8.9 IBUs Nugget (10 min.) |
| Hop Addition 3 | 7.1 IBUs Nugget (5 min.) | 2.3 IBUs Nugget (5 min.) | N/A | 0.8 IBUs Amarillo & Nugget (20 min Whirlpool at 120F) | 6.8 IBUs Amarillo (5 min.) |
| Hop Addition 4 | 16.8 IBUs Amarillo—30 min. Whirlpool | 0 IBUs Amarillo (flameout) | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Hop Addition 5 | 22 IBUs Nugget—30 min. Whirlpool | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Dry Hop | 2.5 oz. Amarillo, 2 oz. Nugget (10 days) | N/A | 2 oz. Amarillo @ Day 1; 2 oz. Amarillo @ Day 4 | 1 oz. Amarillo & 0.5 oz. Nugget @ Day 2, 1 oz. Amarillo @ Day 8; 2 oz. Amarillo & 0.5 oz. @ Day 8 | N/A |
| Yeast | WLP090 at 64°F, raised to 70°F | WLP090 at 66°F, raised to 72°F; WLP810 at 63°F | WLP810 at 65°F, raised to 68°F | WLP090 | WLP810 at 60°F, raised to 65°F |
| OG | 1.059 | 1.058 | 1.050 | 1.063 | 1.055 |
| FG | 1.012 | 1.009/1.014 | 1.010 | 1.012 | 1.013 |
| ABV | 6.2% | 6.5%/5.8% | 5.3% | 6.7% | 5.5% |
| Beer 6 | Limitations: Beer 7 (Hoppy Wheat) | Limitations: Beer 8 (American Pale Ale) | Beer 8 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Style | California Common | Hoppy Wheat | American Pale Ale | ESB |
| Maris Otter | 30% | 21% | 50% | 80% + 10% baked |
| Light Munich | 60% | 12% | 41% | 5% |
| Wheat | 10% | 67% | 9% | 5% |
| Hop Addition 1 | 28.2 IBUs Nugget (30 min.) | 23 IBUs Nugget (45 min.) | 21 IBUs Nugget (30 min.) | 24.4 IBUs Nugget (60 min.) |
| Hop Addition 2 | 4.35 IBUs Amarillo (5 min.) | 8.2 IBUs Nugget (15 min.) | 23 IBUs Amarillo (0 min.) | 6.1 IBUs Nugget (15 min.) |
| Hop Addition 3 | 1 oz. Amarillo (165ºF Whirlpool for 20 min.) | N/A | N/A | 2.4 IBUs Nugget (5 min.) |
| Hop Addition 4 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Hop Addition 5 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Dry Hop | 2 oz. Amarillo | 1 oz. Amarillo for 9 days; 1 oz. Amarillo for 4 days | 1 oz. Amarillo & 1 oz. Nugget day 1 of fermentation; 2 oz. Amarillo day 4 of fermentation | 1 oz. Amarillo |
| Yeast | WLP810 at 65°F | WLP090 at 65°F for 5 days; raised to 72°F over 5 days | WLP090 | WLP 810 at 65°F for 4 days; raised to 70°F over 4 days |
| OG | 1.050 | 1.059 | 1.055 | 1.057 |
| FG | 1.012 | 1.009 | 1.010 | 1.014 |
| ABV | 5% | 6.6% | 5.9% | 5.6% |