Jim's bitter recipes

[Northern Brewer]

I’ve been comparing Jim’s stock bitter recipes and note they are very similar.

Jim’s recipe from Brewing Techniques page…

Pale Malt 3.5Kg
Crystal Malt 250g
Mash in 2.8g of water at 67 deg C for 75 minutes with a PH of 5.3

Hops
Fuggles 10 IBUs (approx 30g)
Challenger 10 IBUs (approx 20g)
Late: 5g Fuggles

Jim’s recipe from Recipes section of forum…

Pale Malt 3.7kg
Crystal Malt 250g
Mash in 2.75g of water at 67 deg C for 90 minutes (aim for pH around 5.2)

Hops
Fuggles 17 IBUs (50g @ 4%)
Challenger 7 IBUs (10g @ 8%)
Late: 5 g Fuggles

I am rather intrigued by the low hopping levels and wonder whether Jim or anybody else can comment on what these brews taste like. In particular I would be grateful if somebody could draw any similarity with today’s commercial brews.

My reason for raising this is that it appears to me that many modern bitters have far lower hopping levels than the recipes from the books we follow. For example, Wheeler’s Boddingtons bitter recipe contains 37 IBUs, but I can’t believe that the today’s Boddingtons tastes that bitter.

[Exextractor]

Can't comment on Jim's recipes, but Boddington's used to be a real ale with a distinctive hoppy flavour before they transformed it into today's tasteless creamy nitro-keg. Similar thing happened to a lesser degree with Greene King Abbot, reduced the taste to make it more commercial. I saw a recent ad in a trade journal encouraging landlords to serve new lower gravity Speckled Hen at same retail price (and save on the reduced duty/tax). Moral: lots of well known beers aren't what they used to be (....and don't get me started on Guinness!)

[Jim]

I've always been more of a malt-head than a hop-head - that's why I tend to make beer with low IBUs (though still with plenty of hop flavour).

I've recently started using a beer engine to serve my brews, and I'm finding that my standard brew is lacking hop flavours a bit, so recently I've upped the hops. However, I've boosted late hops and used dry hops in the keg rather than increase bittering hops, to keep a low overall bitterness, but with plenty of hop flavour and aroma. I find that suits me best - the beauty of home brewing is you can please yourself how you make it.

[Northern Brewer]

To my mind, many commercially available bitters simply don’t seem very bitter. But then I start to question whether they ever were.

Wheeler indicates that English bitters typically have 50EBUs. However, when you study the 73 bitter/pale ale recipes in his book, BYOBRAAH, not a single recipe touches 50EBUs. In fact, only 3 recipes exceed 40 EBUs whilst 22 of them have less than 30 EBUs. This all strikes me as being somewhat contradictory.

[Northern Brewer]

I've always been more of a malt-head than a hop-head - that's why I tend to make beer with low IBUs (though still with plenty of hop flavour).

I've recently started using a beer engine to serve my brews, and I'm finding that my standard brew is lacking hop flavours a bit, so recently I've upped the hops. However, I've boosted late hops and used dry hops in the keg rather than increase bittering hops, to keep a low overall bitterness, but with plenty of hop flavour and aroma. I find that suits me best - the beauty of home brewing is you can please yourself how you make it.

Thanks for the explanation Jim. Can you share with us what your new hopping levels are?

[Jim]

I've always been more of a malt-head than a hop-head - that's why I tend to make beer with low IBUs (though still with plenty of hop flavour).

I've recently started using a beer engine to serve my brews, and I'm finding that my standard brew is lacking hop flavours a bit, so recently I've upped the hops. However, I've boosted late hops and used dry hops in the keg rather than increase bittering hops, to keep a low overall bitterness, but with plenty of hop flavour and aroma. I find that suits me best - the beauty of home brewing is you can please yourself how you make it.

Thanks for the explanation Jim. Can you share with us what your new hopping levels are?

They say you should only change one thing at a time when you're experimenting with a recipe - well, I've massacared that rule!

Here's the last 'standard' bitter I made, with extra wheat for a lasting head with no top pressure and extra late hops for more flavour. Note that the IBUs are still very low:

Grist:

4kg Marris Otter pale malt
250g Crystal Malt
250g Wheat Malt
250g Torrified wheat

Hops:

Added after 15 mins:
45g of 5.6% Challenger (20 IBUs)

Added 15 mins before the end
10g East Kent Goldings

Added just after switching off the boiler (i.e. soaked for 20 minutes)
15g East Kent Goldings.

(total boil time 1 1/2 hours)

This is currently clearing in a pressure barrel prior to being racked into a polypin to feed the beer engine. Initial taste tests are really, really promising - plenty of hop flavour without too much bitterness. I'll wait till it's ready to go in the polypin before deciding whether and how much to dry hop.

[Northern Brewer]

Thanks Jim. I've been planning on trying a low EBU recipe with some wheat so your new recipe looks like it could be the way forward.