Need help with ESB recipe (Sharp's Style)

[user 17310]

Hi all!

I just started to brew completely on my own after brewing with friends for a couple of years.

My first project was an ESB which should come close to Sharp's Sea Fury. I just loved this beer when I was on vacation in the UK with my girlfriend this summer.

I made up my own recipe which may or may not reassemble how it should be done... at least the resultant beer is not quite as I expected it to be.

Here the details:

4 kg Maris Otter
1 kg Wheat Malt
0.5 kg CaraMunich III
0.5 kg of dark Crystal Malt (approximately 140 L)

Chalenger (originaly wanted Northdown, but was unavailable)
Pilgrim
East Kend Golding

40 IBU

OG ~1.0625
FG ~1.010

Single tempersture Infusion: 67 C
Cl- to SO4: 1.00

My efficiancy obviously was to high and It turned out to have more ABV than expected.

Wyeast London ESB (Fullers Yeast)


My Problems:

It is to dry
Its to bitter
Lacks that marmelady raisiny flavour I hoped to get from the dark crystal malt and Challenger and Pilgrim hops

Does someone know the beer mentioned and maybe have an idea of how to achieve that raisiny marmelady sweet thick taste and mouthfeel? Are there general things I did wrong or should lookout for? Wrong yeast?

I am extremely happy about all help from you brewers!

Thanks in advance!

ThePhil

 

[zippy40]

i am no expert by any means but maybe change your yeast strain to one that compliments the flavours you wish to bring out.

Check out this site here which gives yeast strains and their characteristics/flavours they impart.

https://byo.com/resources/yeast

 

[MyQul]

I love that beer. I first had it in cornawall on draft and it was called sharps special rather than sharps sea fury.

I've looked on the internet for clones but cant find any. Bitters get a huge amount of their flavour from the yeast. I dont think there are any sharps beers that are bottle conditioned to culture up the yeast from. The only way to get it would be to buy a mini keg and get it out of there.

You could maybe try some special b as that has a raisiny taste to it. First Gold hops are suppoesed to be marmaladey (although they dont taste like it to me)

To me special/sea fury taste a bit blackcurrenty like it has some bramling cross in it. Did you guess at the hops or did you find a clone reciepe somewhere?

Also perhaps mash higher than 67C for the thick sweet mouthfeel

 

[Brightonnik]

I'd also say that you have a fairly high percentage of wheat malt in there.

 

[user 17310]

Thanks for your input! I was really just guessing and researching in the malt and hops regard. I really am not quite familiar with malts that are not german... but I know british and belgian malts are much more special. Thanks for the tip on special b! Reads quite like the solution! I had the wheat thing from a burton ale recipe. Probably not suiting the style? Did I get that right?

I will also try those hops next time! Northdown I read on a lot of beers I liked during that ...ehemmm... little beer study vacation 😉

I was actually researching and found sharps was using pilgrim for some beer. Lately I even read that they are mashing at 65 C and fermenting at 25C which would explain the yeasty estery flavour. I will look for the site I found and will post a link here.

http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=41624

Somewhere there they even stated they are using some kind of whitbread derivative strain. But which one...

I am really looking forward for more tips!

 

[user 17310]

Hey MyQul

You write that you actually brewed an ESB with those hops you mentioned. Did you have the same idea in mind (sea fury clone)?
How did it turn out?

Cheers

 

[user 17310]

Also. What do you think about the sharps brewer statment to actually use a temperatur closer to the beta amylase optimum?

65 C as the single temperature infusion temperature as oposed to 67 C

Thanks in advance

 

[MyQul]

Hey MyQul

You write that you actually brewed an ESB with those hops you mentioned. Did you have the same idea in mind (sea fury clone)?
How did it turn out?

Cheers

Yeah, I made an ESB about 3 weeks ago. It was just inspired by sea fury rather than a clone as I have no idea what the sea fury recipe is. I used First Gold and Bramling Cross hops for my ESB. I only bottled it yeasterday. It tasted a bit alcoholy so I think it's going to need plenty of conditioning

 

[user 17310]

Hi!

I unfortunately had to pour my homebrew away completely because it simply tasted like grass in the end. Probably due to the hops dust residue clouding up the beer. I think in future brews I will be much more conservative in regards to dry hopping...

Yesterday I had a Fullers 1845 for the first time and this beer simply smelled the same as my homebrew (maybe due to the yeasts volatile products). But obviously it was much more tuned and not quite as roasty as my first recipe.

I think that I will leave out the wheat completely next time, use the hops suggested and will not use dry hopping at all. BUT I will change up my hop boiling schedule so that I will late-hop the large mayority of my hops. I read this is very typical for british beers?

I will stick with maris otter as the base malt though I guess. I will lower the percentage of the caramunich III and will add some special B. I also checked out some other yeasts. It will basically be a completely different beer.

Thanks for your input so far! I am still happy if you keep them tips coming :thumb:

 

[MyQul]

I was in cornwall again over xmas but I didnt sea any seafury/special I did see something called Sharp's Reserve but it was 6% and I was too scared to drink a a pint :lol:

 

[MyQul]

Also try emailing the brewery and asking for the reciepe. Some breweries are amazingly open about their recipes. Another forumite came on the forum recently and asked for some reciepe help so I suggested emailing the brewery, which he did, and they emailed him back the complete reciepe http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=67517

 

[user 17310]

You know what? I followed your advice and wrote them. Now Let's see what happens. :-?

 

[MyQul]

Worse they can say is, 'were not telling'. So it's worth a punt

 

[zippy40]

Hi!

I unfortunately had to pour my homebrew away completely because it simply tasted like grass in the end. Probably due to the hops dust residue clouding up the beer. I think in future brews I will be much more conservative in regards to dry hopping...

Yesterday I had a Fullers 1845 for the first time and this beer simply smelled the same as my homebrew (maybe due to the yeasts volatile products). But obviously it was much more tuned and not quite as roasty as my first recipe.

I think that I will leave out the wheat completely next time, use the hops suggested and will not use dry hopping at all. BUT I will change up my hop boiling schedule so that I will late-hop the large mayority of my hops. I read this is very typical for british beers?

I will stick with maris otter as the base malt though I guess. I will lower the percentage of the caramunich III and will add some special B. I also checked out some other yeasts. It will basically be a completely different beer.

Thanks for your input so far! I am still happy if you keep them tips coming :thumb:

That is a shame:sad:

If you dry hop for too long they do tend to impart a grass flavour to the brew. Solution is to dry hop for only a few days near the end of fermentation or do a hop tea and pour in.

Better luck next time.:thumb:

 

[user 17310]

Yeah actually I only dry hopped for 5 days. The final 5 days of secondary fermentation.

But the bag I had the hops in simply let a lot of hops dust into the brew. The beer came out quite a bit cloudier than right after boiling. And the dust did not settle so inside the bottles there was still extraction going on until it was like grass juice.

It really is a shame if one considers the amount of time that went into doing it. But hey, that is learning.

I actually will not dry hop next time. May you please describe the "hop tea" method? are you extracting the hops in a smaller volume of low temperature water? I would guess that is not so effective, or am I mistaken?


I also did some further research regarding the sharps hops an reread a forum page and found this:

Aurora, Hallertau (probably Mittelfrüh?), Northdown, Northern Brewer and Perle

those are supposed to be the main hops sharps uses. If I look at the data of these hops varieties it makes me switch the combination "Bramling Cross/First Gold" for "Bramling Cross/Northern Brewer". What do you guys think?

I also did not recieve an answer of them so far. Not even a hint.

 

[johnnyboy1965]

I dont know the beer in your OP. JMHO..If you try to clone a beer, you will always be dissapointed.
It will take many brews before you get even close.
Start with the basic brew..ie strength, colour, mouthfeel....Then move onto the yeast and finally the hops

 

[terrym]

I actually will not dry hop next time. May you please describe the "hop tea" method? are you extracting the hops in a smaller volume of low temperature water? I would guess that is not so effective, or am I mistaken?

Dry hopping is supposed to impart more aroma than flavour.
Making up a hop tea is more flavour than aroma.
To make a hop tea simply steep the hops in a small amount of hot water for a time. Suggested max temp is 80*C, hotter and the volatile oils may be lost. Some people use a french press (cafetiere) to do this. Member Godsdog posted recently some photos where he used a tea ball and a SS tea pot. After its stewed a while you chuck in the liquid and hops (optional) into your brew, and if the hops go in you keep them in there for a few days like dry hopping. And like everything we do on this Forum there will be variations on this.
Personally I have found a hop tea followed by adding hops to the brew is more effective than a dry hop alone, and I am slowly moving to hop teas in future.

 

[MyQul]

@ThePhil still no reply to your email from Sharps?

Have a look at this thread http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?p=648084#post648084 , forumite Jceg316 has a bottle of Sharps 6 vintage blend which is bottle conditioned. He is going to culture the yeast up and is willing to share some with you. Making the assumtion that the yeast in the vintage blend is the primary strain and not a some other conditioning strain, having the Sharps strain will get you a couple of steps closer to Sea Fury :thumb:

 

[user 17310]

Hi! 😉

Sorry it took me so long to answer. We are moving right now on short hand. Really exausting.

No unfortunately they did not answer. Would really have been interesting.
Thanks for the tip! I will have a look into that link for the yeast.

 

[user 17310]

Hi, been a long time.
Don't know whether I actually wrote how the beer turned out.

I did not do prepare a hop tea but rather sticked to late hopping as a compromise. I actually dropped into the wort 95 % of the hops at like 5 min to the end.
Furthermore I had the wheat ommitte, added Special B malt and did cook 30 min longer.

The beer turned out quite nice. Though not close to the Original. People still liked it pretty much. Though looking back I acrually thought the beer was a little to dry. Maybe due to the yeast I had used (wlp007).

The hops were nice. Thanks again for the suggestion!

I wonder what I could do next to get closer. I think I will at some point brew this again. Switching Maris Otter for Pale Ale Malt and less Special B and maybe more “lower L crystal“ malts.

I have brewed a Wit and a Weizen since. currently planning for a northern english brown ale with challenger hops.

Best regards