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Could not agree more.
An English traditional bitter - or even paler summer ale - should have a bitterness ratio no higher than 0.6
So max 30 ibu for a 1.050 brew.
Any higher and it just loses its traditional roots
Nonsense - you're heading into mild territory there - or the blandification that's happened to some mainstream brands. Any discussion of bitter gets complicated just because of regional variations, in part because of whether a recipe is designed to be served through sparklers. Southern bitter tends to have more crystal and BU:GU's around 0.65-0.8, northern bitters tend to have less crystal (Boddies being one extreme with 0%!), more sulphate and BU:GU's up in the 0.8-0.9 range. Personally my taste is for something up in the 0.85 range.
As some examples :
London Pride is 30 IBU and 4.1% on cask, 35 IBU and 4.7% in bottle/keg, so BU:GU around .67. Per the Fuller's brewing books, it (and the rest of the Fuller's partigyle so Chiswick (RIP), ESB and Golden Pride) is pale malt with 7.2% light crystal and 0.19% chocolate malt - and I think most people (certainly up north!) would say it's on the crystal-heavy end of the spectrum, I certainly wouldn't want more crystal than that. But I might sneak up the chocolate a little bit for interest.
Compare that with Landlord at 39 IBU and 4.3% so must be up at around 0.85 BU:GU, and most clones have it at around 2-3% crystal. But apparently Nicks90 thinks that Landlord is not a traditional bitter.
Just as a general comment - I think "ordinary" <4% bitter is one of the hardest beers to do really well, but upping the ABV into 4.2-4.3% best range really helps.
Generous mineralisation is a feature, particularly up north. Murphy's suggest 170ppm Ca, 200 Cl, 400 SO4, 25 HCO3, 15 Mg for bitter (note the table headings are wonky). You can reduce that a bit for southern bitters. They suggest a pH of 5.0-5.3 going into the fermenter and 3.7-4.1 for finished beer in cask.
Yeast is really important, I'll just point you to what I said on this thread.