Loosely based off of Jamil's BCS recipe.

6 gallon batch (post boil volume), est 75% efficiency

7 lbs Maris Otter
8 oz Crystal 80
4 oz Pale Chocolate

60" 160° Mash (Same as I use for my mild)
Might just do a 60" boil

Hopped as follows:
1.2 oz Willamette/Styrian Goldings @ 60"
0.5 oz Willamette/Styrian Goldings @ 30"
0.5 oz Willamette/Styrian Goldings @ 0-5" (haven't decided exactly)

Ferment with Wyeast 1968 ESB at 66-68°

Should make for an excellent, quick pipeline filler

Looks nice!! pretty close to my Red Hook ESB clone, no chocolate for me but there is some biscuit and carapils. Also using the same yeast and willamette and tettnang.

Oh right, the numbers!: 1.036 OG, 30 IBUs (Rager), 12° L.

Pale chocolate is a lot lighter and less roasty than chocolate malt, so I'm thinking it'll work well in this recipe.

I'll give you a personal thought on Ordinary Bitter. This is my two cents and should, in no way, be taken as gospel.

What comes to mind is in the name "ordinary". Not "extra"ordinary.

So for me, the idea is to keep it simple. The flavor should be simple too. Not to over the top with flavor malts (save that for your Special/Premium Bitter). Not in your face with hops, but enough that differentiates it from some weird underhopped thing.

Imagine if you went into a bar, had only a couple bucks on you. You could get 1pint of the "super awesome Russian Imperial India Pale Ale" or maybe 2-3 of some "Bitter". You can get 2-3 pints because the brewer used "ordinary" ingredients, and threw it together for the guy that wants more than 1 with little money on him.

Now, even though it's all "ordinary" it doesn't mean there is lack of flavor. It should have plenty of flavor to make you want to have another. And then maybe one more, because you just can't get enough of that flavor.


I say it looks pretty good. But I don't know your tastes.
Good luck!

Thanks for the feedback, Bob!

Based on Bob's feedback on another forum, I'm considering dropping the mash temp a few degrees, maybe to 155° for this one, to see how I like it and adjust from there. Because, unlike the mild, which is a brown ale and should havea decent amount of body to it, this is a pale ale, and should be eminently drinkable.

Great post Bob and I agree. Sometimes in the past I have brewed
session like beers with low amounts of pale chocolate or some
other dark specialty or crystal malt for background flavors and
they always turned out nice. One thing I have learned is you
can screw up a beer easily by overdoing it but if you err on
the light end and that goes for bitterness and malt a good beer
will be the result every time. I like to creep things up on
the rebrew.

Oh, and I like your interpretation of Ordinary in the name as well, especially given that the next step up is supposed to be a brewery's Best Bitter (aka Special or Premium, as you mentioned)...in many cases, even better than their ESB.

So I think I'll work on this and a Special/Best Bitter recipe as well.

My next is a Premium Bitter. It has a more hops and some more "expensive" grains.

I tend to focus on this style a lot. I prefer the Premium/Best Bitter style. My first brewing shirt was a Best Bitter.

Going to get this started in a bit. Having a leisurely breakfast, then will get my strike water heating and measure out my grains and get the brewday started.

Grains are weighed out and ground, and the strike water is heating. I guess I'll go preheat my mash tun with hot tap water now.

Since our hot tap water gets up to around 145° sometimes, it's well suited to this sort of task.

That's quite the hot water heater.

Heating this one to the boil now. The mash didn't want to drain, so I ended up cutting it off after draining about 4 gallons of wort and adding the sparge water to what was left in the bucket. I let it sit for a bit more than 10" at right about 170° and it drained with no problems at all.

So far, so good!

Decided to go with Willamette for my hops. Mine are only 4% AA, so I bumped up the bittering addition to 1.5 oz. Should put me right about on target.

All went well...yeast is pitched, fermentor is on the windowsil to (hopefully) stay in the appropriate temp range for the yeasties. If it gets too chilly, I'll give it a gentle rocking and try to warm it up a bit.

Congrats. Glad your brew day went well.

mmm sounds good!

Going to rack this one to a keg today. Had it soaking in water for the last few days, hit it with a quick PBW soak and rinse, and I'll sanitize it in a little while so I can rack it to the keg.

Temps fluctuated a fair bit on this, so I wouldn't be surprised if racking it to the keg wakes the lazy 1968 yeasties up, and gets them to chew through a bit more of the sugars...which is why I'll let this one sit at room temp for a bit before I put it in the kegerator and put it on co2.

But first, I need to sanitize a jar so I can harvest the yeast cake...which I'm not really looking forward to. This stuff forms trub like concrete!

So I tried to take a gravity reading while transferring this.

I failed, and in the process managed to break my thermometer/hydrometer (just a cheap petco version, so no major loss).

Of course, this means there was broken glass and steel shot in my beer. So I had to pour it through a sieve. Luckily, it was somewhere above 1.015, so I can only hope the yeasties will eat some of the extra 02 that was introduced.

I also did my best to scrub it with CO2, by hooking CO2 up to the bev in line and repeatedly venting the keg, in the hopes that the CO2 bubbling up through it would pull the o2 out as well.

I also added about 100 grams of wheat DME to it, in the hopes that the yeasties will eat the remaining o2 while eating the DME.

And now, I have the keg sitting in the living room, with the exhaust valve open, to allow the yeasties to eat up all the extra o2 and added/remaining sugars.

I'll leave it here (where it's about 75°) for the next few days, then I'll close up the exhaust valve and maybe leave it here for a bit before moving it to the kegerator to cool down and carb.

you did all you could there. that was good quick thinking, so hopefully the yeast don't mind doing a little more work for ya

This has been renamed Catastrophe Bitter...it's actually a pretty good Bitter, but between a bit higher efficiency than usual, and the DME addition, it has ventured into best bitter territory. Only I'm not calling this a best bitter, that's for sure.

It *does* have some slight oxidation notes, but luckily, it's the sherry variety, not stale cardboard flavor.

All things considered, this turned out remarkably well, and I plan to drink it fairly quickly, in case it oxidizes any further.

Oh, and with the DME addition, it has remained cloudy...probably due to the fact that there's a lot more yeast than normal in the keg, and the dip tube is sucking it all up off the bottom. I really should trim my dip tubes, but I *am* really lazy.