BeerBorg

ESB thread made me want an ESB. Don't have stuff to make one exactly, but I could get close enough as a Frankenbrew to make me happy. So..

Beer to use up one of the cans of Seasonal Nut Brown I got for $10 on sale + coupon including the S-04 yeast. Easy cheap 2.5 gallon batch. The seasonal are worth it when you get them on sale like that. At least if you don't always have time to brew and want to keep your pipeline full. Posting recipe just to give anyone else who has one of those some ideas on how to doctor it.

The seasonal nut brown, although a tasty beer actually, is too bitter to be a real nut brown. It is another case of Coopers thinking that Americans only like fooking bitter beer. It is bittered even more then an ESB at 2.15 gallons to begin with. It just doesn't have enough finishing hops. I corrected that and preserved ESB levels of bitterness at 2.5 gallon batch size. Can has enough malt already in it to make 2.5 gallon batch. Therefore I decided that "extra special brown" sounded mighty fine based on the hops I had opened and wanted to use up.

Took 1 can of Seasonal Nut Brown.
Brought it up to 170 in water threw in my left over 1oz of Delta for a 20 minute hop stand.
Cooled, topped up to 2.5 gallons, pitched full pack of S-04. Hops went into fermenter commando style.

If you want details of exact process see "Punked Patriot Pale Ale" thread, I did exactly the same thing here since it worked so well for that. I'm drinking one of those right now.

OG was 1.052
50ish IBUs.
Even diluted to 2.5 gallons, it's going to be too dark to be an ESB, therefore I call it Extra Special Brown.

The only detectible hops in the straight up beer are Styrians. No POR flavor that I get. I think the Delta will play nice with the Styrians since they both started out as Fuggles.

Yeah but you didn't say how you were going to carb it.

I bottled this. 1.013. Tasted good flat out of the keg, I could have consumed a whole glass. Which means it's going to be really good in 2-3 weeks. I like what the Delta hops brought - has a mellow Fuggles/Willamette vibe with subtle citrus and stone fruit thrown in. It will be interesting to see what sticks around. But based on the sample those hops are going to be good in any English style bitter/ESB you can come up with.

@BrewBirds: Oh, and didn't feel like spending time batch priming since this was a "lazy ass HME on sale brew" so I used 1 Dominos DOT (2.5g) for each 740ML bottle. So "low in carbish". It was plenty bitter, the lower CO2 will help the malt stand out more, which is appropriate here.

Anyway, if you have one of these HMEs and want to get an extra bottles out of it, this is a good way to use it I think.

Drinking one of these. 2 weeks in the bottle. Very tasty stuff it is. Delta hops are going to go into lots of my British beers in the future.