To me, English pales (or British bitters, whatever) are the platonic ideal of beer. This is my white-can-with-the-word-beer-stenciled-in-black-spray-paint beer, the beer that weaned me off the macro-lagers of my misbegotten youth, the house beer at my house beer. There's not much better—doesn't matter if it's hot, cold, wet, dry, with food, or just a lonely pint—than an easy-drinking, well-balanced English Pale (although its Irish, Scots, and American cousins all come pretty darned close).Platonic ideal. As such, I've played around with my house bitter a lot. I've enjoyed the more-complicated recipes, such as the one in Jamil Z's classic styles book, but not as much as simpler recipes: base malt, crystal malt, nice hops, nice yeast. Real talk: I don't think I like the flavor of special roast. I think I like a beer that tastes like the one (good) malt and, often, the one hop and the one yeast. I'm intrigued by Rob Pattinson's recipes--especially that 1945 Tetley's bitter recipe--and I appreciate that some sugar can keep thinks drinkable, but I really can't be bothered to make invert no. 2 at the moment (it's totally on the list--maybe when it's hot out again). As much as I enjoy getting deep into the process, part of the joy of a bitter is that it can be as simple to brew as it is to drink.
Now that I no longer live around the corner from an excellent, or any, homebrew shop, I also need to take provisioning into consideration. MoreBeer sells 10 pound sacks of pre-crushed base malts with free shipping, including Golden Promise and Maris Otter. They also sell one-pound packs of EKG, Fuggles, and Willamette pellets and one-pound packs of pre-crushed UK crystal malts. And the ingredients for four batches are generally enough to carry you across the free-shipping line. So, I tend to brew all beers with about 10 pounds of base malt and 4 oz of crystal and 2-4 oz of hops--on my systems, that's generally right at the line of a big best bitter, or smallish ESB, which is just fine by me. I'm also fine with this method of determining my OG--who wants to have an odd bit of grain in a bag going slack, when they could just have a bigger beer? I know for a fact that a number of great breweries never vary from 55 lb increments for the same reason. Given this situation, I know it makes sense to get a mill and start buying sacks (and that's in the plans) but for now it works.
With no LHBS, I've also been relying on dry yeast, like S04, but it's not my favorite. In fact, I prefer US-05, even in an "English"beer, as there's just something about S04 that I don't like. But now it's winter, when yeasts can better survive their travels through the mails, so I can start using liquid yeasts again, and this year I'm planning to re-pitch more from prior batches (and maybe even do some yeast banking). I want to have my favorites on hand, and I'm deeply intrigued by the idea of brewing an English-style pale with some of these Norweigian Kveik strains during the warm, summer months. For the moment, I've got a smack-pack of Wyeast 1469, their excellent Timothy Taylor strain that I've really enjoyed in the past (so long as there's enough head space in your fermenter).
So there it is. My ode to a subsistence brewer. My next beer. A recipe based at least as much on household economy (if not laziness) as on any notion of what the beer should be: 10 lbs of Golden Promise. 4 oz of Baird's dark crystal. Two or three boil additions of EKG. Pitch the smack pack, and accept that it's underpitching for the sake of using the cake going forward for the next three batches. I'm expecting Boltmaker writ large.
And it will be beer.
