Burton Bitter

An unconventional English-style bitter.

This recipe is identical to my yearly winter warmer, the Burton Ale, with the exception of the hops and boil length. This beer is a standard 60 minute boil and there is a whirlpool hop addition at the end (which shows up as 5 min aroma addition on this page for some reason). The grain bill, including Golden Naked Oats  and brown malt pushes this beer outside of a conventional bitter style beer, but like my Rye, Bitte the general concept stays within the bounds of a strong bitter.

Tasting Notes

It ended up quite close to a strong bitter, though the brown malt gives it a toasty flavour that doesn’t fit the style at all. I’ve found depending on the day and what I’ve had to eat the roast can be non-existent to quite prominent, but largely shows up as a subtle background flavour. Hop balance could be tweaked a little more toward the bitter side, so I’ll push the bittering ratio to 0.75 from the 0.65 I started with. Flavour and aroma hops are good as long as you like EKG. Neither hop aroma nor flavour is the focal point, but both are discernible in the overall profile.