"Adams" - (SMaSH) Yorkshire English bitter

As I sit here this evening, sipping on a Fuller's London Pride for inspiration, I reflect upon a wonderful brewday, one that will be the first of many for me here in Princeton, NJ.  Today, for my first brew up here, I decided to brew an English bitter that toes the line of ordinary bitter and best bitter--a perfect session ale for early fall.  I decided to do an interesting twist to it, one that is quite in vogue for the brewing world right now; SingleMaltandSingleHop, meaning one base malt, no specialty malts, and only one hop variety.  For the base malt I chose Maris Otter, the golden standard of base malts for British beers and my favourite base malt ever since I started brewing all-grain beers.  It has an amazing depth of flavor and I think it will do this ale loads of justice.  For the hop variety, I was conflicted for a while.  I considered East Kent Goldings because I love their character, but I realized that I had rather recently brewed a beer using solely East Kent Goldings (Belgian Table Beer), so my thoughts turned elsewhere.  After considering Styrian Goldings, Fuggles, and Willamette, I settled on the latter.  They have a wonderful aroma and flavour, are made in America and are easily and widely available, often for a slightly lower price than other hop varieties.  When I opened up the packages of hops today, I was not disappointed; the aroma was extraordinary.  Here's my recipe for today:

Batch size: 5 gallons
Anticipated OG: 1.046
Anticipated IBU: 35
Anticipated SRM: 5.3°L
Anticipated ABV: 4.1%

8 lbs Maris Otter

1 oz. Willamette (Pellets, 4.6% AA) @60 min
1 oz. Willamette @30 min
1 oz. Willamette @ 10 min
1 oz. Willamette @0 min

Wyeast 1968 London ESB (supposed to be a wonderful strain, perfect for bitters)

I am really excited about this one.  It will be the first homebrew that my new cohorts here in Princeton will get to taste, and it will be served off the faucet of my kegerator.  I am also going to naturally (rather than force) carbonate it, to give it that extra layer of English "real ale" authenticity.  This batch will be both a throwback to my first batch and a step forward with regards to experimentation with beers, so it will certainly be one for the books.

Until next time, cheers!