First all Grain bitter

[reaperbrew]

Not so. I live in France.
The Republic of Ireland is in the European Union. They accept payment in € and in £ as a lot of their business is with the UK. I pay £12 (or €18 ) delivery to France i and that's for 30 Kg. True, the 25Kg bag prices are within €5-6 euros of each other, but if you buy by the kilo it's much cheaper eg. Maris Otter is €15.31 for 5 Kg from Autobrasseur France and it's €16.94 for 10 Kg from thehomebrewcompany. Hops are much cheaper, too.
Crossmyloof is in Glasgow. Yeast and hops don't attract import duty and I've never had a problem. If you buy, say 10 sachets of yeast you can get them down to about £1 a sachet or less, depending on the yeast. Hops are a little dearer, but that's to offset the "free" postage. In fact postage is free in the UK, but I've never paid more than £5 for tracked delivery for up to a kilo of hops. And both company's have a discount code for being a member of this forum, 5% and 10% respectively.
Well worth a look.

Just had a look at Más Malta website masmalta.com. Prices are about the same as here in France. You really need English malt for English bitters, but it doesn't have to be Maris Otter. True, I use Hookhead, which is Irish, but it's just as good. German and Belgian Pale malts are quite different and, when times are hard, I prefer to use Belgian "pilsner" malt instead of their pale malt for making bitters. But I'm unlikely to run out as I'm well stocked up.

Hi, Thank you for all your info, i will check them out, sounds good. Could be really good for me here.

 

[reaperbrew]

Hi Carl,

Here is a recipe for you using your ingredients. I personally wouldn’t use chocolate malt in my bitters. I would however normally add 100g of flaked barley and 50g Torrified wheat to the grain bill below for improved mouthfeel and head retention but you can add these on a subsequent batch, the beer will still be nice. I would also add 20g East Kent Goldings at 10mins with the Fuggles but again you’ll still get a nice beer without it.

2Kg Maris Otter
100g Medium crystal
Mash for an hour at 65C
Raise the temperature to 72C for 20 mins if this is an option.
Raise the temp to 77C to mash out if this is an option.
(You can omit the two temperature rises if this isn’t practical for you)

20g Fuggles boiled for 60mins
30g Fuggles boiled for 10mins

Use the whole pack of yeast and leave it fermenting for 12 days at 19-20C. The beer is good to drink 2 weeks after packaging.

Thanks Hazelwood

I will be brewing your recipe tomorrow with the flaked barley and torrified wheat and the temps you recommended, thank you for your help and i will let you know how it turns out.

Many thanks Carl