Jonathan Newman is the Brewmaster at The Virginia Beer Company in Williamsburg, VA (imported to Japan by Cardinal Trading). He’s been brewing professionally in a number of breweries since 2011 and completed the American Brewers Guild Diploma for Intensive Brewing Science and Engineering in 2013.
Twenty years ago, I spent a couple of months “studying” in Oxford, England during the summer after my sophomore year in college. Don’t get me wrong, I’d consumed plenty of cheap beer and more than my fair share of six packs of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale at that point in my life, but when I got to Oxford and discovered the beer culture and pubs, a light bulb went on for me. Who knew beer could be so smooth, so flavorful, and so supremely drinkable? There were two pubs within a few hundred yards of St. John’s College in Oxford, The Lamb & Flag and The Eagle and Child. Most afternoons and evenings you could find me and my buddies neglecting our books and working our way through pints of various cask ales in the pubs. I immediately loved all the traditional cask ales including Bitters and Milds, but one style stood out, and to this day it is the most lovely style of beer I’ve encountered in my drinking and brewing life: Extra Special Bitter (aka ESB).
Extra Special Bitter is the strongest of the family of UK beers known as Bitters. There’s more malt, more hops, and more expression than either the Ordinary or Best Bitters that also abound in English pubs.
Don’t think of Extra Special Bitter as anything close to the modern American Pale Ale or IPA, though. The beer is smooth, perfectly balanced, and typically under 6% ABV. It should be hoppy, but not aggressively so, and necessarily hopped with traditional UK varieties such as East Kent Goldings (EKG) or Fuggles. Typically a higher sulfate content water helps to accentuate this hop character and add a minerality and dryness that better expresses the hop character. There should always be a perfect balance between that hop character and a fullness of malt consisting of caramel and a toasty breadiness. The final aspect of the style from a brewing perspective that ties it all together is a typical fruity ester character from traditional English ale yeasts that adds interest and complexity to the fine balance between malt and refined hop character.
Extra Special Bitter was pioneered as a style by Fuller’s Brewery in the early 1970s. Bitters and Best/Special Bitters had abounded in the UK for centuries at that point, but they pushed the envelope with ESB, adding more malt, more hops, and finishing with more alcohol (though still a manageable and drinkable 5.5%). There are certain points in brewing history, where you know something new has happened. While maybe not as groundbreaking as the onset of Pilsner in continental Europe, for example, in hindsight, the first brews of ESB at Fullers really did change the landscape of UK brewing and later American craft brewing for decades to come.
While the craft beer revolution may have moved past the popularity of malt forward beers like Extra Special Bitters and moved on to Hazy IPAs, sours, and now seemingly back to crisp lagers, there are still plenty of smaller, neighborhood breweries in America, the UK, and around the world producing this supremely drinkable and always interesting beer style.
Beyond the quintessential example of Fuller’s ESB, a couple of American favorites of mine are Green Man Brewing’s ESB and quite frankly, the one we produce here at The Virginia Beer Company, Purley’s ESB. We have been brewing it consistently for years and it has won multiple medals in competitions around the world. Purley’s hits all those notes of malt complexity, hop character, and fruity esters while maintaining an ultimate drinkability that keeps me coming back to it over and over again. We have a batch in the tank right now and it’s time for me to go fill some casks of one of my favorite beers. Drink more Extra Special Bitter whenever you can find it!
(Editor’s note: There aren’t many breweries in Japan with an ESB as a regular. Three that we do recommend trying are Numazu Craft’s Merseyside ESB, Tokyo Aleworks Flagon Filler ESB, and punny Ieyasu-B by Hyappa Brews (Okazaki, Aichi). Also, as touched on this issue in our interview with Eigo Sato, Shiga Kogen has made a variety of tasty ESBs.)