ESB is not a British style. ESB is an offering by Fullers. In the UK, one will see the adjectives "standard" and "best" used in front of the word bitter. Any brewer who is basing British ale on what he/she has received in bottles on this side of the pond is making a major mistake.
I do not know if anyone has picked up on it, but charles1968 is British. My experience with a few non-Thames Valley Brewlab strains and Alan Pugsley's comments on Ringwood being considered a neutral strain in the UK bear witness to charles1968's comments. I remember the first time that I used Brewlab's Somerset 1. I stressed the yeast cells, and they treated me to a level of ethyl heptanoate that I have never witnessed with any of the strains that we can obtain in the United States. One of my children commented that the beer smelled like cheap wine (yes, the batch was a dumper). A lot British strains are POF+ (phenolic off-flavor positive) as well, which is something that we normally associate with Belgian strains. I used the Devon 1 strain from Brewlab exactly one time because it threw phenolic spice, banana, and sulfur.
With that said, anyone who is seriously interested in learning how to brew British-style ale should pick up a copy of the CAMRA book entitled "Brew Your Own British Real Ale" (
http://www.amazon.com/CAMRAs-Brew-Your-British-Real/dp/1852493194/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1463188187&sr=1-1&keywords=%22Brew+Your+Own+British+Real+Ale%22). I purchased an older copy of the book in the late nineties (the edition with the white cover), and it was an eye opening experience. That's where I picked up the technique of using colored malt instead of crystal malt to color a bitter. I understand that Graham Wheeler has improved the accuracy of the recipes in the later editions. American home brewers need to go into this process with an open mind. British brewers use sugar and non-malted adjuncts like flaked maize and torrified wheat (I picked up the use of torrified wheat from a defunct Peter Austin designed/Alan Pugsley installed microbrewery called Wild Goose). Beers that you thought were all malt are often not. Many British brewing practices are the result of taxation.
The overuse of crystal malt is the number one mistake that Americans make when attempting to create British-style ale, and that mistake is the result of drinking old bottled British ale. BJCP judges often make the mistake of stating that a beer needs more caramel malt when judging Category 8 because of lack of easy access to fresh authenticate British-style bitter.
Here's part of a review from Amazon:
"I originally purchased this book because I have been making more of an attempt to brew more sessionable low gravity ales, and no one does it better than the British. I mainly purchased this for recipe related inspiration, and in this respect the book is great - there are over 100 different recipes that are claimed to be clones of commercially available beers, presented in primarily all-grain recipes, but they have extract equivalents as well. I have yet to try any of the recipes, so I cannot vouch for their authenticity or accuracy -
personally, most seemed to be very low on Crystal malt usage, but without actually trying them, it is difficult to judge fairly."