Northern Brewer Irish Red Ale - Head Retention Improvement

Going to be doing a Extract Kit from NB - Irish Red Ale. Wanting to improve the head retention on my kit beers in general. I do have a pound of torrified wheat that I bought for the Graff recipe. Could I use that with this kit and if so how much should I use to improve the head retention??

O.G: 1.040 READY: 6 WEEKS
1–2 weeks primary, 2-4 weeks secondary, 1–2 weeks bottle
conditioning
KIT INVENTORY:
SPECIALTY GRAIN
-- 0.5 lbs Dingemans Caramel Pils
-- 0.25 lbs Briess Special Roast
-- 0.125 lbs Dingemans Biscuit
-- 0.125 lbs Simpsons Chocolate
FERMENTABLES
-- 6 lbs Gold Malt syrup
HOPS & FLAVORINGS
-- 1 oz Willamette (60 min)
-- 1 oz US Goldings (30 min)
YEAST:
I'll be using Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale Yeast

Thanks for any help and cheers

i think wheat has to be mashed, but not sure if it would work if steeped. I've done that IRA from NB and the head retention was pretty decent (i do full boils). Have you looked into other possibilities than the kits for what's causing lousy head? any oils in your process? Heavy proteins or lipids could cause that too. I think a longer boil might help break those down if that's the issue. I'll look into other possible causes from a brewing course i took and post later.

I don't know where any oils could come from. The pot that I use for boiling is stainless steel and was bought brand new and only used for brewing. I do use Dawn dish soap to clean it, but it is rinsed afterwards. My bottles, I rinse immediately after pouring my beer, and then use only Star San on the day of bottling, no soap is used.

My beers are tasting great, have perfect initial head and then it just doesn't last.......damn head retention, the last fix in my brewing process. Thanks for looking into this for me.

I've made this kit 3 times. I get what you're saying about head retention. No ideas on how to fix that.

But, in another vein, I added 2 lbs clover honey to my last batch and honestly I think it was way better than the first two. I even drank it a little younger (5weeks) tha usual (7weeks).

Highly recommend 2lbs clover honey after 3 days. The fermentation should look to stop around that time, then just dump the honey. Adding another oz of hops 5 days before you bottle/cold crash before bottling also helps improve the beer IMO.

Are you doing full wort boils? The concentrated boil can hurt head retention.

I would recommend not using Dawn. Just give it a rinse and use one of those green scrubbies when stuff starts to build up. PBW also works great, but it does not need to be shinny clean every time you brew.

Torrified wheat needs to be mashed. You could start to sub in 1lb or so of wheat extract. The proteins in the wheat will help retention. You could also up the carapils.

You should be able to get decent heads without any sort of bandaids like wheat or carapils. I'd troubleshoot the root cause of the trouble before I'd start looking for bandaid fixes.

Well my last two batches have shown improved head retention. My fix has been better bar glass management. Making sure the glasses/mug is void of all soap film (rinse,rinse,rinse)and using the hard pouring method. I'd say 80% improvement. Thanks to all for the advice.