Head retention

I brewed a batch of wheat beer with a kit from Midwest Brewing. It has been condtioning for about a month and it seems the head is more like a Pepsi than beer. What causes that.

I'm sure people will have much more technical answers and possible causes, but soap is a huge killer of head retention. So when you're prepping brew equipment and bottles/kegs, don't sanitize with soap. Use water/bleech solutions (1 tbsp bleech for 1 gallon of water) or a rinseless sanitizer from a brew shop. It's not too expensive, and definitly worth it to rinse bottles if you've got a simple setup like myself.

What's the recipe?

I use wheat malts in my IPA, Black IPA etc. and get awesome head retentions. The head stick around all the way down

Was it kegged or bottle conditioned?

I add 1 - 2 lbs. of torrified wheat to all of my beers. It aids in head retention quite well. I use less for lower gravity beers, and more for higher gravity.

I have tried all kind of things to get longer lasting head. But she says she gets tired out after just a few...

Oh...wait...sorry, wrong forum.

DubbinFive1Eight said:

I'm sure people will have much more technical answers and possible causes, but soap is a huge killer of head retention. So when you're prepping brew equipment and bottles/kegs, don't sanitize with soap. Use water/bleech solutions (1 tbsp bleech for 1 gallon of water) or a rinseless sanitizer from a brew shop. It's not too expensive, and definitly worth it to rinse bottles if you've got a simple setup like myself.

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I use oxyclean to clean the bottles and equipment and an iodine based sanitizer. Could one or both be screwing things up. Also I bought a bottle cleaner that attaches to my sink so do I really need to use oxyclean if nothing is stuck to the bottles?
I did notice the head retention is better on some bottles I pour than others from the same batch.
One other thing, do the iodine based sanitizer have a tendecy to leave a taste in the beer? Are there better sanitizers? What about Starsan? Is that a better sanitzer than most? Do some sanizer leave an undesirable taste in the beer?

I use Starsan sanitizer. It's a no-rinse sanitizer.

I use oxyclean to clean my bottles, but I rinse them well.

Adding wheat or carapils will aid head retention, but if the beer fermented at too high a temp, that can adversely affect head retention too. What temp did it ferment at?

Otherwise, I agree to make sure you rinse your bottles thoroughly after cleaning. I wouldn't use bleach personally, though--it's very hard to rinse off.

I had the same thing with a wheat beer over the summer. Was 45% White wheat, 50%(?) and something else I forget. Great head that lasted for 10 seconds and 0 lacing.