Carapills, Torified Barley, Flaked Wheat and Mashing for Head Retention

Hey guys! I have been brewing for about the past year and a half or so at this point, and something that I have always struggled with is head retention in my beers. They are all well carbonated, so there is indeed c02 to form the head, but after the head forms, it quickly falls apart.

I have heard that soap residue in the glassware can be an issue, so I even have tried cleaning my beer glass with a salt scrub first to address that issue first, but still the head disappears in under a minute.

I have done some reading, and many people seem to recommend adding one of the following to the beer, Carapills, Torified Barley, or Flaked Wheat, apparently these will release proteins into the beer during the mash that will help the head hold together, but I have wondered what are the effective differences between using these ingredients? Can you use them all together to form some kind of "super head" at the risk of possibly having chill haze?

Another factor, I have been doing most of my mashes at 152 F, normally the when I first add the strike water, the mash will be at 155-156, and I stir it until it reaches 152 and mash for 90 minutes. After the 90 minutes, the mash is still in the 151-152 range.

So I have been thinking, if I want my next brew, which might be an APA, American Amber Ale, or maybe an oktoberfest, what can I do give my brew the best shot of having great head retention without wrecking the clarity?

Thanks!

APA? 4 oz of carapils will work just fine for a 5 gallon batch.

More Hops! This doesn't necessarily mean making your beers more hoppy, but using larger amounts with lower AAU will work. Palmer addresses this in his book as well. The hop proteins will help head retention really well. I used to put 2-3 oz of high AAU hops in my APA's- now I put 4-8 and the head is much fuller and sticks around longer, leaving beautiful lacing on the glass.

The more hops suggestion is a very interesting idea, especially since I have had a tendency to do mainly just a bittering addition with a high AA hop to get me into style, and many of my brews have been pretty low on the IBU scale.

How many oz of hops do you generally use? Using the malts you listed will provide more head retention but at the cost of complicating your recipe. To each his own, but for beers like you mentioned (apa, amber, marzen) I would be hesitant to muddle the recipe with lots of extra malts for the sake of head retention. If anything, add in maybe 4 oz of flaked wheat and call it good.

I would definitely try subbing your high aau hops for like a clean low aau Perle Goldings or Mt Hood. I am trying to dig up some articles on hops increasing head retention, but it will have to wait til I'm back at home

Depending on your carb method, you may just need to wait longer. Whether bottle conditioning or kegging I generally have to wait 3-4 weeks after packaging for a beautiful creamy head to develop. Until then the co2 is present in the beer but really hasn't reached full absorption.



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I normally use around 2 oz of high AA hops in my brew, but tomorrow I am going to brew a pale ale so that of course will be different

If you don't want to use Carapils most any of the crystal malts will serve the same purpose.
Flaked barley will contribute to a serious head as well. I use it in my stout and it's like a marshmallow sitting in your glass.

Most of my recipes have 1/2 pound of either flaked barley, or more often wheat malt, or occasionally 1/4 pound of instant oatmeal. Lots of head on my beers

Falcon3 said:

More Hops! This doesn't necessarily mean making your beers more hoppy, but using larger amounts with lower AAU will work. Palmer addresses this in his book as well. The hop proteins will help head retention really well. I used to put 2-3 oz of high AAU hops in my APA's- now I put 4-8 and the head is much fuller and sticks around longer, leaving beautiful lacing on the glass.

Click to expand...

Hop proteins? Are you sure you read that correctly? I'm not aware of hops (or any sort of flower) contributing anything in the way of proteins. Hops do contain a lot of oils, however, which I would actually expect to have the opposite effect and reduce head retention.

I was under the impression that it was alpha acids that contributed to head retention. I can't find it now, but there's a nice PowerPoint presentation from a lab at Oregon State showing this, available on the web somewhere.

So I looked it up, and it appears that alpha acids (not proteins) from hops do indeed contribute to head retention, despite the contribution of hop oils. Interesting. I suppose, however, later-addition low alpha hops might contribute too many oils and not enough humulones to have this effect.

CraptainWirtz said:

I was under the impression that it was alpha acids that contributed to head retention. I can't find it now, but there's a nice PowerPoint presentation from a lab at Oregon State showing this, available on the web somewhere.

Click to expand...

Found the figure I was looking for, for those interested:

https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/...7538/Thesis (Takeshi Kunimune).pdf?sequence=1

Check out page 48. The top row of the image is iso-alpha acids in increasing concentrations from left to right.