Carapils is cheating . . . isn't it?

I've searched, and found some threads touching on this but nothing directly.

So, is Carapils cheating in the quest for rocky head formation?

I love Denny's Rye, and marvel at the head on it from 3% Carapils and 3% wheat. But, I kind of feel like that's cheating (no offence Denny!!) if Duvel can have a rich head with just Pilsner malt and sugar.

I've been following the common advice around here and keeping crystal additions to under 10%; and failing at producing rich, creamy, foamy heads on my (bottled) beers.

So, I've been looking around for suggestions for how to boost head formation, let alone retention. All I see is to add Carapils (not what I'm looking for), skip the protein rest (doing that, done that) or add a foaming adjunct. Well, none of that is helping.

Surely you guys are getting some foam on top of your SMaSHes, right? What am I needing to do? I've mashed at 148 (wit and BGSA), 153, 155, 156. I'd rather not go much higher than that for my bitters and pale ales, but maybe that's the key (I fear too much sweetness). I know that protein is the key, and one can add a number of adjunct grains to boost protein, but how is it "supposed" to be done?

 

Why is it "cheating?" You think it will piss off the brewing gods or something? Who cares.....there's many paths to things in brewing, and in life, and they're all right. Use it or don't use it....

Hell maybe it's cheating to someone if you're not growing and malting your own grains. *shrug*

 

Yeah really, what's cheating? If using those grains or whatever get the result you want then who cares. Well, I'm sure someone does but not most people.

 

I've brewed, from this forum, Biermuncher's House Pale Ale, Centennial Blonde, and Nierra Sevada; Yooper's House Pale Ale; and Denny's Wry Smile. I've only gotten head formation (let alone retention) from Denny's. I use on-line calculators for priming, and (barring my Wit mistake detailed in the bottling section) have gotten decent carbonation, but just bubbles to the surface (and rather larger ones than in the rye). I've also done a number of SMaShes using MO, Golden Promise, and regular 2-row--those have been entirely foamless.

I get that most people are fine with adding adjuncts, and I am not opposed to them for any reason. I'm more interested in what steps could produce a rich, creamy head in, say, a SMaSH. I'm definitely not calling anyone out for using Carapils/foam/wheat or whathaveyou.

I've got a BGSA fermenting right now--just pilsner malt and sugar. If I were to do that all over again, and say I ran out of Carapils, how would I assist head formation?

(I know it's not a glassware issue, as I can pour a head forming beer in the glass in any order and still not get head formation from my beers not using wheat/Carapils.)

 

Let's indulge him a little, at least for the sake of science?

It's true that Carapils were not always around. I think it's a pretty valid question as to how someone improves head retention the old fashion way without resorting to any type of "high tech" adjunct...!

Myself, I'm wondering if the fact that back in the days grains were not as "highly modified" could have resulted in a beer that was less clean with symptoms like higher head retention...?

In consequence, now that we use highly modified grain, we now add wheat or Carapils to compensate.

Might that be a good hypothesis? ipe:

 

The only thing I know to do is to start your mash at 130-135F and hold that temp for 30 mins before raising to 150-158F. I don't know how you have been using mash temps to your advantage but that's the best place to begin looking for the issue. Good luck!

 

No, I haven't been doing this.

That's a little higher than a traditional protein step. Interesting.

thanks to you and atreid for taking this for what it is, perhaps a poorly titled attempt to understand what's going on further than "just add carapils."

 

I'm not a fan of adjuncts so I try to avoid them all together. Starting at a temp of 130-135F should do the trick. You can pick up little things like this by reading some books such as designing great beers. If you use my tip let me know how it works for you it's never done me wrong. Good luck!

 

Oh by the way atreid has a good theory. Under modified grains do have a better chance at having better head formation and retention but there are other issues that under modified grains present. Nothing a good step mash won't solve though.

 

Thanks!

I'm not adverse to reading. The bulk of the literature says that, using fully modified grains a protein rest (or protease rest in this case) is not necessary.

Somebody's been lying The BYO article about head retention actually cautions against such a long protein rest, for example.

 

I have never heard anything like that before I guess I should do some research on that. Protein rest are great for under modified grains but its never caused me problems with fully modified grains.

 

Lets back up a little because I had the same problem with a few of my beers and now that I found the answer, I get a head that lasts to the bottom of the glass and just sits there when the beer is all gone. I sip my beer so it takes more than half an hour to empty my glass and I still have a head of foam. What happened to my beer?

I tried the tricks to get my glassware clean, still no head. I knew that the extract kits I had done had head but now I couldn't buy a head. I turned out that my bottles were not rinsed out well enough and had carried a little Oxyclean residue through sanitizing and was killing the head on my beer. I quit using it for the bottles I use, just a triple rinse when I empty one and a double rinse before sanitizing to get any dust and errant bugs out, then a rinse with starsan and bottle.

 

If its German beer purity law approved it's not cheating, IMO.

 

If it's a key ingredient in Pliny the Elder, it's not cheating. That's one expertly crafted beer.

 

That's possible. I treat my bottles all the same. Oxy soak, then two hot water rinses, then storage. Then hot water rinse and StarSan. If I had the problem across the board, this might be the answer. But, that's not saying it's not the answer and I'll keep better track of my bottle cycle.

 

Just to answer the OP, it's not cheating.

However, I am behind you 100% in trying to do it the "old fashioned" way just for a challenge.

 

Water chemistry maybe? I think harder water has something to do with poor head retention, but IDK.

I've been primarily an extract/Partial Mash brewer in the past and just made the switch to AG. My 1g trial batch using 1lb of munich and 1lb of 6-row had ok head retention, but not great... my extract beers had either great or really bad head retention, I thought it was changes in extract quality...

But in the end, if it works and tastes good, so be it. Not all of us can follow Bavarian Purity Law (though i like to when i can..)

 

Step mashes, including a protein rest, if you want to do it the old fashioned way. That's what I do. I should mention though that I mostly use pilsner malts, not pale malts, so this just applies to pilsner malts. For the kolsch shown below the grain bill was 80/20 Pils/Vienna, with no other malts. Typical kolsch hop rates. P-rest at 122F for 20 min. then ramp to 147F for 30 min, then ramp to 160F for 15 min. followed by a mashout to 170 (no rest). My system is direct fired and it is very easy for me to do step mashes)

Pictured below is a Kolsch I brewed 6 weeks ago. My guest did the pouring and the first one he is holding had a bit extra foam in the pour. He was a slow drink (big talker) and the second photo is after about 30 min. and you can see good lacing, and there is a little still head on the beer.

I have no problems with carapils etc, although I prefer to use wheat if I want even more head/body in a beer. I'm partly skipping the carapils simply so I don't have to have as many grains around (and to keep track of). I prefer to have bags of base malts (including wheat) around and then just a few specialty grains (rye, aromatic, 2 different crystals, and then a couple dark malts)





That is Steven Mead, International Euphonium soloist who was visiting from the UK, whose visit the beer was brewed in honor of

 

My experience with carapils turned into an almost comical like fluffy head. That was only from a few ounces. A single infusion mash in the 148 to 154 range usualy gives me good results without the use of carapils. I get good lacing and the head slowly fades as it sits or gets drunk... which it should. A large head 10 minutes after a beer is poured isn't appropriare for most styles, imo...

 

This. 1000x This.

I don't find that it adds anything particularly useful to my beers that can't be replaced by wheat or mash manipulation. To me, it seems like a commercial artifact to work around the fact that most breweries like to have a "set" mash schedule across beers and this allows them to get around that. For homebrewers, I seem to find it MOST often in clone recipes but pretty rarely in recipes from top homebrewers in competitions. YMMV.

 

I think cara is just an ingredient. If u do not want to cheat.... Go back to rancid grain with lite amount of wild yeast alcohol. (stone age).

I was kidding. Just saying.. Brewing is always evolving, tasting better. I think if you want to brew a certain way, go for it! Way I brew is different then you. That's a good thing, different tasting brews is always good.

Hops 20 years ago was completely different today. Our galaxy or citra would of been considered impractical back then.

 

It always comes back to the Quest for Better Head, doesn't it?

Personally, I'm not upset when *some* of my beers don't have a lot of head. It's just the nature of some styles.

But, I always seem to get a nice foamy head on my Pale Ales and similar. Oh, and I usually add /5 lb of carapils...

It's not against the rules AFAIK, but sometimes the head is annoyingly long lasting.

Oh, and I never knew there was such a thing as a Euphonium Soloist! That's pretty cool. I'd be curious to hear what that sounds like.

 

He is a virtuoso. One of the best in the World - on any instrument. He'd be a lot more famous if he played a more mainstream instrument

 

Yeah, I just checked him out on Spotify. WOW! I never thought you could do that with a euphonium! So clear and precise.

 

Please tell me I'm not the only one reading this who didn't know WTF a euphonium is?

 

Brew however you like, but neither carapils nor malted wheat are adjuncts....

Anyways, just had to nitpick that. Carry on!

As I understand it, the same (or very similar) processes that help break down large proteins into proteins that assist in head formation will also break down those head forming proteins. Therefore, at some point in the protein rest, you pass the point of maximum head retention proteins and start breaking them down at a faster rate than you're producing them. And in highly modified malt, the proteins have already been broken down from their initial large form, and therefore you're only likely to decrease the amount of head forming proteins when you do a protein rest with highly modified malt.

I would be remiss if I did not point out that I've never done a protein rest with any type of grain, so take the above for what it is, which is me stating things I've heard and read, not things I've experienced.

 

The key wording is too long a protein rest. As long as you are shorter then the point of "maximum head retention" your are improving the head. Go too long, and you lose body (which highlights the importance of protein in the body of a beer, which many folks neglect).

Mass produced malt is a bit of a compromise to produce a malt that can successfully be used with a wide range of brewing system. The result is there is still some room for us the brewer to do a little tweaking - if we want.

Again, this is what I have found holds true for pilsner malt.

 

I tend just to use wheat, but that's mostly because I'm cheap and buy sacks of wheat.

 

Well, the key is the last part---for highly modified malts, any protein rest may be too long.

 

So, how long of a protein rest would you recommend? At what temp?

 

I haven't found this to be the case. When I used to use pale malt more regularly (at least with Optic & Golden Promise), I would use a 5 -10 min rest, or simply mash in at 122 and then ramp it up to my saccharification temp(s). No problems with body or head retention. I liked the results better than mashing in higher. Now this is on my system. someone else might find different results on their system

It wouldn't make sense from the maltsters point of view to push the proteins all the way to the edge. That leaves no room for error on the part of the brewer. If you accidently mash in too cool you could get a really thin beer, and likely wouldn't buy that particular malt again. The malster leaves a little room in there so when people do make a mistake, the beer still turns out good, and the people go back and buy that malt again

 

I have had good luck with 20 min. at 122 F. This is with Best Malz, Franco-Belges, Weyerman, and Canada Malting Pilsner malts. I can ramp my mash at a fairly decent rate (1.5 degree/min. - I direct fire) If your ramping rate is slower, then I would shorten the time. If you are adding hot water to increase the temp, then you could go a little longer

 

Thanks pjj2ba! I mash in a cooler so I'm thinking I might add a protein rest for 20-30 minutes at about 1 qt water/lb grain and then add hot water to bring the mash temp up and about 1.5 qt/lb. Currently, I do a single-infusion mash (usually around 1.5 qt/lb) and a mash-out to bring the temp to ~165

 

This is my typical process as well. 15 min at ~131

 

Use whatever works...

 

So it seems something is missing in my process.

Doing BIAB, I have experimented with thick and thin mashes, but only done one step infusion mash. That's my BGSA on week three in primary. So, eventually we'll see if a protein rest and two-stage saccrification rest has any effect.

I wonder if in pulling the grains out before a proper mash out I'm doing myself a disservice by missing a dextrinization mash. Definitely something to consider. May start working something closer to a mash-tun schedule.

Thanks everyone for your input.

 

Has anyone tried propylene glycol alginate as a head improving agent? It is supposedly used by some macro brewers.

 

I could be wrong.....

But this just sounds like another engineer complaining about not getting enough head.


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