Balancing protien rest and head retaining malts....

[Brewskii]

I'm doing NB's Speckled Heifer which is a New Glarus Spotted Cow clone.
The recipe has mostly base malt and barley and flaked corn in it. I found this beer is really hazy and the head is acceptable but could be better.

My thought is to do a protein rest to help the clarity but I'm a little nervous because I don't want to kill the head completely and it has only .75 carapils in it and it's under 30 on IBU.

Any thoughts?

 

[TopherM]

There's certainly a balancing act here. You need proteins in the beer to promote the head retention, but those same proteins are a detriment to clarity. The protein rest will promote clarity by pulling proteins out of suspension, to the detriment to head retention.

I personally just do whirlflock in the boil and a good cold crash while I keg carb, and get sparkling clear beers about 2 weeks after kegging that have acceptable head retention and good lacing.

Commercial breweries will promote clarity with the protein rest, then add pepsin to improve head retention. You may want to research that technique.

 

[Brewskii]

Yeah, that's true. I use Irish moss basically because that's what I have. I don't know much about whirlflock, I've never used it.

I suppose I had better stay with the single infusion mash scheme. I can do a better job on the chill-proofing side any way with a good crash and some gelatin. I think that would be less impactful to the head, but, perhaps this is a bad assumption as well(?).

 

[TopherM]

Whirlflock is Irish Moss. It's basically just Irish Moss that's been compressed into a hard tablet that's a single serving size for 5-10 gallons of wort.

Gelatin certainly works for clarity, but it is going to do the same thing....it coagulates proteins and drops them out of suspension, again at the detriment to head and head retention.

 

[Brewskii]

Gelatin certainly works for clarity, but it is going to do the same thing....it coagulates proteins and drops them out of suspension, again at the detriment to head and head retention.

yeah, but at that point at least you are only removing the less soluble proteins instead of breaking them all down in a protein rest.