Which caramel malt is best for head retention?

[ramloese]

I think the title pretty much says it.

Caramalt
Pale Caramel Malt
Crystal Malt
Pale Crystal Malt
Dark
Red

What do you guys think?

 

[MrPowers]

Whats the starting point and whats the goal? Is there a specific recipe in mind, or are you just trying to get better head retention overall? There are a lot of factors that contribute to head retention that are much more important than caramel malt selection.

In fact, recent research seems to suggest that caramel malts in general tend to be detrimental to head retention.

 

[ramloese]

I'm trying to find out what the specific caramel malts do to head retention. Not needing help on an overall recipe, but rather to isolate this one question for itself - independent of other variables it might present for the recipe.

 

[Yooper]

Caramel malts tend to have decent head retention properties, but for specific head retention you may want to use CaraPils (from Briess) that says: Carapils Malt falls into the category of dextrine malts and is intended to improve body, mouthfeel and head retention by adding resistant dextrines, proteins, non-starch polysac-charides , and other substances to the wort and beer. Because of the crafted design, Briess Carapils is very effective in this regard and is intended to be used at 2-3% to show a positive effect.

CaraFoam from Weyermann is very similar, also a dextrine malt.

 

[ESBrewer]

Yes, the special versions where dextrins are able to resist mashing probably give more head retention. If you are just steeping under conditions where there is no diastatic power from base malts present, cara -type malts will contain longer sugar chains and they will probably be more effective than crystal malts that are higher in short, sugary compounds. If mashed, among cara -type malts I think darker malts would produce less fermentable worts when mashed so I would guess they could potentially contain more compounds that could increase head retention compared to lighter versions. There is also wheat crystal malt (or toasted wheat malt) that is probably good for head retention, because it contains more protein (and some maltsters also say it is good for head retention).

But honestly, if you consider adding these grains in a recipe, there are much more important things and differences between these malts to consider than the minor difference in head retention capability. If you want more head retention, you could consider adding 6% of wheat base malt to the grain bill or something like that and choose the special malts based on other properties such as flavors, astringency and color.

 

[rhys333]

I think the title pretty much says it.

Caramalt
Pale Caramel Malt
Crystal Malt
Pale Crystal Malt
Dark
Red

What do you guys think?

If you're wanting head retention, the best way is to include a portion of wheat malt, or an adjunct like flaked barley. It's a little cheaper too.

 

[MrPowers]

This is pure speculation, however I would guess the differences on the effect of head retention between different caramel malts will be generally negligible. Perhaps there would be slightly better retention at the extreme ends of the spectrum (10 and 100l+), but not enough that you would notice it after all the other factors in the recipe are considered. The possible exception to this would be CaraPils/CaraFoam.