Making Good Head

[warrenn]

Hi, I've only used concentrates, I'm looking to make a beer that has good head. I haven't had any that had a good head.

Could any boady please help

cheers

[rwh]

Wheat malt is a good head booster. Maybe try adding 200g to your next brew.

[Cortez The Killer]

get yourself some carapils grain

steep about 100g in each brew you do

it doesn't add any taste or colour to your beer

but it'll improve mouth feel and head retention

crystal will do the trick too

cheers

edit: speling

[alangman]

I recently used 230 g of wheat malt to prime my beer. It gave a great head, nice and dense, but the beer was a bit under carbonated. Not flat, just not as much as I'd have liked. But the point remains that wheat malt (due to the protien) is a sure fire way to get a good head.


Slight hijack: Anyone want to guess at why 230 g of wheat malt (for 22L ) still left the beer a bit flat?

Cheers,

Adam L

[BierMeister]

Your problem is that Wheat malt is not as fermentable as Barley malt (I'm talking the dried stuff here). It's partly to do with the fact that there is more proteins in the mix and therefore less Sugars per gram. Having used wheat malt once for priming I wouldn't do it again as it will give the same results by adding it to your initial wort and using dex etc for priming. Judging by the amount you used Adam, I am thinking you added it to one of your recent Wheat beers?

PS I agree with Cortez. Caramalt etc is also a great one to use and adds some good malty flavour to boot.

[Eureka]

Yep I find the liquid malt (barley) is giving me good head. Where does that leave my wife?

[lethaldog]

also make sure your not brewing to hot, leave to mature longer also, make sure your glasses are clean and steralised, try and leave the bottles in the fridge for at least a couple of days before opening etc etc

[alangman]

Hi BierMeister,

I actually used the wheat malt to prime an amber ale. Perhaps not standard, but the amber had such a good strong malty flavour that I didn't need any extra barley malt. I wanted a good/big head to go with it, so I tried wheat malt.

Perhaps I'll just include wheat in the wort and prime with dex. More predictable results I hope. I think I'll use dex to prime my wheat beer since a flat-ish wheat beer won't be very good!

Cheers,

Adam L

[BierMeister]

Just another thought. It could also be that there wasn't enough of a yeast cell count in the beer. This is pretty rare though.

[Chris]

I'm thinking that that is a little bit unlikely.