Fri Jun 16, 2006 4:55 pm
Adding things to your beer to increase head is not the answer, you need to fix the processes that are causing the head to fail first, A IPA will generally have a poor head retention because of the great amount of hop oils in a beer, but for some reason a pils or a pale that has alot of late hops will generally have a better head retention.......
If your brewing all grain there are a few things you can do,
as you may have all heard me continually say, a rest at 55deg c will do wonders, and Dan Gordon also mentioned this last week, any lower than that may cause the protines to break up to much and cause the head to fail
adding cara pils, flaked wheat, oats, or what ever will work, but you may also be changing the profile of the beer, the best way to do this with a single infusion mash is to increase the sacc rest temp by a few degrese c.
Seperation of cold break can also help to much hot/cold break in the fermenter seems to break down the head, but im stuffed if i know why yet, also ensuring you get a good break helps, has anyone noticed that (except for wheat beers) the more cloudy the beer is the worse the head retention?
so as i say instead of adding more things to the brew to compensate, work out what is causing the head to fail first
Thank God All Mighty For Titties and Beer