head retention

Hi All,
Great site by the way,I have made a few brews that lacked head retention i mean fairly flat even after 4-6 weeks in the bottle.Have followed all the guides on temperature storage, cleaning glasses etc.

Then I read an article on boiling ingredients and letting the wort cool to room temperature that was the light bulb moment looking back I have been boiling my dme, hops, extract adding straight in the fermenter and topping with chilled water ajusting to desired pitching temp then adding the starter.

Does it make a differance cooling the wort?

Or does boiling the extract interfere with the protiens?

One of the best extact brews I ever made, I didn't boil the extract I just added boiled hot water to it in the fermenter

Your  thoughts greatly appreciated

mgbrown,

Yes this will make a difference.  I would read books like How to Brew by John Palmer and The Complete Joys of Homebrewing by Papazian.  These two books will get you started in the right direction and off to making great beer.  This software and site you'll also find very helpfull.

Good Luck!!

Richie

I always chill my wort down using a chiller.  If you are not doing a hop boil there is not any point to boiling your extract.  You will darken it change the flavor profile.  If you are doing the hops use about 25% of your extract to get a good hop utilization.  Add some grains to the boil priming with honey all help with head retion

You may be boiling to hard as well. It should be a good boil but not something that looks like it is going to fly out of the pot. Over boiling can trash your stability. I normally set mine to a nice hard rolling boil not something where you have it coming up up out of the pot. You can also try adding some carapills to your recipe to aid your stability.

Steep 8 oz. to a lb. of Cara Pils into your brew. That will probably be enough to get you to where you need to go.

BrewWhat said:

Steep 8 oz. to a lb. of Cara Pils into your brew. That will probably be enough to get you to where you need to go.

Click to expand...

Ive done this for the last 4 batches or so. Works great.