Many beer styles rely on a full bodied beer with great head retention, mouthfeel and complex character. Higher body comes from a combination of malt choice, final gravity, hops, tannins and protein in the beer. Below are several tips to help you create a full bodied beer with excellent mouthfeel and head retention.
1. Malt Choices To Enhance Beer Body
One of the easiest ways to boost mouthfeel and body in the beer is by choosing the right malts. Malts higher in protein content will naturally have more body. Adjuncts like wheat, oats, and flaked barley have high protein levels. You can also focus on malts that are high in dextrins as these are generally unfermentable sugars that will give the beer body post fermentation. For example Caramel/Crystal malts, Carafoam, Carapils, and others in the Caramel/Crystal malt group are good sources of body and add sweetness.
Darker roasted malts can also enhance body, because the high temperature roasting process substantially reduces the amount of fermentable sugars, again leaving long chains of unfermemtable starches in the finished beer. The roast malt group, including chocolate, black patent, de-husked carafa malts and stout roast all add body and mouthfeel to a finished beer if style appropriate.
2. Use Higher Mash Temperatures
Mashing at the higher end of the temperature range in the 158F (70 C) range at a slightly elevated pH of 5.3 to 5.7 can result in more body in the finished beer. The reason for this is that it is the best range for the mash enzyme alpha amylase to operate. Alpha amylase acts randomly to break up sugar chains resulting in longer carbohydrates in the finished beer, many of which are unfermentable. So instead of just getting highly fermentable maltose from the mash you end up with a mix of long and short dextrine chains, resulting in more body in the finished beer.
3. Pick a Low Attenuation Yeast Strain
Yeast choice also has a big impact on the finished beer. Attenuation refers to the apparent percent of fermentables that get converted to alcohol during fermentation. Most yeasts are in the 60-80% attenuation range. If you choose a yeast strain on the lower end of the attenuation scale it will ferment fewer sugars, again leaving longer carbohydrate chains untouched, resulting in more body in the finished beer.
Even across similar strains of yeast you can choose yeasts with lower attenuation. For example the White Labs English Ale yeast WLP002 has a minimum attenuation of 63% and the related British Ale yeast WLP005 has an attenuation of 68%. So choosing the WLP002 yeast for a high body Robust Porter would be a better choice as its lower attenuation would leave more body and mouthfeel in the finished beer.
I hope you enjoyed this article on enhancing beer body and mouthfeel in your homebrewed beer! Thanks for joining me on the BeerSmith Home Brewing Blog. If you want to take the guesswork out of brewing, please try my BeerSmith 4 recipe software from BeerSmith.com. Be sure to sign up for my newsletter or my podcast (also on itunes and youtube) for more great tips on homebrewing.
