Doubts about head retention

[Daniel Vilchez]

Hi to everyone, I wanna know how can I improve my pale ale´s head retention, for example if I had to use oats, it need to be mashed the same time as base malt?

 

[BeerSmith]

Hi,
 I personally would not use oats in a pale ale - it would add a large amount of chill haze that would be very hard to get rid of.

 I usually include 0.5 to 1lb of crystal or caramel malt and 4 to 8 oz of carafoam (also called carapils) malt.  Both will improve your head retention without adding excessive haze.

 You would mash these with the base malt.

Cheers!
Brad

 

[delhotal]

What effect does CaraPils have other than head retention?  What would, say 4 oz.,  do  in a very light american style beer?

Van

 

[BeerSmith]

  Carapils also adds body - so depending on how light your beer is it might not be the best.  

 Four ounces would probably not significantly change the body character of the beer however.

Cheers!
Brad

 

[delhotal]

So is there anything out there to improve head retention without affecting body?  How about a bit of malted wheat?

Van

 

[cj_in_j]

A quarter pound of flaked barley won't add much to the beer except good head retention. Wheat malt will do the same thing. And really, truth be told, you won't notice a lot of extra body from a quarter or half pound of carapils/carafoam/detrine malt.

 

[Dannken]

If I use flaked barley for head retention, It need to be mashed, and whats the right quantity

 

[BeerSmith]

Again, if you are going for a pale ale I would recommend Carapils instead of flaked barley (clarity issues due to protein haze from the flaked barley).

I would probably add no more than about 1/2 lb of either to a 5 gal batch for head retention.

Cheers!
Brad