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Doubts about head retention

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

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

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