chit, spitz, carapils and carafoam

Their uses have been widely debated for adding body and stabilizing foam. Do you use chit, spitz, carapils or carafoam in your helles? If so, which do you prefer?

I generally don’t use any of those, but I definitely plan on incorporating some. I plan to use some Carahell in my next helles, 5% I’m thinking. I usually do 90% pils, and 10% either Vienna or Munich I.

Just a comment, carafoam is Weyermann’s carapils in the rest of the world. They didn’t get the trademark for carapils in the USA, Briess did.

I have been using carafoam to keep it all German.

Spitz and Chit are essentially the same: undermodified malt. The malting process reduces the betaglucan content of the raw malt. I prefer to use very small quantities of flaked barley or flaked wheat to produce a similar effect (improving body and heading). It does take more of the wheat product to produce an equivalent betaglucan contribution of flaked barley. Be careful with flaked barley since I find it does have a raw grainy taste that can be objectionable in pale beers. (it pairs well with roasted grain flavors though :slight_smile: )

By the way, where can a fella buy some chit malt? I see this Brew Brothers place has it, but are there any other places? A web search isn’t turning up a whole lot of results…

I get mine from Brew Brothers. Not a lot of sources for homebrewers.

That is where I ordered mine from as well.

lately, been using carahell with good results for added foam and body. anywhere from 2-5% depending on beer.

edit: 9% in my o’fest…lovely contribution.

Great. Thanks for the info fellas.

Best Malz

I only just started experimenting with chit malt, so I can’t answer the original question.

Currently, 8% chit in an amber lager is feeling like a bit much though…

I can get chit malt from Country Malts.

Country Malts doesn’t let me order from them, must be a pro brewer thing. And Best Malz doesn’t either. Maybe I’m not looking hard enough…
I might order some from Brew Brothers eventually, but shipping is insane! I don’t want to order 5lbs of chit malt and pay $15 for shipping. I don’t need much else for ingredients…guess I’m SOL for now.

Yeah I wasn’t happy with that either.

Can chit malt be used in a single infusion or does it have to be stepped if it is under-modified?

It is sprouted enough so that it meets the RHG. It is so under modified, it is almost an adjunct. Bottom of the page.

Cool.  Thanks for that!

Great link, guess I need to actually read that book soon, as I bought it a while ago

With that said, my comment regarding the use of flaked barley becomes more salient. Why go to the trouble of sourcing chit malt when it is a less strong version (beta glucan wise) of raw barley? Flaked barley is a gelatanized version of raw barley.

I might have to revisit using a small amount of flaked barley in some of my Pilsners. When I started brewing Pilsners Jeff Renner gave me the advice that a small % of flaked would emulate Chit. Used that for a while, can’t really say why I stopped.