I recently did my first all-grain and it was quite fun. It was rocky and i didn’t do the best job, but it was fun and the beer is pretty good. The issue i’m having with it is that it has no head.WHAT!?!? I’m confused what could have caused this. During my mashing process when i was bringing my mash temp. to around 155 and somehow i messed up and gave it too much heat and it went up to 180. Would this have been what “killed” my head? My boil was not the most vigorous boil either, The wasn’t enough room in the pot. Would that have affected it as well?
The recipe is humpty dumpty bitter from The complete guide to homebrewing by charlie papazini. I keep a record of my brewing process and i know i made some big no-nos that i will not commit in the future but here it is.
6 lbs English 2 row malt
1/3 lb English crystal malt 55 lovibond
1/4lb aromatic malt
6 oz lyles golden syrup(sugar)
1 oz northerdown hops
1oz kent goldings hops
½ oz kent goldings hops – dry hopped 2nd ferment
British ale wyeast
61/2 quart water and grain mash sat between 138-142ish for 30 min
Added 3 gallons boiling water sat at 150-154 for 45 min
Accidently brought to 180 degrees instantly taken off of heat and brought down to 155ish for 15 min
Sparged in 2 parts, strainer broke used a bigger hole strainer small pieces go into sweet wort(assumed will sediment out with yeast)[I know now that would be a bad idea because of the tannins extracted in the boil]
Boil does not look like it is boiling, the top of the water is 216 so we went ahead and put in the 6 oz of the sugar and 1 oz northerndown hops
Irish mosh added 10 min before the boil ended as planned
Kent goldings added on time 5 min before end of boil, started running the water bath with ice
Jacob was stupid and spilled wort as straining it into the main fermentor, my leg and arms are sticky final OG = 1.030, it was expected at 1.038-40.[shouldn’t of filled as much water as initially anticipated]
Pitched yeast at 5 gal 70 degrees 3/9/12
Racked into 5 gallon bucket and then racked back into primary fermenter with ½ oz of kent on 3/15/12
Tied nylon mesh hop bag to top end of siphon to restrain hops and small husks from getting in and siphoned into second bucket with 2 cups of water with ¾ cup of corn sugar for priming sugar 3/7/12
Those are the notes i recorded on the process, It was only at 180 for a short time, 5 min max. Jacob is my brother in case you were confused by that comment.
Thank you for all the advice guys and i’m definitely going to try to add some malted wheat with my low grav beers next time.I did try and put salt in the beer and i got a big creamy head. I noticed not very much sediment at the bottom of my bottles so i’m thinking the mesh bag may have filtered out some of the yeast. It fermented for a longer time than planned just because i was busy. It was extra low grav because of the spill so i think it was a combination of many things that destroyed the head. I’ll make sure to take extra care with low grav beers when it comes to heads in the future and i’m going to pull back and do a few more partial mashes before i step up to all-grain. Thanks guys
There are a lot of factors that can affect foam formation. A healthy fermentation is one thing to consider. Read this short article that will point you in the right direction.
i usually will add a touch of wheat to my beers especially with adjuncts.
i also will salt a beer that seems flat to me. it increases nucleation sites and this will cause bubbles to form. this may help identify if there was a carbonation failure.
+1 to Ron’s link, a healthy fermentation is often the key to good foam, but I wonder if the combination of possible pH being off and not having a good hot break due to the lack of a proper boil could cause head forming problems?
I would also calibrate your thermometer. Your wort did not get up to 216F under any kind of normal brewing conditions, let alone get there and not be visibly boiling.
Good notes for the first time! It helps with organization to get a brewers logbook.
Assuming you’ve made extract brews with good head retention, I think your notes give us a few clues:
Your recipe doesn’t lend itself to good foam stability. Low gravity, a good dollop of sugar, and no foam boosters (wheat, oats, rye, etc.). Next time, adjust your efficiency and replace the sugar with malt and some flaked wheat or oats (this is more appropriate for english bitters, anyway).
A week at 70F with a low gravity wort is plenty of time for the English Ale yeast to complete fermentation and drop out like a rock. Coupled with dry hopping in a secondary, you probably didnt transfer over much (or any) yeast to your bottling bucket. If you’re hell-bent on saving the batch, open up the rest of the bottles and add a few drops of liquid yeast slurry via a sanitized eye dropper (or sprinkle in some dry yeast).
Your mash temperature fluctuations shouldnt have affected your head retention. They may actually have helped add body to the small beer! Getting the mash temp lined out just takes practice with your system.
Unfortunately there’s so many variables with head retention. Also IIRC head forming proteins only form once, so if they were lost somewhere along the way they may not have formed again in your glass.
I also don’t see any reason to do anything other than a single infusion mash for a bitter.
Just dough in@ 150-154 and hold there for an hour or so. It will help simplify things for you until you get acquainted with your system and then you can start doing step mashes, although as I mentioned with today’s malts its not really necessary to do additional steps with this type of beer.
I also 2nd the mention of replacing the sugar with some wheat or corn or something along those lines.
This, I’ve heard also but have never seen anything that would substantiate it.
Since I, and many others, carbonate our kegs via the shake method and still get good long-lasting head (the best kind, eh) I find it hard to believe.
If you carb up some beer in a two liter and shake the heck out of it, you get a fair amount of foam in the bottle. I’ve not had the experience that these beers are carbonated but head-less.
I was thinking the same thing Tom, If it looked like it wasn’t boiling at 216 then it was likely down in protien rest temps for a while in that sac B rest which could kill head retention.
I don’t add wheat. The 100 Pilsner malt beers (Helles and Pils) have great rocky heads that really last.
Back some time ago I had beers that the head would just collapse. That was before I learned proper yeast mangement and the temperature contol that goes with that.
I used to use two lab grade thermometers that gave very close readings. One was NIST certified (with serial number), the other was NIST traceable. I suspected something was wrong, so I used water baths to determine how far off. Boiling was off 12 and 10 deg F high respectively, ice water bath (correctly done) was 4-5 high on both. talked myself into getting a Thermapen and confirmed they were both 7 deg low at a 150 mash temperature. Those things were all over the place. The Thermapen also confirmed my Ranco probes and ice bath numbers.
That means you were roughly between 130-134 for the 30 minute beta rest. That’s in protein degradation temperatures, and I would guess that is what really wiped out your head.
