British beers - flatness and head

[Dulwich North]

I feel dissatisfied with how my British-style beers are carbonating and forming a head. The PET bottles firm up within a week or so, and I don't rush to open them, the taste is good and the beers are drinkable, but they just don't have much of a head and carbonation is only just OK.

The problem beers include two ESBs and a Winter Warmer, two of these being recipes straight out of the Greg Hughes book but scaled down (I am ruling out the assumption that my results are exactly what I should expect of those recipes!). So I am wondering what approaches might help next time I brew ESB or similar styles.

I can distinguish some obvious differences from other beers which turned out fine. Carapils is used in my Mosaic and Citra IPAs, but I wouldn't want to add it unnecessarily to an ESB. My wheat beers also turned out fine, and I've seen some comments about adding a little wheat malt to improve the head. But there was 5% wheat in one of my ESBs.

Another difference is that in these British brews I used half a tablet of Protofloc late in the boiling. The beers have been very clear, but could it be that Protofloc reduces the amount of yeast getting into the bottle? Reduce Protofloc, or might I add yeast during bottling?

Before bottling, I put the FV in the fridge for a couple of days. I then syphon to a fermenting bucket and am getting better with practice at not transferring sediment - a good thing?

My priming method is by adding caster sugar solution to the fermenting bucket, then giving a gentle stir. The amount of sugar roughly follows the suggestions in the Greg Hughes book and in other recipes - let's say around 5g per litre. Add more sugar? Change sugar?

As I mentioned before, I am mainly using PET bottles for these beers. I fill to within a couple of centimetres of the brim and storage is at room temperature. The bottles firm up noticeably and feel like the IPAs, although they don't get as rock solid as the wheat beers.

Before opening, I usually give these beers an hour in the fridge, but I have tried drinking them without chilling. There is still a bit of sediment in the bottle, not much though.

So I hope I have mentioned enough of the key points where I may be going wrong. Any thoughts appreciated.

 

[terrym]

You could try increasing the wheat content in your beer, say up to 10%, and maybe give your beers longer to carb up in the warm even though you believe them finished after a week. Sometime longer conditioning helps too.
Otherwise what you are doing is similar to what I do and no doubt many other brewers.
Have you inspected your drinking glasses? If there are tiny bubbles on the inner wall of the glass after you hav epoured your beer into them, then there is a microscopic film of oil present which may be responsible for causing the head on your pint to fall away.
Finally have you tried pouring into a pitcher then into your glass, or the other trick I sometimes use which is to inject air from a syringe (like those you get for children's Calpol) which displaces the CO2 in solution and creates a head, only do it carefully because the effect can be volcanic.

 

[Dulwich North]

Thanks, Terry, that's broadly reassuring. I've not studied my glasses but I reckon I have seen small bubbles. They're rinsed after washing with standard detergent in the sink with other crockery and glass, but I'll look at that aspect. The pitcher might be anther good test.

 

[St00]

I condition/carb all of my bottled beers for at least a month at as close to the original fermentation temperature as I can get (16-20°c usually). I then crash them in a fridge for a week. It's a pain in the ***, but it works.

I keg and force carb anything that's American IPAish.

 

[Richard_H]

The above 2 points were what sprung to mind, I always rinse my beer glasses with hot water and towel dry after and I find the stronger traditional English ales benefit from a good conditioning time at ambient temp(1-3months).

Otherwise everything else sounds spot on, are you getting a satisfying hiss when opening the bottles?

 

[Dulwich North]

Otherwise everything else sounds spot on, are you getting a satisfying hiss when opening the bottles?

Yes, enough.

The storage cupboard is on an interior wall, near but not adjacent to the freezer, and I'm confident there's little temperature variation. I'm just going to have to wash the glasses and test with one of the earlier batch of ESB bottled 6 weeks ago.

 

[St00]

I use a heat belt attached to an Inkbird in a cupboard lined with packing material for conditioning. As I only bottle what won't fit in the keg the 4 bottles fit nicely around the keg. I also have a greenhouse heater for if I'm only doing bottles. It's so easy to keep the temperature steady, thanks to the inkbird.

 

[Sadfield]

The ESB recipe will likely have medium colour crystal malt in which can have a negative effect on head retention. Obviously reducing or swapping for another lower colour crystal will detract from the recipe and it will no longer be an ESB. Adding more wheat, which has positive effect on foam through adding protein will counter that, but I'd say 10% wheat is also a diversion from a good ESB recipe. I would first try halving or omitting the Protofloc, allowing more of the protein already in your grist to remain (5% wheat should be more than enough for good foam) and then work back from there. It is a case of finding the balance between foam and clarity, with good process both can be achieved without wheat and Protofloc.

 

[Dulwich North]

I would first try halving or omitting the Protofloc, allowing more of the protein already in your grist to remain (5% wheat should be more than enough for good foam) and then work back from there.

Yes, that does sound like a good way forward.

 

[Spratt]

I'm probably the only one, but I found batch priming very hit and miss. After 3 or 4 batches with variable results I went back to priming each bottle with a proper measuring spoon and never had any more problems. It may be that I was too nervous of introducing O2, so never stirred or swirled after adding my sugar solution but I used to find some bottles well under-carbonated and others far too foamy.

It might be worth just doing a couple of bottles from your next batch with direct priming and seeing if that makes a difference. the measuring spoon I use is similar to this one. My "funnel" is a Tesco plastic champagne flute with the bottom sawn off!

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sugar-Di...Ingredients-Priming-Bottles-X-3-/253751390039
and I know some people have mentioned using sugar sachets like these, though I've not done so myself

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/White-Su...4d0d80ba5dbe36503072|ampid:PL_CLK|clp:2334524

 

[Ben034]

I'm probably the only one, but I found batch priming very hit and miss. After 3 or 4 batches with variable results I went back to priming each bottle with a proper measuring spoon and never had any more problems. It may be that I was too nervous of introducing O2, so never stirred or swirled after adding my sugar solution but I used to find some bottles well under-carbonated and others far too foamy.

It might be worth just doing a couple of bottles from your next batch with direct priming and seeing if that makes a difference. the measuring spoon I use is similar to this one. My "funnel" is a Tesco plastic champagne flute with the bottom sawn off!

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sugar-Di...Ingredients-Priming-Bottles-X-3-/253751390039
and I know some people have mentioned using sugar sachets like these, though I've not done so myself

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/White-Su...4d0d80ba5dbe36503072|ampid:PL_CLK|clp:2334524

I found the same, that I would get over and under carbonation with batch priming. I'm sure it can be done, but preferred not having to prepare an extra bottling bucket.

I've recently bought some sugar sachets for bottling and found they're great for speeding up bottling. Got 35 bottles done in about 40 mins from start to finish including clean up. I use them for American pales, IPAs lager etc. Anything that I want 2.5 vols of carbonation. I use 2g sachets for 330ml bottles and 3g sachets for 500ml bottles. English style ales I've moved to mini kegs and just measure sugar on scales.

 

[Drunkula]

It's easy to be rubbish at batch priming. I started doing it in the fermenter and the first time I just watched the sugar solution plummet to the bottom like a Prince Rupert's Drop. If you gently swirl just the top of the beer and pour the priming juice over the back of a spoon while circling it around and then leave it 15 minutes - boom, problem solved.

 

[PhilBrew]

Hi @Dulwich North

Another thing to check ... what were your FGs on those brews with poor heads?

I ask because, when I first started AG brewing I had a few brews that ended up with higher attenuations, ending up at lower FGs, than expected ... while those beers seemed to taste fine they had really poor head retention ... it turned out I was measuring/monitoring my mash temps poorly and producing a more fermentable wort. So, what were your OGs and FGs for those (poor head) ESB brews?

Cheers, PhilB

 

[BlackRegent]

On a slightly related point, I was contemplating force carbonating a brew in a fermenter king junior and then bottling straight into bottles using a beer gun. It seemed to me that this would take out the guess work of carbonating so long as the carbonation was retained at its original level when transferring to bottles. I wanted to do this because I plan on giving this batch away to friends and neighbours (it's a christmas beer) and I wanted to reduce the chance of bottle bombs and gushers.

Is there any reason why what I'm proposing would be a bad idea?

 

[micklupulo]

I'm probably the only one, but I found batch priming very hit and miss. After 3 or 4 batches with variable results I went back to priming each bottle with a proper measuring spoon and never had any more problems. It may be that I was too nervous of introducing O2, so never stirred or swirled after adding my sugar solution but I used to find some bottles well under-carbonated and others far too foamy.

It might be worth just doing a couple of bottles from your next batch with direct priming and seeing if that makes a difference. the measuring spoon I use is similar to this one. My "funnel" is a Tesco plastic champagne flute with the bottom sawn off!

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sugar-Di...Ingredients-Priming-Bottles-X-3-/253751390039
and I know some people have mentioned using sugar sachets like these, though I've not done so myself

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/White-Su...4d0d80ba5dbe36503072|ampid:PL_CLK|clp:2334524

No you have company! Now that I have two FVs I am racking from the first to the second where I let the beer rest for a few days with a view to clarity being attained whereas priming would impose a short time restraint. I too find no problem priming each bottle with a plastic measure (which dropped out of a Xmas cracker!) which in addition to a half tsp measure has one for a quarter and a whole making pro rata adjustments easy for differently sized bottles.

 

[Spratt]

On a slightly related point, I was contemplating force carbonating a brew in a fermenter king junior and then bottling straight into bottles using a beer gun. It seemed to me that this would take out the guess work of carbonating so long as the carbonation was retained at its original level when transferring to bottles. I wanted to do this because I plan on giving this batch away to friends and neighbours (it's a christmas beer) and I wanted to reduce the chance of bottle bombs and gushers.

Is there any reason why what I'm proposing would be a bad idea?

I can't find the link right now, but I'm sure I have watched a YouTube video where some-one does exactly that.

I tried it myself for literally one bottle and it came out rather flat, but I tend to drink my beer from corny kegs at a lower pressure than I enjoy in a bottled beer, so I may not have had it carbonated enough in the first place

 

[BlackRegent]

I can't find the link right now, but I'm sure I have watched a YouTube video where some-one does exactly that.

I tried it myself for literally one bottle and it came out rather flat, but I tend to drink my beer from corny kegs at a lower pressure than I enjoy in a bottled beer, so I may not have had it carbonated enough in the first place

@Spratt Thanks for your insight. This is what I'm concerned about - that carbonation is lost in the bottling process and the beer is less carbonated than I had planned. That's why I'm keen to hear what people's experiences are form those who have tried it.

 

[Dulwich North]

Hi @Dulwich North

Another thing to check ... what were your FGs on those brews with poor heads?

I ask because, when I first started AG brewing I had a few brews that ended up with higher attenuations, ending up at lower FGs, than expected ... while those beers seemed to taste fine they had really poor head retention ... it turned out I was measuring/monitoring my mash temps poorly and producing a more fermentable wort. So, what were your OGs and FGs for those (poor head) ESB brews?

Cheers, PhilB

Does this tell you anything, Phil?

	OG	FG
ESB	1.074	1.013
Winter Warmer	1.058	1.011
ESB-GH	1.054	1.012

 

[foxy]

I feel dissatisfied with how my British-style beers are carbonating and forming a head. The PET bottles firm up within a week or so, and I don't rush to open them, the taste is good and the beers are drinkable, but they just don't have much of a head and carbonation is only just OK.

The problem beers include two ESBs and a Winter Warmer, two of these being recipes straight out of the Greg Hughes book but scaled down (I am ruling out the assumption that my results are exactly what I should expect of those recipes!). So I am wondering what approaches might help next time I brew ESB or similar styles.

I can distinguish some obvious differences from other beers which turned out fine. Carapils is used in my Mosaic and Citra IPAs, but I wouldn't want to add it unnecessarily to an ESB. My wheat beers also turned out fine, and I've seen some comments about adding a little wheat malt to improve the head. But there was 5% wheat in one of my ESBs.

Another difference is that in these British brews I used half a tablet of Protofloc late in the boiling. The beers have been very clear, but could it be that Protofloc reduces the amount of yeast getting into the bottle? Reduce Protofloc, or might I add yeast during bottling?

Before bottling, I put the FV in the fridge for a couple of days. I then syphon to a fermenting bucket and am getting better with practice at not transferring sediment - a good thing?

My priming method is by adding caster sugar solution to the fermenting bucket, then giving a gentle stir. The amount of sugar roughly follows the suggestions in the Greg Hughes book and in other recipes - let's say around 5g per litre. Add more sugar? Change sugar?

As I mentioned before, I am mainly using PET bottles for these beers. I fill to within a couple of centimetres of the brim and storage is at room temperature. The bottles firm up noticeably and feel like the IPAs, although they don't get as rock solid as the wheat beers.

Before opening, I usually give these beers an hour in the fridge, but I have tried drinking them without chilling. There is still a bit of sediment in the bottle, not much though.

So I hope I have mentioned enough of the key points where I may be going wrong. Any thoughts appreciated.

Why don't you add the carapils? I add Gladfields Gladiator malt to most of my beers, it is also a dextrin malt, and only about 5% gives great head and lacing.

 

[PhilBrew]

Does this tel you anything, Phil?

... Nope, it just eliminates the beer too thin to form/retain a head theory

Cheers, PhilB