First IPA - Head Retention Query

[Ghillie]

Hello guys,

Looking to brew my second AG brew which will be IPA; the first was a pale ale.

For the pale ale I used 250g carapils which as I understand is for head retention. The head of that beer is good and I'm happy with it.

With regards to IPA's, is carapils actually required? I read somewhere that compounds from the hop additions can actually give sufficient head retention by themselves? I plan to use 65g hop additions through the boil followed by a 90g dry hop.

 

[ACBEV]

Hops by themselves won't give good head retention. My last brew had 200g of hop additions in the boil, the recipe had little else to promote head retention, so as expected, head retention was not long lasting.

If I'm looking at promoting head retention, I'll use some combination of the following... Wheat Malt 4-5%, Flaked Barley 5-10%, Crystal Malt 5-10%, Oat Malt 5-10%, Cara Malt 5-10%, Torrified Wheat upto 10%.

Typically for a modern IPA, I would use 5% wheat malt and 7.5% crystal malt.

Others will have differing opinions...

 

[Sadfield]

Malt and isomerised hops should be more than enough for good head retention. As evident in any well brewed Golden Ale or Lager, despite the lack of speciality grains or unmalted adjuncts. Late and dryhops can have a slight negative effect, as can yeast in suspension, basically anything containing oils or fats. Good process and a bittering addition should be enough.

Research has shown that Carapils is slightly foam positive where as crystal malt is actually foam negative. There's a great post by @Wouter in a recent thread on this.

https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/76106/

Sent from my E5823 using Tapatalk

 

[Ghillie]

Hops by themselves won't give good head retention. My last brew had 200g of hop additions in the boil, the recipe had little else to promote head retention, so as expected, head retention was not long lasting.

If I'm looking at promoting head retention, I'll use some combination of the following... Wheat Malt 4-5%, Flaked Barley 5-10%, Crystal Malt 5-10%, Oat Malt 5-10%, Cara Malt 5-10%, Torrified Wheat upto 10%.

Typically for a modern IPA, I would use 5% wheat malt and 7.5% crystal malt.

Others will have differing opinions...

Thank you,

I'll try 350g of carapils in the recipe then; that works out around 6%.