I bottled my last brew on the weekend, when filling the bottles there was no head at all whereas my previous brew was really heady. Someone told me to shake the bottles a week after bottling and that will carb it up more and give me more head on the beer.
Has anyone heard of doing this??
MSR
The only way that could help is if it put more yeast into suspension and somehow helped
it ferment a few more milligrams of sugar.
Although I always invert each bottle once after putting the seal on to get the sugar
off the bottom, but if you're bulk priming that's not important.
There's few variables to produce a good head.
1. You need some live yeast in the bottle.
2. You need the right amount of sugar or other fermentable for it to eat.
3. You need to ferment the contents of the bottle at the right temperature. In winter this
is a problem for me, so I sit the cartons of stubbies in my fermenting box with mat and thermostat
set to ~20C for two weeks. Summer I just shove 'em in the cupboard.
4. For head retention you need some frothy compounds
which you can get from
crystal malt or wheat malt which might be in the ingredients of your kit, or may not be!