Wheat Flour For Head Retention

[wimbymoonshine]

Hi All,

A few people have suggeted u use 'wheat flour' in my kit beers to help with my head retention issues. Questions:

1. what wheat flour? Is it just the stuff you buy from the supermarket (ie to make dough etc)?
2. How much should i put in a 23L batch?
3. What is the method? I am thinking that adding flour to the fermenter would cause doughballs?
4. Does it effect the taste?

Ive done a search on the site and cant find anything about the what and how to?

Cheers

 

[goatherder]

Not sure about head retention but it will certainly leave a haze in your beer. Wheat flour is a potential beer ingredient but it would need to be mashed to convert the starches into sugars. Without the mashing, those starches will just contribute to haze.

Maybe the advice you should have got is a bit of wheat dry malt extract (DME)? A small percentage of wheat malt (5%) is a common addition for improved head retention in AG beers. In a kit beer, use wheat DME for the same effect. If are using it in a kit, I suggest dissolving it in some hot water and mixing into the fermenter when you mix up the kit.

 

[mika]

Or you could steep a small amount of carapils. As Goatherder has mentioned, wheat flour will only haze it up

 

[goatherder]

Spot on mika - ignore my previous dumb advice. Wheat DME is only any good if you are doing a full boil. Stick with carapils steeping in with a kit.

 

[wimbymoonshine]

Or you could steep a small amount of carapils. As Goatherder has mentioned, wheat flour will only haze it up

tried caparils, didnt work. I even went as far as posting a topic about whether it was my water composition (water is super hard in London)?
I think the wheat DME idea of goat's is worth a shot.

As for the carapils, when i steeped it at about 60deg c for 20mins, i did an iodine test and it went black indicating release of straches??!
i thought carapils was a speciality malt and the starch had been preconverted to sugars and thus the iodine shoulda not gone black?