Wheat malt - Head Retention

[alwilson]

Hi guys,

How much wheat malt would you suggest to give a beer a thick foamy head. Either as a percentage or as weight for a 100l brew length?

Cheers
Alex

[WishboneBrewery]

You might want to serve it through a Sparkler too

[alwilson]

What - down here in the south?

Actually these are going to be bottle and recently, if not, all my brews tend to lack a bit of head. But I think thats partly because I tend to pour (or trickle) the beer so as not to disturb the sediment.

[boingy]

Go for 5% to 10%

[alwilson]

Cheers Boingy.

What kind of flavour does wheat malt have? Better than torrified? I've read some comments on here about torrified giving an unpleasant flavour?

This may appear a stupid question, and it probably is, but when you say 5-10% what is the difference, are we talking more head @ 10% and if so, does that come at a cost or downside elsehwere?

Cheers

[Tom_D]

Sorry to hijack the threat but I've just taken a hydrometer reading of my latest beer in which I used 5% wheat malt. The beer is super cloudy and I was wondering whether that could be down to the wheat or maybe just the yeast still in suspension. I'm using wlp001 for the first time although I'm used to wlp002 which would've dropped out by this point.

Cheers.

[Wolfy]

Sorry to hijack the threat but I've just taken a hydrometer reading of my latest beer in which I used 5% wheat malt. The beer is super cloudy and I was wondering whether that could be down to the wheat or maybe just the yeast still in suspension. I'm using wlp001 for the first time although I'm used to wlp002 which would've dropped out by this point.

WLP002 is THE most flocculant yeast that I have ever used, you can't really compare other yeasts to it in that regard, its simply just super-floculant.
Most likely its just yeast in suspension, using 5% to 10% wheat malt is a common thing for many pale ale beers and it (as far as I know) does not generally make the beer any more cloudy than expected.

[boingy]

Cheers Boingy.

What kind of flavour does wheat malt have? Better than torrified? I've read some comments on here about torrified giving an unpleasant flavour?

This may appear a stupid question, and it probably is, but when you say 5-10% what is the difference, are we talking more head @ 10% and if so, does that come at a cost or downside elsehwere?

Cheers

I have to say that I have never noticed any flavour problems with torrified wheat and I tend to use that and wheat malt pretty much interchangeably for the purposes of head retention. I've also never really made any study of the differences between 5% and 10%.

Adding a bit of wheat is not a magic wand and is never going to give you a full-on Guinness-style head so it depends what you are expecting.

[alwilson]

Cheers Boingy.

So what im asking, I think is, does 10% give you more head retention than 5%

[Tom_D]

Cheers Wolfy!