Coopers Irish Stout - dark spraymalt or brew enhancer 3 for head retention?

hatrickpatrick

I've just made a Coopers Irish Stout kit, which tastes incredible and has a lovely mouthfeel. The one thing I'd like to improve is the head retention - I'm using the syringe-injection trick to give it a proper nitro stout head, which works far better than I expected it to. The issue is that the head tends to dissipate fairly quickly, so that by the time you get about half way through a pint, it's pretty much gone. I've gotten around this by keeping enough in the bottle to pour once you get down that far, re carbonating the glass in the process, and then doing a second injection which brings back the head - but I'm wondering if the selection of additional fermentables with the kit has any effect on this.

I ordered the original kit from Homebrew West, with a light malt extract as the fermentable. I'm ordering my next kit from HBC, as they have another kit I'm looking for which HBW doesn't, the Evil Dog (and I've had great experiences with both companies so I'm trying to give them even amounts of brand loyalty ) - they offer two configurations for the kit.

One is Coopers' own recommended addition, which is brew enhancer 3 - this is "a high proportion" of light dry malt combined with dextrose and maltodextrin. I'm assuming the ratios are somewhere in the 50/25/25 ballpark.

The other is simply 1kg of dark spraymalt, straight-up, without any other sugars. This is recommended by HBC and is offered by them as an "ingredient pack".

In terms of head retention, nothing else, which of these configurations is likely to yield a better result? Or will it not make much of a difference from the one I brewed with light malt extract?

BeerNut

I doubt you'll get a better result that what you've been doing, though you could look at raising your carbonation level slightly. I've always got great head retention brewing with 100% DME so I would guess the weak point in your system is the kit itself. I suspect that DME contains a proportion of wheat and LME doesn't, but that's just a guess.

ArrBee

Another thing to try would be adding other grains during the brewing.
I find that steeping oats and adding that liquid results in long lasting tight bubbles. Not as creamy as nitro pour but.

hatrickpatrick

BeerNut wrote: »

I doubt you'll get a better result that what you've been doing, though you could look at raising your carbonation level slightly. I've always got great head retention brewing with 100% DME so I would guess the weak point in your system is the kit itself. I suspect that DME contains a proportion of wheat and LME doesn't, but that's just a guess.

It seems highly carbonated when pouring in terms of bubbles in the actual body, it's just that the head disintegrates fairly quickly after forming, so that about half way through a pint it's almost entirely... Headless.

I'll look into trying steeped oats with the next one - I have a muslin bag for dry hopping from another kit, could I use this to directly steep them in the fermenter, as opposed to steeping them separately and extra liquid?

ArrBee

I have always steeped them in hot water.
Maybe about 30 mins at roughly 60C

You can just add them as is and get some benefit. I'm not sure how much of a difference to expect.
You could try toasting them 1st too.

irish_goat

You could try adding either of these products instead and see if it improves head retention.

http://www.thehomebrewcompany.ie/coopers-malt-extract-wheat-15kg-p-817.html
http://www.thehomebrewcompany.ie/spraymalt-wheat-500g-brewing-grade-p-255.html

I would advise against Brew Enhancer as it's bulked out with sugars and if anything will result in poorer head retention.

hatrickpatrick

irish_goat wrote: »

You could try adding either of these products instead and see if it improves head retention.

http://www.thehomebrewcompany.ie/coopers-malt-extract-wheat-15kg-p-817.html
http://www.thehomebrewcompany.ie/spraymalt-wheat-500g-brewing-grade-p-255.html

I would advise against Brew Enhancer as it's bulked out with sugars and if anything will result in poorer head retention.

Will give it a go for sure, thanks for the tip. I reckon it'll take a few brews to get this right, if I ever do, so I'll try all the ideas posted in the thread one brew after another until I get the right one

Honestly I'm very surprised at how well the syringe method works to create a proper nitro-esque surge without any nitrogen involved, so if this is the best thing I can get without a kegging setup I'm ok with that, but it feels like I'm so close to making an authentic nitro stout if I can just get that settled head to last a tiny bit longer before fizzling out. I'm thinking it could just be that nitrogen bubbles have a different characteristic compared with pure CO2 bubbles which makes it unfeasible to get a lasting head of post-surge bubbles without nitrogen, but I'm willing to give it a shot. The stout is delicious, so definitely worth seeing if the standard kit recipe can be tweaked to make it more nitro-ish.