Almost no head retention and I can't figure out why.

Hi All,

I tried brewing a belgian blonde and well, this is my first experiance with Belgians. I typically brew german beers but I REALLY wanted a tripple so I brewed this to get the yeast cake. The recipe I used was:

4.5lb Pils
4.5 Light Munich
1lb Aromatic
1oz tetnager 6.9AA (60min)
1oz spalt 4.1AA (15min)

1245 Abby Yeast
1.5lb Palm Sugar.

It fermented out cleanly and I got great attenuation. It took some time for this yeast to drop out but that is expected. I kegged it the way I always keg. I washed it out, rised it really well, poured in about 2c of starsan and poured off the extra. I have this keg at 32 degrees F at 12PSI. I let this sit for about a week.

I have two problems. I don't really have any good carbonation in the beer. I also don't have any head retention or formation. I don't know if the two are related. I would have figured that the Munich would have added enough protein to keep carbonation and head retention but perhaps not? It has the perfect body though. It is high alcohol but light to medium light body.

Any ideas what I might have done wrong? I cranked up the PSI to 15 to see if that will do anything but that will take another few days.

Thanks in advance.

If it isn't carbonated, something is wrong. That is 2.9 volumes, so it should be highly carbonated. Is the keg holding pressure?

And yes, if it isn't carbonated, you won't get much/any head.

Needs a lot more time on the gas before you will get any head to it. Give it time grasshopper...

Gary

yeah give it another week at that PSI and see what happens. If it carbonates but still lacks head, its something else.

If your beer is really uncarbed at this point, something isn't right. You might not be at 100% in a week, but you should have noticable carbonation.

Hmm. So I did carefully examine it and it turns out that there is some dissolved CO2 in the beer but really not much at all. So this is funny. I have been kegging for a very long time but I never really figured out or asked how long it takes to force carb at 12-15 PSI. So how long should it take?

~Ben

For most of my beers it usually takes 2 weeks for full carbonation.
After 1 week there is some carbonation but additional week gets it to right carb level.

Crank psi to 22. Put keg on side. Rock back and forth vigorously for 4 minutes. Turn gas off. Wait 24 hours. Bleed gas. Set gas to serving pressure.

I do this to all my beers now and like the results way better than the wait and see if it ever gets where I want it method.