brewing a highly driknable beer with body?

[irishrover32]

id like to brew a light beer thats highly drinkable, the kind of beer that you just wanna constantly sip on, its light and refreshing (eg stone pale ale, levitation ale), i suppose you'd call it a session beer, but i dont want it to be watery, i suppose im refering to a dry beer but how do you brew a dry beer with some body to it? if i was to add carapils im sure this would improve the body but would it effect the FG or does carapils build body by some other means besides residual sugars? im refering to pale ales here but id also like to know is it possible to brew a malt forward beer thats very drinkable, with malty beers am i right in saying that the lower you go, gravity wise the more malt character your gonna lose?

this is a tricky one that i cant get my head around so any help is appreciated

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

driknable? Is that gaelic? Isn't this what Brew Dog makes?



Sessionable with body says 4% Marzen to me.

 

[MrHadack]

Well, I suppose if you do all grain brewing you could always design a beer with a lower target OG and then mash high. That would be sessionable with body.

Maybe something like:
7# Pale Malt
8oz Cara-Pils
8oz Cystal 80
8oz Biscuit Malt

In a 5 gallon batch, mashing at 156F that would give a predicted target OG of 1.046 and finish somewhere around 4.2% ABV.

 

[irishrover32]

driknable? Is that gaelic? Isn't this what Brew Dog makes?



Sessionable with body says 4% Marzen to me.

drunken gaelic my friend ha ha, i suppose your right brew dog would be a good example how do they get body but the crisp refreshing character

Well, I suppose if you do all grain brewing you could always design a beer with a lower target OG and then mash high. That would be sessionable with body.

Maybe something like:
7# Pale Malt
8oz Cara-Pils
8oz Cystal 80
8oz Biscuit Malt

In a 5 gallon batch, mashing at 156F that would give a predicted target OG of 1.046 and finish somewhere around 4.2% ABV.

the beer you describe would finish around 1.014 is that not kind of high for a crisp refreshing character?

 

[irishrover32]

also iv never used marzen ill look that up

 

[progmac]

don't confuse body with sweetness. too much residual sweetness makes a beer become cloying and undrinkable. you can have a full-bodied beer that is dry. or you could have thin beer that is cloying.

practically speaking, mash high, keep the OG modestish, and use a yeast with medium to high attenuation.

 

[TheCanisDirus]

also iv never used marzen ill look that up

I think he means brew a 4% ABV Marzen (aka Oktoberfest) beer.

You'll also get more or less "body" or mouthfeel from different yeast strains... different unmalted grains etc. Here's a quick, but good, article for ya...

http://beersmith.com/blog/2008/02/27/making-full-body-beer-at-home/

 

[irishrover32]

don't confuse body with sweetness. too much residual sweetness makes a beer become cloying and undrinkable. you can have a full-bodied beer that is dry. or you could have thin beer that is cloying.

practically speaking, mash high, keep the OG modestish, and use a yeast with medium to high attenuation.

i cant get my head around this, so the residual sugars which cause sweetness arent the only thing responsible for body? wat else adds body proteins? the reason i ask is because my last two beers have been a bit cloying i think, one was a zombie dust clone with 7.8% munich and 3.5% melanoidan malt and finished at 1.022 and the other was a pale ale with a 11.3% munich that finished at 1.014. could the munich be responsibel for the "heavy" sweetness

 

[Beernik]

For sessionable beers, I mash lower than normal and use something (Carapils, wheat, oats) to bring the body back. My dampfbier (4.3%) I mashed at 147F and used 8oz CaraPils (for 6 gallons of beer). My rye-weizen (4.8%) I mashed at 144F and it had at 1/4 wheat and 1/4 rye.

The lower mash temperature is to counter the residual sweetness or softness of the "body grain".

Munich is toasty in flavor. It doesn't strike me as sweet.

1.022 sounds under attenuated. That's about where my sweet stouts end up.

 

[irishrover32]

does carapils add unfermentable sugars or proteins and does malted wheat add proteins/body to beer or is it just flaked and torriefed wheat that does this

 

[Beernik]

Carapils adds both. All malts add some protein. Carapils adds a long chain carbohydrate that isn't fermentable. So all the points it adds to your OG, it adds them all to your FG too. If you use 8oz in 5 gallons, that works out to about 3 points of gravity. This is why I mash lower when using it.

Wheat malt give a lot of extra protein to a beer. The extra protein adds body but it can also add haze. The same goes for flaked and torrified wheat. I use torrified wheat if I'm worried about head retention.