I Want to Brew Pretty Beer

[whovous]

I am fairly new to brewing. My basic approach is to keep brewing a narrow range of styles (PA, APA, IPA) over and over again with the idea that this is the best way for me to develop a process. I would rather learn to brew a few styles well than to brew many styles that are "just OK."

While my APAs have plenty of room for improvement they are beginning to draw a lot of compliments from friends and family and now I want to add another arrow to my quiver. I want looks to be the most important objective in my next beer, and to focus on color, clarity, lacing and head retention.

COLOR - I feel at a loss here. Is there any guide to targeting specific colors in beer? I know software can project my SRM, but that is just light or dark, isn't it? How can I know what color my beer will be before I brew it?

CLARITY - What is the best practice here? I own Irish Moss, Whirlfloc, Polyclar, a Blichman Hop Rocket that can double as a filter, a Fermostat regulated fridge/fermentation chamber, and gelatin. What should I use and what shouldn't I use? What other practices are important?

LACING and HEAD RETENTION - What does it take to get a thick, long-lasting head? Why do some beers lace up so much more than others, and why is some lacing so much prettier than other lacing?

WATER - How much does water matter to all of this? I have an RO filter in my kitchen, so everything starts with a blank canvas on this front. Are there specific water characteristics I should seek when building my water recipe?

Any and all advice will be appreciated.

 

[Braufessor]

COLOR - I feel at a loss here. Is there any guide to targeting specific colors in beer? I know software can project my SRM, but that is just light or dark, isn't it? How can I know what color my beer will be before I brew it?

CLARITY - What is the best practice here? I own Irish Moss, Whirlfloc, Polyclar, a Blichman Hop Rocket that can double as a filter, a Fermostat regulated fridge/fermentation chamber, and gelatin. What should I use and what shouldn't I use? What other practices are important?

LACING and HEAD RETENTION - What does it take to get a thick, long-lasting head? Why do some beers lace up so much more than others, and why is some lacing so much prettier than other lacing?

WATER - How much does water matter to all of this? I have an RO filter in my kitchen, so everything starts with a blank canvas on this front. Are there specific water characteristics I should seek when building my water recipe?

Any and all advice will be appreciated.

Water - it can be VERY important. The fact that you have RO water to use to start means you are unlikely to brew "bad" beer. However, paying attention to pH and mineral content can definitely take beers from ok or good and move them to great. Different styles require different water profiles to make them as well as you can.

Color - what are you looking for? You can project color very accurately using brewing software and SRM....
3-4-5 you are looking at gold
6-7-8 you are looking at orange to copper
9-14 you are at amber
14-20 you are moving into brown
20+ you are getting toward black

clarity..... yeast plays a big role. I find pH of boil kettle and calcium content of water can make a big difference here.

Head retention.... I use wheat and flaked barley in a lot of my beers which can help.

 

[Helloworld]

I use unflavored gelatin to clarify my beers. Here is a great guide:

http://www.bertusbrewery.com/2012/06/how-to-clear-your-beer-with-gelatin.html

It works like magic.

 

[Double_D]

I think what you need to do is pick one of your next attributes and work on that. Color, clarity, lacing/head, water are all separate focuses. An 8.5% DIPA will never have the head of a 5% pils. It depends on what you're looking for.

I think you should get a bjcp app. They have color ranges in the specifications and also a rough example of what they should look like color wise.

Water profiles vary by region, these also happen to correspond to style and for the most part are included, vaguely in the guidelines. This is something that a for me is definitely a solo project that gets individual attention.

I agree with what braufessor said about head retention. As for adding ingredients I don't really worry about it usually. I do tend to make 8ish % beers prefering lighter body DIPAs and IPAs. I get lace no matter what. I make wheat beers and the head takes care of itself. Helles lagers and pils same thing.

Clarity for me is something I focus on intermittently. If it's appropriate for style, I worry about it. I have tried filtering and it was a universal failure. But that was my fault. Gravity will naturally clarify your beer. Previously, that was my solution. I've recently started wanting to use gelatin. Supposedly it's quick and easy to use post fermentation.

 

[whovous]

Water - it can be VERY important. The fact that you have RO water to use to start means you are unlikely to brew "bad" beer. However, paying attention to pH and mineral content can definitely take beers from ok or good and move them to great. Different styles require different water profiles to make them as well as you can.

Color - what are you looking for? You can project color very accurately using brewing software and SRM....
3-4-5 you are looking at gold
6-7-8 you are looking at orange to copper
9-14 you are at amber
14-20 you are moving into brown
20+ you are getting toward black

clarity..... yeast plays a big role. I find pH of boil kettle and calcium content of water can make a big difference here.

Head retention.... I use wheat and flaked barley in a lot of my beers which can help.

WATER - I use Bru'n Water and add Lactic as instructed to reach the number for my style, but I have not done much measuring to date. I tried some pH strips last time, but they seemed to be telling me my numbers were in the mid 4s and I had trouble believing that.

I have a cheap pH meter, but I've been a cheap brewer and reluctant to spend more money calibrating it every time to get good numbers from it. I think I need to get over this concern.

The bottom line for me right now on pH is that with RO water and my additions I doubt I am too high, but i do not know how low I might be, and I do not know the effects of being too low on my goals.

COLOR - I guess I am most confused here, as I do not see the direct correlation between color and SRM numbers. One brew in the fermenter now uses MO with a little honey malt. The SRM is about 5, per Bru'n Water, but to me it is more an unattractive pale orange than it is gold. Making it lighter seems like it would be an even less attractive shade of orange, not gold.

CLARITY - I suppose patience is the biggest factor here. My one recent foray into browns left the beer in the fermenter for a very long time (by my standards), and it pours very clear, though being dark brown means you cannot tell much once it is in the glass. But the side effect of leaving it in the fermenter so long is that I can barely taste my late hop additions. I guess if I am to focus solely on clarity I need not to worry about that, or choose a style that does not rely so much on those additions for this experiment.

Yeast I understand for clarity. How do pH and calcium figure into the process here?

HEAD RETENTION - If I add wheat or flaked barley for head retention, do I not also detract from clarity? Do I need to choose one or the other? I know commercial brews manage to do both with regularity, but I also know I am not a commercial brewer.

I appreciate all the ideas you've given me to think about here.

 

[cyanmonkey]

An 8.5% DIPA will never have the head of a 5% pils.

I have an 11% IPA with a head that won't quit. Depends on carbonation and proteins in your brew.

 

[whovous]

I think what you need to do is pick one of your next attributes and work on that. Color, clarity, lacing/head, water are all separate focuses. An 8.5% DIPA will never have the head of a 5% pils. It depends on what you're looking for.

I think you should get a bjcp app. They have color ranges in the specifications and also a rough example of what they should look like color wise.

Water profiles vary by region, these also happen to correspond to style and for the most part are included, vaguely in the guidelines. This is something that a for me is definitely a solo project that gets individual attention.

I agree with what braufessor said about head retention. As for adding ingredients I don't really worry about it usually. I do tend to make 8ish % beers prefering lighter body DIPAs and IPAs. I get lace no matter what. I make wheat beers and the head takes care of itself. Helles lagers and pils same thing.

Clarity for me is something I focus on intermittently. If it's appropriate for style, I worry about it. I have tried filtering and it was a universal failure. But that was my fault. Gravity will naturally clarify your beer. Previously, that was my solution. I've recently started wanting to use gelatin. Supposedly it's quick and easy to use post fermentation.

Do lacing and head retention go hand in hand? Does getting one always get me the other? And are you saying that the size of the ABV largely determines the size of the head and lace? I wind up with mostly 5s and maybe 6s, so perhaps I need to increase the size of my grain bill a bit?

What role does sugar play in this? Will adding sugar to up the ABV gt me where I want to go? I know it will give me a drier brew.

I will definitely get a BJCP app, as I need to actually see these colors before I brew to have a better idea of where I might wind up. Right now I am just creating recipes to produce my target numbers without having much idea how using some different grain additions might affect my color choices.

Clarity is probably the area where I have the most idea of what to do. Here, I guess my concern is how much focusing on clarity can detract from flavor. But if I am going to do an experiment that focuses on clarity, then I need to worry about that a little bit less.

Your suggestion to focus on one area at a time is a good one. So good that I am likely to have a very hard time following it...

 

[whovous]

I have an 11% IPA with a head that won't quit. Depends on carbonation and proteins in your brew.

Unlike Spinal Tap, I fear mine will never go to eleven!

 

[Homercidal]

Honestly, I would not stress about getting perfect clarity or color. Not for every beer, anyway. Certainly you will want some styles to be perfectly clear. That's expected.

But some styles, like IPAs can be beautiful with a certain amount of haze as well, and others almost require a level of cloudiness.

As far as color, you can predict an SRM level, but that doesn't really give you any idea of the COLOR. There are different malts and adjuncts that can affect the color from yellow, to gold, to amber, brown, red, black, etc. It's not simply degrees of dark and like of a single color. The brown/red/yellow is determined by the grains used. Find a book or website on brewing grains and see what they say.

I know Mosher has some good information in his books, and the AHA has a series of books, one about Malt. You might also read some recipes on here and note which recipes provide a certain color to the beer (If they post pictures...) Then make some correlations. The data is out there. Just find it and put it to use.

I've used a touch of wheat for most of my Pale Ales to help with head retention. It *can* affect clarity, but it shouldn't be a concern at the levels useful for head retention. Of course water chemistry can affect this as well. Generally the more protein a beer has, the better the head. I don't personally worry about that.

The one thing I like about homebrewing is that there are many different beers with different characteristics. Embrace the diversity!

 

[brewcat]

COLOR - I guess I am most confused here, as I do not see the direct correlation between color and SRM numbers. One brew in the fermenter now uses MO with a little honey malt. The SRM is about 5, per Bru'n Water, but to me it is more an unattractive pale orange than it is gold. Making it lighter seems like it would be an even less attractive shade of orange, not gold.

Plug the recipe into a software program. I find that the color Brewtarget shows is pretty close. Color in the fermenter isn't a good judge of what the beer will look like in glass.

Clarity also affects color with how light hits the beer. I had an irish red that wasn't a brilliant red until it cleared. Before it cleared it was quite a bit darker, closer to brown.

 

[Yooper]

This is an article I wrote a while back on how to get clear wort and clear beer: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/clear-wort-clear-beer.html

I brew a ton of IPAs and APAs, as I'm a total hop head. They are also pretty easy to get "pretty".

I like to get an SRM of 6-8 in my IPAs, and use very little crystal malt in them. For my APAs, I generally go for 6-11 SRM and often will use crystal malt for color and flavor.

The nice thing is that hops help contribute to head and foam retention, so hoppy beers don't really need any "help" for that.

I like to use Munich malt in those beers as well, maybe a pound or so in a 5 gallon batch, which gives the beer an orange/reddish hue. It also gives a great malt flavor for support for the beer.

 

[MrFancyPlants]

For color, I pretend that the Lovibond rating is linear and use proportionally decreasing amounts of darker rated malts in my recipes, 'specially for the "specialty malts".

I.e:
if I used 1# cara60(l), I would use .5# special B (120l) and .1# of dark chocolate (600l).

Better than adding depth of color to your brew, I find that it adds depth of flavor when no one particular malt draws too much attention.

 

[Double_D]

I have an 11% IPA with a head that won't quit. Depends on carbonation and proteins in your brew.

Very true. I add corn and dextrose to my DIPAs. I wouldn't say they have head that don't quit but even then I'm never disappointed.

 

[HCbrewing]

Any beer will clear perfectly if you leave it in the keg long enough. I even had a hefeweizen that I was a little slow to finish that was crystal clear by the time the keg kicked.

 

[cyanmonkey]

Any beer will clear perfectly if you leave it in the keg long enough. I even had a hefeweizen that I was a little slow to finish that was crystal clear by the time the keg kicked.

Kristalweizen?

 

[trav77]

CLARITY - What is the best practice here? I own Irish Moss, Whirlfloc, Polyclar, a Blichman Hop Rocket that can double as a filter, a Fermostat regulated fridge/fermentation chamber, and gelatin. What should I use and what shouldn't I use? What other practices are important?

What works for me for pale ales... Ca in the 50-100 range. Focus on setting proper mash (and therefore kettle) pH. Whirlfloc with 10 minutes to go (1/2 tablet in 5 gal). Invest in a chiller that can cool fast. I just have a no frills immersion chiller that I added a recirculation arm to and I pump to recirc. It gets 5 gallons down to pitching temp in 5-10 minutes (but my groundwater is always cold). I don't worry much about trub in the fermenter. Use an appropriate sized starter. Ferment to completion, dry hop for as long as you like, then cold crash to 0-2 C. Hold for 2 days then hit it with 1/2 tsp gelatin heated/dissolved in 1/4 C water. Leave it another 2 days and keg straight from primary. It usually is pretty clear at this point and commercial clarity in 1-2 weeks in the keg depending on yeast and how much adjunct etc. was in the grain bill. Total grain to glass is usually 2 weeks-ish or 3-4 total if you count the week or two in the keg to get it really clear.

LACING and HEAD RETENTION - What does it take to get a thick, long-lasting head? Why do some beers lace up so much more than others, and why is some lacing so much prettier than other lacing?

Most pale ales I find are OK for head retention without doing anything special. If you want a particularly thick head try unmalted adjuncts (flaked wheat or my favourite - oats). Also try some CaraFoam etc.

WATER - How much does water matter to all of this? I have an RO filter in my kitchen, so everything starts with a blank canvas on this front. Are there specific water characteristics I should seek when building my water recipe?

Lots. Get a copy of BrunWater and get your water profile dialled in - especially pH.

 

[lowtones84]

I like to get an SRM of 6-8 in my IPAs, and use very little crystal malt in them. For my APAs, I generally go for 6-11 SRM and often will use crystal malt for color and flavor.


I like to use Munich malt in those beers as well, maybe a pound or so in a 5 gallon batch, which gives the beer an orange/reddish hue. It also gives a great malt flavor for support for the beer.

Munich malt is a great choice to get that hue that Yooper is talking about. A small amount of Melanoidin malt can work nicely as well. Sometimes I drop 4-8 oz. into a recipe to get a pleasing light copper thing going on. Even try 1 oz. of roasted barley, crushed fine if you're looking for color but very little effect on anything else.

 

[whovous]

Lotta stuff to chew on in all of this. My three main takeaways are not necessarily the most important aspects, but they are things that seem to make more sense out of the process.

First, I just have to wrap my head around pH and figure out how to get good mileage out of my cheap pH meter. pH strips just are not telling me anything useful and I don't think there is much value in continuing to use them. I don't really "get" pH yet, and this needs to change. I have just joined the AHA (so I can attend the big event in Baltimore in June!), and it looks like they will send me a book on Water, which should give me more pH stuff to work with.

Second, I need to find these BJCP and color apps. I've never heard of BrewTarget before, but if it will let me play games with malt and color, it will be my new best friend.

Third - Mixing a lot of hops can muddy the flavor of a beer, but mixing a variety of grains can add depth. That is a huge revelation for me.

My plan for the moment is to create a test beer recipe that concentrates on color and clarity, and to let the other aspects take care of themselves for now. pH is the next frontier after that.

Thanks all, and keep the ideas coming!

 

[trav77]

What works for me for pale ales... Ca in the 50-100 range. Focus on setting proper mash (and therefore kettle) pH. Whirlfloc with 10 minutes to go (1/2 tablet in 5 gal). Invest in a chiller that can cool fast. I just have a no frills immersion chiller that I added a recirculation arm to and I pump to recirc. It gets 5 gallons down to pitching temp in 5-10 minutes (but my groundwater is always cold). I don't worry much about trub in the fermenter. Use an appropriate sized starter. Ferment to completion, dry hop for as long as you like, then cold crash to 0-2 C. Hold for 2 days then hit it with 1/2 tsp gelatin heated/dissolved in 1/4 C water. Leave it another 2 days and keg straight from primary. It usually is pretty clear at this point and commercial clarity in 1-2 weeks in the keg depending on yeast and how much adjunct etc. was in the grain bill. Total grain to glass is usually 2 weeks-ish or 3-4 total if you count the week or two in the keg to get it really clear.

Just a testament to how well this works...

This is the HopWards/HopHands clone recipe for NE style IPA. Supposed to be super hazy, even murky I know but that's not how I roll. So this has all the makings for a beer that shouldn't drop bright. 20% unmalted oats, very low floc Conan yeast, huge 6 oz dry hop. But this is 1 week in the keg (3 weeks from brew day).

The Caffreys etching is on the back of the glass...

View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1460073328.096640.jpg

 

[GnenieGone]

...
Head retention.... I use wheat and flaked barley in a lot of my beers which can help.

So do you basically replace say 1lb of 2-row with 1lb of flaked barley? I've been trying to get bit more mouthfeel in my PA's.

 

[Braufessor]

So do you basically replace say 1lb of 2-row with 1lb of flaked barley? I've been trying to get bit more mouthfeel in my PA's.

Depends on the beer. But, maybe a quarter pound of each in something like a blonde ale or a half pound of each in something like a porter or amber ale. Not a pound of each usually though.

 

[GnenieGone]

Thanks! I'll give it a go..

 

[whovous]

Just a testament to how well this works...

This is the HopWards/HopHands clone recipe for NE style IPA. Supposed to be super hazy, even murky I know but that's not how I roll. So this has all the makings for a beer that shouldn't drop bright. 20% unmalted oats, very low floc Conan yeast, huge 6 oz dry hop. But this is 1 week in the keg (3 weeks from brew day).

The Caffreys etching is on the back of the glass...

View attachment 349413

Oh, that is pretty. Almost pretty enough to convince me to make this recipe the basis for my planned "pretty beer" experiment.

Almost. I think for my first try I will do something that isn't designed to be murky. Getting a recipe like the NE IPA this clear can be my masters thesis!

Do you have any particular tricks to recommend?

 

[trav77]

Do you have any particular tricks to recommend?

Just what I wrote in my original reply to your question on clarity. It's nothing special, just some fine tuning of my process with other people's ideas from here.