I plan to brew a Pale Ale recipe tonight that I've made previously on a couple of occasions. I've got it fairly dialed in at this point, however, I would really like the beer to have a smoother/creamier mouthfeel. In the past, I've used Carapils for body and head retention, but am thinking about replacing the Carapils with either Flaked Wheat or Flaked Oats to achieve the mouthfeel I'm looking for. I'm not concerned with any haze that might result with using either, but plan to use no more than 5% of whichever I chose. I've also heard of Flaked Barley being used as well. For those of you that have used these in a Pale Ale/IPA, do you have a preference and why? Thanks in advance for your thoughts!
In my experience, flaked oats at best are foam retention neutral, but often are foam retention negative. I assume it's because of fats/oils in the oats.
Thanks Vike, so in your opinion would you use them in conjunction with a little carapils or just go for the flaked wheat, which I've heard doesn't give you quite the same mouthfeel, but offers more by way of body/head retention.
I am looking to do the same for my pale. Listening to a podcast with the Carton Brewing Co he mentioned using wheat at 10% do give it more body. I am going to try that. I assume he means just wheat and not flaked wheat. Curious to know what you decide to use and how it worked out.
Below is what Augie Carton posted in another BA thread concerning the grain bill for Carton Boat beer: “boats bill is mostly 2 row with some flaked wheat and a touch of acidulated” Cheers!
Whenever I use a small amount of Victory (4-6oz), it seems to provide a surprising amount of body and foam.
Door County Brewing made a PA with Flaked Oats. And it turned out delicious! I will def. be doing one of these in the near future.
For any who are curious, I've decided to mash higher than I normally do 154 instead of 152 and will be using Flaked Wheat (4%) and Carapils (3%). I also plan on going with a yeast that is known to produce a bigger mouthfeel but not a lot of residual sweetness, Wyeast 1450. Will report back at a later time to comment on how all of these factors impact the final mouthfeel.
Being an old school homebrewer, I favored flaked barley for a long time, but mostly in dark beers. About 10 years ago I noticed a lot of Belgian brewers saying that unmalted wheat improved the stability of their beers, noted that wheat had more foam-stabilizing proteins than barley and switched to flaked wheat for my stouts/porters. It turned out to be a good move. For pale ales, wheat will do the good things, as long as you can live with cloudy beer... personally, I'd probably go with carapils.
out of the basic fact that I can get some at the local grocery store, I often opt for quick oats to add body. It does the trick...also I don't care too much about head retention with IPAs, the hops always seem to add a lot of foam stability.
