I recently did my first all-grain and it was quite fun. It was rocky and i didn't do the best job, but it was fun and the beer is pretty good. The issue i'm having with it is that it has no head.WHAT!?!? I'm confused what could have caused this. During my mashing process when i was bringing my mash temp. to around 155 and somehow i messed up and gave it too much heat and it went up to 180. Would this have been what "killed" my head? My boil was not the most vigorous boil either, The wasn't enough room in the pot. Would that have affected it as well?
The recipe is humpty dumpty bitter from The complete guide to homebrewing by charlie papazini. I keep a record of my brewing process and i know i made some big no-nos that i will not commit in the future but here it is.
6 lbs English 2 row malt
1/3 lb English crystal malt 55 lovibond
1/4lb aromatic malt
6 oz lyles golden syrup(sugar)
1 oz northerdown hops
1oz kent goldings hops
½ oz kent goldings hops – dry hopped 2nd ferment
British ale wyeast
61/2 quart water and grain mash sat between 138-142ish for 30 min
Added 3 gallons boiling water sat at 150-154 for 45 min
Accidently brought to 180 degrees instantly taken off of heat and brought down to 155ish for 15 min
Sparged in 2 parts, strainer broke used a bigger hole strainer small pieces go into sweet wort(assumed will sediment out with yeast)[I know now that would be a bad idea because of the tannins extracted in the boil]
Boil does not look like it is boiling, the top of the water is 216 so we went ahead and put in the 6 oz of the sugar and 1 oz northerndown hops
Irish mosh added 10 min before the boil ended as planned
Kent goldings added on time 5 min before end of boil, started running the water bath with ice
Jacob was stupid and spilled wort as straining it into the main fermentor, my leg and arms are sticky final OG = 1.030, it was expected at 1.038-40.[shouldn't of filled as much water as initially anticipated]
Pitched yeast at 5 gal 70 degrees 3/9/12
Racked into 5 gallon bucket and then racked back into primary fermenter with ½ oz of kent on 3/15/12
Tied nylon mesh hop bag to top end of siphon to restrain hops and small husks from getting in and siphoned into second bucket with 2 cups of water with ¾ cup of corn sugar for priming sugar 3/7/12
Those are the notes i recorded on the process, It was only at 180 for a short time, 5 min max. Jacob is my brother in case you were confused by that comment.
Thank you for all the advice guys and i'm definitely going to try to add some malted wheat with my low grav beers next time.I did try and put salt in the beer and i got a big creamy head. I noticed not very much sediment at the bottom of my bottles so i'm thinking the mesh bag may have filtered out some of the yeast. It fermented for a longer time than planned just because i was busy. It was extra low grav because of the spill so i think it was a combination of many things that destroyed the head. I'll make sure to take extra care with low grav beers when it comes to heads in the future and i'm going to pull back and do a few more partial mashes before i step up to all-grain. Thanks guys