Carapils in the Hughes single hop recipes

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Hi there,

In his single hop recipes Greg Hughes generally has pale malt plus 250g or thereabouts of carapils. Would this be solely for head retention? Does the carapils add any other quality? If not I might just drop it, e.g. in the Amarillo recipe, and make a simple SMASH pale+Amarillo.

Thoughts?

Cheers,

Allan
 
I think you can miss it out and make up the weight with base malt. Brulosophy have shown that it doesn't do anything anyway and that fits with my own experience.
 
I did the EKG one a couple of times and used crystal instead of carapils.
Have to say it was one of the least inspiring BIABs I've done so far. Twice...
 
This is interesting. And great link to that Brulosphy article, thanks.

I am only just starting to move away from single malt recipes, but must admit I don't know much about speciality malts and I just tend to follow recipes blindly.

I have just done a Simcoe and Ekuanot pale ale, and based the malt (blindly) on the Greg Hughes recipes - so 4.2Kg MO and 250g Carapils.

I had to drive all the way across town (in rush hour traffic) to a 'local' home-brew shop and paid a whopping £2.40 for 500g Carapils, just so I could get the brew started on my day off. I am so happy to read that it makes absolutely no difference to the brew. :doh:
 
Yet another Brulosophy, not showing anything other than for one set of circumstances and a small sample set, no conclusive data was observed. Omits the fact that Briess claim it enhances beer stability, yet doesn't do any tests on this over a period of time. From Briess -"Use up to 5% for increased body, foam retention, and beer stability in any beer style."

In fairness they do add a disclaimer in the discussion.

Considering some possible explanation for these results, perhaps the head retention benefits are only relevant in beers with notably poor foam without it, that the addition of Carapils may help to correct a foam-deficit, but not work in a cumulative sense for beers that already display “normal” foam qualities. Given our decision to use a higher amount of Carapils for this xBmt, I also wonder if there’s a point of diminishing returns whereby a smaller amount might produce a more noticeable effect.

Here is an alternate view.
 
The biggest point for me in that quote is the reminder that good foam is perfectly achievable without adding an ingredient purely for that purpose.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I listened to the podcast about the mash temperature one recently. The beers were objectively different, FGs were 1.006 and 1.014 I think, and the tasting panels, including the hosts, didn’t tell them apart. Makes one remember that it’s not just about the product, but the drinker as well.
 
I listened to the podcast about the mash temperature one recently. The beers were objectively different, FGs were 1.006 and 1.014 I think, and the tasting panels, including the hosts, didn’t tell them apart. Makes one remember that it’s not just about the product, but the drinker as well.

I liked that article as it made me think of something, I'd not clicked to before. "Maltiness" is often linked to fg but what I took from that article was that I can brew 2 beers with the same abv using different mash temps, the higher temp necessitates a higher OG which then needs more malt. As such the higher temp and FG beer had more malt in it to start which leading to a maltier beer.
 
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