How To Get A Better Head On Your Beers

Appearance isn’t everything, but it sure feels good to impress your mates with a beer with a beautiful head. It’s not all about correctly carbonating your beer, there’s actually many ways to ensure that your beer has a good head:

1. Avoid simple sugars and use malt instead.

Using dextrose or brewing sugar should be kept to a minimum when homebrewing. These simple sugars form alcohol, but contribute nothing to the body of the beer. Instead use more malt in your beers. Malts are not 100% fermentable and produce a ‘thicker’ liquid which holds the CO2 in solution.

2. Hops.

Good news for hop-heads – adding more hops to your brew helps with head retention. The isohumulones in hops help to hold the bubbles together. Yet another reason to hop up your beers!

3. Clean your glasses properly!

This is so often overlooked by homebrewers who go to an enormous effort making a perfect beer only to pour it into a dirty glass! A good glass cleaner will give a perfect shine to your glasses as well as killing any nasties that could affect the flavour and head retention in your beer.