Improving mouthfeel/crispness on extract brews

[Gavin_currie1]

Hi guys, I’m still a novice and only about to put down my 5th brew. My question is, how do I improve the crispness of my extract brews? I’m pretty happy with the flavour and clarity of the beers I’ve made so far but the mouthfeel is the only thing that is letting it down. Can a crisp taste be achieved by just using the cans and enhancers? Should I be using DME? All advice welcome.

Cheers in advance.

[Lab Cat]

Depends what you mean by 'crisp'. To me, that's more to do with a style of beer, like pils or lager. I don't want crisp ales, I want malty, well flavoured ales with good body and feel. Brewing with all dry malt (or liquid malt cans) gives you that, but I wouldn't say it's crisp.

What's you method of temp control? A fridge and external temp control will make a big difference to making consistently good beer. Brewing at appropriate temps for the yeasts and styles you're brewing will ensure the yeast ferments cleanly, and don't add extra flavours. Which isn't always a bad thing.

Cold chilling your beer will also help clear it, which can help with taste.

Edited July 17, 2019 by Lab Rat

[Greenyinthewestofsydney]

Crisp is usually synonymous with a lager brew. I dont think i have ever had a crisp ale. 

I find the more dryer the beer the more crisp it is. Dry means most of the sugars have been fermented out and thus the final gravity will be quite low. Because its an extract you cant really do anything to make it crisper without an additive. Dry enzyme will make it crisp by eating sugars which the yeast cant handle. Thats an option for you but personally nlt a massive fan of the dry enzyme.

[Beerlust]

Hi Gavin.

1 hour ago, Gavin_currie1 said:

Hi guys, I’m still a novice and only about to put down my 5th brew. My question is, how do I improve the crispness of my extract brews? I’m pretty happy with the flavour and clarity of the beers I’ve made so far but the mouthfeel is the only thing that is letting it down. Can a crisp taste be achieved by just using the cans and enhancers? Should I be using DME? All advice welcome.

Cheers in advance.

Put simply, yes. It's a very good question that you ask.

A crisp beer is achieved (IMHO) through the combination of malt selection, yeast strain, & can be accentuated by hop selection. One thing I personally believe is that the final gravity of a beer to remain crisp has a limitation. Past a certain point the remaining viscosity in the beer no longer allows for the beer mouthfeel to feel "crisp". An approx. point with what I've brewed over the years where the shift occurs more noticeably is around a final gravity of 1.010 & above. So if I want a crisp beer it must remain at or below that FG to achieve that mouthfeel & crispness in the final beer.

As an extract brewer using dried malt extracts in place of liquid malt extracts helps as I've found they have a higher fermentability, & where a certain recipe struggles to create that desired crispness, an amount of dextrose can be used to increase fermentability, create a drier beer, & as a consequence assist with achieving a lower final gravity.

Just my 20 cents,

Lusty.