If you are making a beer from grain or from a kit, sometimes they can be a little thin. This is usually due to one or a combination of factors including, the grain used, the quantity of grain, the ABV, the mash temperature, the amount of fermentable sugars, the amount of non fermentable sugars, are just a few factors that contribute to the body of a beer.
Using grain like maize will add extra fermentable sugars, but will contribute to a thinner beer.
Using oats will add body by adding non fermentable sugars and proteins, but will make the beer creamy if used too much.
If you are making a beer kit, and it calls for extra sugar, try not to use sugar, instead substitute it for beer enhancer or better still, liquid malt extract.
However, there is a quick easy remedy if you think your beer will be thin - Maltodextrin.
Maltodextrin is made from corn and is a non fermentable sugar that has an extremely low sweetness and no flavour, but adds body, mouthfeel and helps keep a nice fluffy head too.
Lots of breweries add maltodextrin to their beer. It's very versatile and easy to use as it just dissolves like sugar.
You can add it to the mash, the the boil, or pre fermentation, during fermentation and even post fermentation.
We would recommend adding it post fermentation as it affects the hydrometer readings, so if you aren't used to using adjuncts that affect the Specific Gravity and know how to adjust your hydrometer readings to take account of the extra non fermentable sugars, then it's probably best to add maltodextrin after the fermentation is complete.
How much maltodextrin to add to beer?
That depends on a few things. The type of beer, the mouthfeel you want, how thin the beer is going to be without it, if it's a craft beer or a real ale, it's not an easy question to answer.
1 teaspoon per litre (4.5g / litre) - that's 100g in a 23 litre batch will add a tiny extra mouthfeel and take the edge off a thin beer.
5 teaspoons per litre (22g / litre) - that's 500g in a 23 litre batch will add a good level of mouthfeel that is noticeable.
500g on 23 litres would be a great amount for an East Coast (New England style) craft beer to balance the hops, haze and slight sweetness of the craft beer. But it's likely way too much for a traditional style real ale that just needs a little extra body, so 100g might be more realistic.
A stout however would sit somewhere in the middle, say 250g and that will give a nice silky stout. But if you have made your stout with oats, perhaps drop down the maltodextrin to 150g.
There are no hard written rules about how much maltodextrin you should or should not use. It's up to you.
There is one thing to remember when using maltodextrin, although yeast can't metabolise maltodextrin, we humans can. And it's quite calorific.
Maltodextrin has about 400kcal per 100g, pretty much the same as normal sugar. And the human body likes maltodextrin, it likes it a lot. So much so that maltodextrin is used in sports drinks, because the body can metabolise maltodextrin quickly and give you a hit of sugar.
The sweetness of maltodextrin is negligible compared to normal granulated sugar. To get the same level of sweetness as normal sugar, you would need to use 20 times the amount of maltodextrin. So if you take 1 teaspoon of normal sugar in your coffee, to get to the same sweetness with maltodextrin, you would need 20 teaspoons.
This is why is it so good at adding body to beers without adding sweetness.
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