All my beers taste heavy bodied

Although it's few years I'm into homebrewing I made only few batches, about 6-7, trying different styles, like pale ales, sweet stouts and weiss. As now I always used extracts plus speciality grains and I've never done mashing.

I'm quite happy with the result but all the batches are quite heavy bodied. It's difficult for me to explain exactly what is it, but for sure I never made a refreshing, light bodied pale ale. Of course for some styles it's what I want, but not for others.

My question is, what I can to to improve this and be able to have a light bodied beer? It seems the the different OG of the different styles I tried don't give me the expected results. Is this a problem with the extract? Should I move to partial or all grain?

Topic mashing extract-plus-grains extract homebrew

Category Mac

1
answered at

Considering that your problem is consistent, I would say it is the extract. Although you can make good beer form good extract, you can't control the fermentability, so you can't make different styles very well from the same extract.

Going to a partial grain recipe might be relatively painless way to fix the problem. The brew-in-a-bag method is easiest to set up. Get some highly modified American or Australian 2-row, crush it (at your brew shop) and then mash it for 60-90 minutes at 60C/140F. This will give you a highly fermentable (arguably too fermentable) wort to which you can add extract after the mash. By adjusting the ratio of grains to extract you should be able to dial in the body that you want for the style.

Another possibility is that your yeast are giving up a little too early at the end of fermentation. Usually this would be attributed to poor temperature control: if there is a drop in temperature, and not much sugar left, the yeast will become dormant and never consume the residual sugar in the beer. But this kind of thing is usually not consistent, I'd expect you to get a good brew here or there.

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