"Grrrr, My Beer Is Too Thin! Why?!"

I admit that I have very few beer batches under my belt (8), yet my expectations for the beer I brew are very high.  I switched from extract to grain 3 batches ago and my biggest complaint with my first all grain batches is how thin the beer tastes.  How do I fix that?  So many variables with all-grain!

So, I recently brewed a Nut Brown ale which I had high hopes for.  Everything went well during the brewing process.  I hit all my temps, nothing went wrong during the mash, lauter, boil, fermentation process.  So, when it came time to crack one open and give it a taste, you can imagine my disappointment when, after a visual inspection for color and clarity (good!), I tasted it and the first thing that hit me was how thin it tasted.  Damn!

I'm determined to make the Nut Brown my first multi attempt recipe.  I want to keep refining it until it tastes the way I want it to taste.  So, in an effort to alter what I feel is the biggest flaw, I've done some research on adding body to beer.  The first place I looked was Palmers 'How to Brew' as always, he has good info here.  Adding unfermentables can help with thin beer, as can chosing your yeast selection... Read on.. 

Did you know that Crystal malts (aka caramel malts) and Dextrin malts (aka cara-pils or cara-crystal) have had their starches carmalized during the kilning process rendering them unable to provide sugars for fermentation?  Well I didn't, but I do now.  I knew flaked barley and oats provided unfermentables, but I thought all grains provided sugars/food for our little yeastie friends.  I found a very good explanation of 'body' here.  Might be a little scientific for some, but the payoff comes at the end when Ron Bach talks about 'Body Builders' and the 'Finishing Process'.

I'm off to Northern Brewer this afternoon to pick up what I need for a Black IPA.  I am going to add a .5 lb of flaked barley and an additional .5lb of cara-pils to the posted recipe to 'body it up'.  We'll see.  The true test will be when I remake the Brown Ale with some modifications to adjust for the thiness of my original.  Stay tuned.

Cheers,
-Chris