Help with chill haze

[mrboxpiff]

Hi all
I've done around 8 or 9 brews now and all have been a great success. The one slight fly in the ointment though is that with most of them I get chill haze. At ambient temperature they look great, crystal clear, but as soon as they go in the fridge, they go hazey. I'd be grateful if folk could share their experience's of the one thing they did that made the greatest difference. Now I know of course that haze makes absolutely no difference to the taste, but when you give a bottle to a friend, they automatically think less of the beer because its not clear.
Thanks in advance
Mrboxpiff
PS. Seasons greetings[FATHER CHRISTMAS]

Sent from my SHIELD Tablet K1 using Tapatalk

[Jocky]

The good thing is that your beer is only hazy when it gets properly cold. This means you have sound brewing processes. You can combat chill haze in a couple of ways:

Post fermentation finings such as isinglass, PVPP, gelatin. All these require you to chill the beer as cold as possible to induce the haze first, then you add the finings and leave for 24/48 hours to drop the haze out.

Gelatin is the easiest to use on home brew scale and highly effective. PVPP should be removed before packaging (ideally filtered/centrifuged out). Isinglass is slightly more effective than gelatin, but it's a pain to prepare. Once prepared only lasts a few weeks in the fridge, so it's fine if you're a pro brewer and regularly dosing casks with it, but not so great if you only need it every 3/4 weeks as you'll have to make a fresh batch each time.

Lagering will eventually drop out chill haze proteins too. It just takes time and you can't disturb the lagering tank.

Finally, you could just serve your beer slightly warmer. Cellar temperature (12c) should not be cold enough to induce a haze, whereas domestic fridges tend to run below 5c.

[Mr Squiffy]

Are you chilling them too much? I have only seen chill haze in my beer once and that is a recent very hoppy beer at 7% ABV. I have two fridges in my kitchen, one is colder than the other, in one fridge I got haze in the other fridge crystal clear. Chill haze is due to the hop oils present so you should only see it in hoppy beers. The other thing to consider is hot and cold breaks, if you boil for long enough and cool quickly you will get nice clear wort into the FV, maybe less chance of haze.
Having said all that, educate your friends, chill haze is tasteless, there are many hoppy 'craft' ales on the market that are hazy, some I have had have looked like orange juice.

[TheSumOfAllBeers]

If you cold condition, then gelatin is awesome. It will fix your chill haze and a load of other issues too.

[Jambo]

I have very soft water - since I got a water analysis done and started chucking in a load of Calcium, every aspect of my beer has been better, including clarity.

[Jocky]

Are you chilling them too much? I have only seen chill haze in my beer once and that is a recent very hoppy beer at 7% ABV. I have two fridges in my kitchen, one is colder than the other, in one fridge I got haze in the other fridge crystal clear. Chill haze is due to the hop oils present so you should only see it in hoppy beers. The other thing to consider is hot and cold breaks, if you boil for long enough and cool quickly you will get nice clear wort into the FV, maybe less chance of haze.
Having said all that, educate your friends, chill haze is tasteless, there are many hoppy 'craft' ales on the market that are hazy, some I have had have looked like orange juice.

Haze is generally caused by polyphenols (aka tannins) binding to proteins from the malt.

Polyphenols can come either from grain husks or hops, and in particular dry hops.
Protein exists in all malts, but can be particularly high in adjuncts or non barley malts such as oats or wheat.

For reasons I don't have knowledge of, that bonding happens more when cold.

So you can certainly end up with chill haze in a low hop beer, but dry hops will add a lot more polyphenols, and create a haze even at room temperature, as can beers with a high degree of non-barley malt or adjuncts.

[Matt in Birdham]

If you really want to drop your chill haze out quickly, use Polyclar. As far as I understand it, it has the opposite charge than gelatin, and is much more effective at attracting the polyphenols that cause chill haze (whereas gelatin is better at dropping out yeast). If I want a crystal clear, bright beer then I will hit my beer in the keg with a 1-2 of gelatin (when I rack), and Polyclar about 2-3 days later (with beer as cold as possible). This will give you absolutely bright beer at any temperature within a week - assuming of course that the rest of your process is up to scratch (which it sounds like it is).

[alexlark]

I would try the gelatin first. I was going to go with Polyclar but once I tried gelatin it sorted my haze problem to a point I'm more than happy with. Very bright beer.

[TheSumOfAllBeers]

What alexlark said: gelatin is effective on chill haze too.

[Jocky]

What alexlark said: gelatin is effective on chill haze too.

Agreed.

[Rhodesy]

Clarity ferm (Whitelabs), BrewBrite or NBS Clarity (Malt Miller own label) are all available at the Malt Miller and effective to reduce chill haze.

Clarity Ferm - Added when pitching yeast, it also reduces gluten considerably. Had great results

BrewBrite - Added with kettle finings at 15/10 minutes left in the boil. Decent results

NBS Clarity - Same as clarity ferm but bought as a 15ml bottle which you get 30 x uses of 0.5ml per 23L brew length.

I have used all of these in conjunction with Gelatin and drop bright beers from the keg within a week or so each time. This includes serving lagers etc at cold temperatures.

[Matt in Birdham]

What alexlark said: gelatin is effective on chill haze too.

It is effective on proteins, but it doesn't do anything for smaller polyphenols, so (depending on what the issue is), it might only address half of the problem. Typically I only use gelatin, but if a haze persists then Polyclar deals with it incredibly effectively - although it is more expensive and more of a PIA to use, so I rarely do it these days unless I have a particular urge for a bright beer quickly.

[Wiganbear]

Hi,

I'm also into about 8 or 9 brews and seem to sometimes get the same issue as you, but only with high late hops or dry hopping. I never get an issue with lightly hopped beers. The last dry hopped beer I did I made sure I got a good rolling boil and this seems to have made a big difference in the result.

[mrboxpiff]

Thank you all for your helpful comments. I tend to do a lot of late hopping but no dry hopping. I think I'm going to try using gelatin first as suggested by quite a few people. Currently I leave for 2 weeks in the fv, transfer to a bottling bucket to add priming sugar, then bottle. At what stage should I add the gelatin and how much?

Sent from my SHIELD Tablet K1 using Tapatalk

[Jocky]

At least 24 hours before bottling, although I know of people kegging that have it dropping bright in 12 hours.

You need to get the beer as cold as possible first - I find I need to drop the temperature in my fermenting fridge to 0 or -1c 48 hours before adding gelatin. I did try it on a shorter timescale (24hrs) but found it wasn't as effective, I suspect that the whole body of beer didn't get cold enough before adding the gelatin.