Chill Haze

[Fodder]

Morning folks,

I should start out by saying that I've searched through a few bits and bobs on the site and have found various articles on cold crashing and cubing but I am still a little unsure exactly how I can remove chill haze from my beers when using kits and bits.

I'm fairly certain that chill haze is the problem and not simply cloudy beer from other factors, as I add finings (gelatine) to my brews and the sediment always settles out nicely and never makes it into the glass. Also noticed that the beer does clear up once the beer has warmed up a little (although its usually gone by that stage...).

Just to expand a little on how I brew: I generally use Coopers extract can kits, usually with dry malt extract, occasionally liquid. I only boil a third of my extract with hops (for optimum hop utilisation) and cool with an ice bath, strain into fermenter before adding remaining ingredients, top up and pitch rehydrated yeast. Ferment for a week, then bottle.

The bottles look nice and clear when storing, but once chilled for consumption become hazy.

Thus the question begs....how can I avoid this?

I get the feeling that cold crashing (e.g. racking to secondary and putting in fridge/freezer) may help. Is that a correct assumption, or is there more to it than that?

Also, cubing??? Could I incorporate this into my brew regime when using kits? I figure that as I dont boil the whole kit the total 23L volume is going to be too cool (once topped up) to cube without avoiding infection? Or have I completely missed the boat on that one?

Sorry for nooby questions and if I've missed a post somewhere that already explains, please point me in the right direction...

Thanks :icon_cheers:

 

[Ronin]

Hi Fodder,

If you've got the facilities to chill your beer after racking to a cube, then adding polyclar (PVPP) to cold beer will help you clear up chill haze. Let the polyclar settle for a few days then rack off the top of that and you're ready to go.

James

 

[Bribie G]

From my KnK days, I would bet it's the light dried malt extract that's doing it. The best way to remove chill haze is to use Polyclar, a couple of level teaspoons in a cup of boiling water, stir for a few minutes and add to the cold conditioning beer.

So yes, that brings us to the cold conditioning bit - What many of the guys do is to get a Willow style jerry can "cube" and fit a tap,



rack the beer into the cube with some gelatine solution and cold condition for a few days, then add the Polyclar, wait another couple of days then bottle or keg. The so called 20L Willow cubes actually hold around 23L so ideal for a HB batch. If you ever go on to AG they are useful in all sorts of ways so a good investment.

This all depends on being willing to shell out $25 or thereabouts for the cube, and also have fridge space. An alternative method, if you are already fermenting in a fridge with a temp controller is, after primary, crank the temperature down to 3 degrees for a week (or just run the fridge "native mode") and stir the Polyclar in gently and bottle 2 days later.

Edit: To transfer the beer from the fermenter to the sanitised cube (starsan is great) you will need a PVC tube, make sure it fits the OUTSIDE of the tap, not poking INTO the tap so you'll get quick smooth transfer. Get a tube that will fit down to the bottom and curve round a bit so the beer runs out smoothly and you shouldn't have any problems. Tighten the blue cap up but, once in the fridge, open it just a "crack" to allow any CO2 out that may still being gassed off the beer. Once the Polyclar is in you can then seal it up real tight.

Edit edit: have a word with Gryphon Brewing over there (no affiliation), they'll put you right :beerbang:

 

[Fodder]

Thanks for the replies! That has cleared it up for me nicely (pun intended)

Looks like I'll be investing in a cube this weekend...

Cheers again!

(This site and the folks that frequent it are champs. Just wish I'd found it years ago...)

 

[ekul]

Almost all of my extract brews were crystal clear and i usually used nottingham. So maybe try using that yeast, it chews through the wort really quickly, even at low temps, and then drops bright. Make sure the wort is good and aerated, as if you get a stalled ferment with nottingham it can take abit of effort to get it going again because it flocs so well.

Also, when you talk of 'cubing' do you mean it in the sense of nochilling? Ie pouring hot wort into a cube, sealing and then fermenting at a later date?

If so, you could absolutely do this if you bring your whole volume to the boil. But it really begs the question of why bother? With all grain, nochilling means that you can do your 4-6 hour brew day on the weekend, even if your fermenter isn't ready to be filled (like if it is full of fermenting wort, or yeast isn't ready)
.
But with an extract brew it takes significantly less time to make batch. Why would you want to nochill? It seems to me like this would actually take MORE time and effort than if you weren't nochilling... When i was making extracts i used to have to boil all my water first (its rain water) so i would boil and cube all my water the day before brewing. I could've added the extract to this but it would have increased my chances of infection (without the extract there is nothing really to get infected). So basically you CAN nochill, but i can see little benefit in doing so. Unless you want to make doubles batches, in which case you'd be better off going to all grain anyway...

 

[Fodder]

Thanks ekul.

I have been using kit yeast for some time and only recently changed to US-05 for most of my brews which has helped a little. I will try Nottingham with my next brew as it calls for it anyway and see if that helps further.

In terms of cubing, I think I was referring to no-chilling, in the sense of hot wort into cube to ferment at a later date. But I only got this from one of the other topics on this subject and this is what confused me in the first instance. As you quite rightly point out, there's hardly much use in doing so when using kits/extracts.

I dont have the ability to do a full boil anyway so it would appear there isn't much point pursuing the cubing (no-chill) aspect.

I will however employ a 'cube' as a secondary vessel for crash chilling, finings, polyclar and maybe even dry hopping? Do you know if I can do all 3 in the same vessel? And what timings would I employ...? Seems finings, then polyclar with a few days between each, but when would you dry hop? At the start, middle or end?

 

[felten]

youd want to dry hop before you fine it

 

[ekul]

actually another thing that i have recently found to make my beer a bit clearer is doing french press hops, but throwing the hops in.

So you get a french press, put in whatever dry hops you were going to use, add boiling water, let sit for five minutes and then pour the whole lot in the fermenter. As the hops fall to the bottom it seems to grab a whole bunch of stuff. i did it while cc-ing.

edited to add~ Plenty of brewers use their primary fermenter to cc, dry hop etc, so you'll be sweet.

 

[Fodder]

Do you use plugs, pellets or flowers?

When using pellets I've found them to float about a bit and I end up getting some in the bottle...although the majority do sink and get outta the way or stick to the sides of the fermenter.

 

[ekul]

Pellets and flowers. I think because they get wet before they're chucked in the sink better, because mine have sunk to the bottom. But i've only just started doing it too, so plenty of time to see if they get in the bottle. When doing dry hops it hasn't mattered whether it was pellet or flowers, not everything floats to the bottom! And for me flowers have been far worse for this!

 

[myles_3000]

Another method to consider is filtering the beer with a 1micron filter. Im told that 1 micron still leaves enough yeast for bottle fermentation.

 

[Fodder]

Cool, I think you may be on to something with the pre-wetting of the hops making a difference. I recall making up a hop tea type of thing in just a mug which must be fairly similar to the french press idea (minus the filter, although you said you put the lot in anyway so probably the same result), but cant remember if I had trouble with the hops coming through at the end or not...

I shall try again and see how it goes...

EDIT: In fact, now i think about it, tis the batch I just finished off the other night and I dont recall getting much in the way of green bits in my beers so perhaps that is the trick. Or was it the one I recently bottled and not yet tried...ummm, memory is failing me. I shall check when I get home...

 

[Tony]

Mmmmmm hop teas and prewetting of hops............ i dont think this is the answer.

You have chill haze.... not yeast haze if its chear when in the bottle, but what we need to work out here is "what is the cause" and how do we PREVENT it as aposed to remove it after its already there.

haze in nan extract beer is not a comon thing as far as i know. I never got haze when brewing with kits or extract but something that will add haze is hop oils.

Questions for you:

What volume do you boil?
how much malt?
How much water?
how much hops?

another thing to look at is your water pH. If its really high or really low this can cause mahem in beer. Ring you local council and ask for someone who can give you a report on the local tap water. It will have all the info on it. I have tap water at over 8 pH once and i couldnt brew a beer under 20 EBC that didnt look like it had milk in it (AG though, kits were clear). Moved to my current location and pH dropped to 7.1 and i get crystal clear beers.

Another thing is adding a bit of irish moss to your boil to try and catch anything but i will be interested to see what your doing in that partial boil with all the hops...... i have a gut feeling the problem may be there.

cheers

 

[malt_shovel]

Mmmmmm hop teas and prewetting of hops............ i dont think this is the answer.

You have chill haze.... not yeast haze if its chear when in the bottle, but what we need to work out here is "what is the cause" and how do we PREVENT it as aposed to remove it after its already there.

haze in nan extract beer is not a comon thing as far as i know. I never got haze when brewing with kits or extract but something that will add haze is hop oils.

Questions for you:

What volume do you boil?
how much malt?
How much water?
how much hops?

another thing to look at is your water pH. If its really high or really low this can cause mahem in beer. Ring you local council and ask for someone who can give you a report on the local tap water. It will have all the info on it. I have tap water at over 8 pH once and i couldnt brew a beer under 20 EBC that didnt look like it had milk in it (AG though, kits were clear). Moved to my current location and pH dropped to 7.1 and i get crystal clear beers.

Another thing is adding a bit of irish moss to your boil to try and catch anything but i will be interested to see what your doing in that partial boil with all the hops...... i have a gut feeling the problem may be there.

cheers

Agree with Tony's thoughts on pH.

I think the mash pH is a major part of understanding chill haze development. From my limited reading on the subject chill haze is related to the colloidal stability of the beer. Colloidal stability relates to how colloids form post fermentation & packaging giving rise to hazy beer and is related to the reaction of polyphenols and proteins in the beer. It is a reduction / oxidation process, so the effects increase over time and the reason why commercial bottled beer goes under a lot of treatment to increase shelf life. Tannins combining with polyphenols is a pre-cursor to colloidal instability, and PVPP (polyclar) adsorbs these components and precipitates out to remove the pre-cursor. The best way to avoid it in the first instance is to reduce tannin extraction in the mash-sparge (control of pH and ensure you don't over-sparge to increase extraction efficiency) and to reduce oxygen uptake post-fermentation (reduce splashing when racking between vessels).

I would look at mash pH first (get some pH test-strips they are dirt cheap from Craftbrewer) and start learing about water chemistry. Improve techniques to avoid introducing oxygen during packaging / transferring would be the other.

I may have made some misakes in the sciency bit of this post (i am a homebrewer after all!), but I think the underlying message of looking after mash pH and oxygen uptake post ferment is fairly solid advice as it will help improve overall flavour of beer as well as adress clarity issues.

Cheers
:beer:

Edit: I found an article which had a little golden nugget regarding dry hopping and polyphenol extraction. Using a hot-water technique for dry hopping (tea / coffee plunger), can extract polyphenols that can go on to react with proteins to form chill haze. This does not occur with dry hopping with pellets / flowers straight into the cool beer. So I would also drop this from the process and see if it helps.

Here is the link to the article.

Haze Article

Another edit: Just realised you were doing Extract / kits n bits. Maybe the above will help some of the pashial / AG brewers having similar problems. Should really read the whole post before replying!

 

[krusty_oz]

PVPP (Polyclar) is the go, used it for the first time on my last brew, its an amber ale. Its come out the keg deep golden colour without any hint of haze. I added it a couple days after adding gelatine (cake section of supermarket) finings.

I got a kilo of the stuff for under $50 delivered from a wine industry supplier (its used to clear up wine as well) since none of my regular brew shops in Adelaide had heard of it let along stocked it.

 

[Fodder]

Questions for you:

What volume do you boil?
how much malt?
How much water?
how much hops?

Sorry for previous post, it stuffed on me half way through and i never got a chance to come back to it till now... in response to the Q's:

6L
1/3 of can (600gm roughly) in boil.
total of 23L
25gm in the boil for 15mins & 0mins + the same again to dry hop...

Not sure what the pH of my water is...it must have a $#!T load of chlorine in it though, as i can taste it out of the tap.

It seems i couldnt get polyclar from my LHBS today so will make the trip to Stock Rd for some. I did however get sold something called Bentonite which appears to be a finings used in wine, but I was informed that it would have the desired affect (e.g: remove haze) in my beer, without the need to add it whilst the beer is chilled as you would with polyclar.

I will investigate the pH side of things, and if anyone has heard of/used Bentonite before or knows anything about it your thoughts would be most appreciated.

 

[haysie]

Just wondering folk, Does anybody find chill haze a progressive thing? I can brew reasonably clear beers that are haze free from the keg, yet if I CPBF or bottle condition overtime(3months+) the beer can be hazy.

 

[malt_shovel]

[\quote name='Fodder' date='Mar 4 2011, 07:17 PM' post='747776']
I will investigate the pH side of things, and if anyone has heard of/used Bentonite before or knows anything about it your thoughts would be most appreciated.
/quote]

I have used it in other context before. It is a clay mineral that swells prodigously when water is added. It can be used as a mud weighting agent for drilling oil and gas wells, (help prevent disasters such as seen in the gulf of mexico), or can be used to support earth when excavating for foundations in a civil engineering application.

I think it's capacity to adsorb water is directly related to it's electrical dipolar nature, such that oppositely charged ions/particles in the beer are attracted, clump together and then precipitate out due to gravity. I think this is the same physics that PVPP operates by, so I think it should be the same effect. Seems a bit strange sticking "mud" into beer, but then again we stick all sorts of strange **** in there.

Hope that helps rather than hinders. I would be keen to try it myself.

Cheers
:beer:

 

[speedie]

adopt the coopers statment (cloudy but fine)

 

[Bizier]

I have only just started getting chill haze, I had thought it was because I have been moving straight out of fermentation to keg without a crash chilling step (and fining w/ gelatine) that I always used to do. My water profile has also changed (but my mashes have been pH 5.2-5.4). At first it freaked me out because I thought it was major yeast turbidity.

I guess I should chill some batches down to zero and add gelatine (yes, understood not to act on chill haze) to see if that makes all the difference.