Where did this haze come from?

[Mr. No-Tip]

TL;DR version: sour beer in a demijon for six months, was clear as a bell, moved to crash chill, got mega cloudy.



Longer version:

I brewed a Belgian Golden Strong back in April or thereabouts. It really started to slow down around 1.015 or so. Thinking I had an out of style numpty on my hands, I decided to rack some off onto some sour dregs just to see what happened.

With a bit of a stir and some heat, the main beer ended up attenuating to 1.003 for a crazy 96% AA and ended up smashing comp. Yay. The sour version has been sitting in a cupboard all winter and spring, and had dropped clear as a bell.

A couple days ago, I moved it to my chesty at 0 degrees ahead of racking to keg. I picked it up today and it was very cloudy as per the photo. . The yeast looks quite disturbed, though every move to and from the fridge was super careful and there was not much visual disturbance when it went in.

So in other words it seems to have uncompacted itself at zero degrees, contrary to all we would expect. Looking at the photo again now, the yeast cake was about a quarter that size before chill. I don't believe it's chill haze, or at least just chill haze. The base beer never suffered from anything like this and this is quite a cloud rather than a haze.

Is there anything specific to sour bacteria that could explain this behaviour? I really don't think the movement I've given it would explain this haze.

 

[storeboughtcheeseburgers]

Temperature fluctuations do this I've found.

I bottled a brew recently that developed haze at bottling - it settled in 3-4 days so I think yours will too.

I had pulled it from a 19 degree chamber, put it at a high room temp (30+ degree) for a day thinking I'd bottle it, but didn't have the time.

Went back in the chamber for a day and I bottled.

Don't think those yeasties like temp change, not to mention hops and movement.

I would bet it will clear in the keg after a few days on a low temp.

Good Luck

 

[Mr. No-Tip]

I get the unclumping from 19-30, but from 15-0? Seems counterintuitive to the crash chill approach...but maybe as you say any major change causes disturbance in the yeast force...