How to Fix and Prevent Chill Haze

• Post By: Scott
• Date: 02.02.2012
• Category: Articles

No one likes hazy beer. Other than styles like hefeweizens and wits that are supposed to be turbid, haze is a put-off to most people. Most haze in beer has no taste or flavor, but let’s face it, we drink with our eyes first. There’s nothing more inviting than a sparkling clear beer just begging to be drank. Unfortunately, without filtration, bright beer can be difficult to achieve for many home brewers, but I’m here to help.

One of the more common reasons for hazy beer is chill haze. You know your beer has a chill haze if it’s bright (clear) at room temperature, but turbid (hazy) at fridge temps. Unfortunately, most brewers try to fix chill haze after the beer has been brewed, rather than try to prevent chill haze from the start. Here is a list of best practices that will help ensure your beer is sparkling clear. These are listed in chronological order.

Pre-Fermentation:

– Hot Break – This one is kind of a no-brainer, but a strong boil creates a good hot break. As wort comes to a boil, proteins begin to coagulate and form larger particles. As those particles become larger and clump together, they fall out of solution. I say this is a no-brainer because most brewers already achieve a good rolling boil.

– Finings – Irish moss or whirlfloc are worth their weight in gold; use one or the other on every batch. Either of these will help precipitate hot break and cold break from the wort. Whirlfloc tablets are actually sized for 10 gallon batches, so use a 1/2 tablet for 5 gallons.

– Cold Break – After the boil, chill your wort as fast as possible. As you rapidly chill wort, more protiens, and haze-inducing particulate will precipitate out of solution. This is one of the more critical steps to eliminating chill haze. If you aren’t chilling your wort under 80*F in under 15 minutes, invest some time in improving your process.

Post-Fermentation:

– Cold Crash – Once the beer has completely fermented out, and you’ve given the yeast some time to clean up after themselves, crash the beer down as close to 32F as possible. I know not everyone has refrigeration space that can accomidate a fermenter, but if you, don’t skip this step. Rapidly chilling the beer from fermentation temps to 32F will cause most of the yeast to drop out of solution, it will also help cause chill haze. Why would we want to cause chill haze? Funny that you ask…

– Gelatin – Now that the beer is ice cold, and probably fairly hazy, you’ll want to fine it with gelatin. Plain old Knox or any other unflavored gelatin will work. Add one teaspoon to about 1/2 cup of water in a microwave safe dish. Pyrex measuring cups work well for this. I also like to use my thermometer probe to stir. Now microwave the solution, stopping to stir and check the temp every 15 seconds. It shouldn’t take much more than 60 seconds to reach 150*F which is our target (Try not to go over 150*). Add the hot gelatin solution to your beer, either straight in the fermenter, or rack your beer on top of the gelatin in a keg. The gelatin will drop out the yeast, and most of the haze inducing particulate in the beer in around 24-48 hours. If you did this in the primary, rack your clear beer into a keg or bottling bucket. If you did this in the keg, simply pull a couple pints of cloudy beer off the bottom of the keg.

– Cold Conditioning – The last, but still important step is to condition your beer cold. Brewers that bottle condition their beer are often eager to try their beer after the several weeks it took to carbonate. As a result, they don’t let the beer condition long at fridge temps. I know I never did. The same problem happens once brewers start kegging their beer. Going from grain to glass quicker is one of the big draws to kegging isn’t it? No matter the package, beer can really benefit from about 2-3 weeks spent at fridge temperatures after fermentation. You can call it conditioning or lagering, but the effect is the same. Haze causing particulate falls out of solution, sharp flavors being to round off, and the beer just plain tastes better.

To summarize: Strong boil, remember the whirlfloc, quick chill. Then cold crash, gelatin, and cold condition. I follow every one of those steps on every batch I brew, and I would urge you to do the same. After all, who doesn’t want crystal clear beer?