13 Jun How to Make a Hazy Craft Beer, Whether You Want To Or Not
by Mark E. Lasbury for Indiana On Tap
You order a beer from your favorite taproom, and it comes to you cloudier than you remember it. Have they changed the recipe? Are they turning your favorite Irish red into one of those New England style beers with all that haze that are so popular now? No – it’s more likely that the reason is much more mundane. There are several reasons why a beer might be hazy; some are intended and some are not. Some are temperature dependent, while others are a reflection on the brewer’s style and process.
Some people like the haze in a beer – I’m one of them. I think it smoothes out the mouth feel of many styles of beer, and this is often a good thing. True, in beer styles that should be very crisp, like pilsners and kolschs, haze and rounder mouth feels are a bit off putting or down right wrong, but I can think of many styles that I like to have some extra bulk and density to the liquid. This may not be “to style” in many cases, but I don’t really care.
I’m not a BJCP judge, and I am not trying to judge beers like dogs – memorizing what a style should be like and then determining how close this particular beer comes to that ideal version. That being said, not every form of haze is planned or wanted. Let’s look at examples of undesirable and desirable haze.
Here are two stone IPAs, one of which displays a chill haze. It doesn’t affect the flavor, but brewers take as a sign of pride if they can avoid a chill haze on their beers. Photo credit: Stone Brewing
Chill Haze. When brewers talk about haze in making beer, they are often referring to something called chill haze. The aggregates that form haze are large enough to come out of solution, but small enough to stay in colloidal suspension, similar to fog. The particles scatter light like fog too, so the transparency of the beer is reduced. No matter how well a brewer removes the yeast cells and the trub from their beer, time is going to allow for more proteins and polyphenols to come together and fall out of solution, and these are the major constituents of chill haze.
As the beer ages, even just a few days, flavonoid compounds start to get oxidized, so brewers work hard to reduce oxygen in finished beer containers. But, if a beer gets very cold (just a few degrees above freezing) oxidized flavonoids will facilitate protein and polyphenol binding to form particulate. When the beer warms up again, which it should because a few degrees above freeing is way too cold to be serving craft beer, the aggregates will become soluble again and the chill haze will disappear. Therefore, if you see chill haze in your beer, you’ve purchased or been poured a beer that is waaaaaay too cold.
Some ingredients that are added to beer, like fruit infusions and even a propylene glycol alginate intended to stabilize the foam, can also increase chill haze formation. This seems weird to me because the lipid transfer protein-1 (LTP-1) from barley and wheat is important for head formation and retention, so this is a protein you really don’t want to remove during brewing. Luckily, LTP-1 is resistant to heat denaturing and any enzyme treatment (usually papain) added to degrade left over proteins in the fermenter. Unluckily, the enzyme will remain active long through fermentation and into the keg, so it can harm head retention over time – no protein can hold out forever.
Permanent Haze. Unfortunately, as beer ages longer flavonoids get further changed to compounds called tannoids (really just polymerized flavinoids). These can mess with the flavor of the beer, but also facilitate formation of even bigger aggregates with protein and polyphenols – and these don’t disappear when the beer warms. This is called permanent haze. If you’ve got haze in your beer that won’t go away when it warms up, then there are two possibilities. You have a beer meant to be hazy (so investigate further), or your beer is old.
As opposed to chill haze, permanent haze doesn’t go away when the beer warms up. And unlike chill haze, permanent haze can begin to affect the taste of the beer. It is a signal that your beer is way past it’s prime and was exposed to oxygen. Photo credit: craftbeer.com
Of course, other things can increase the concentration of proteins and polyphenols, like dry hopping and secondary fermentation, so the chances of chill and/or permanent haze are somewhat increased in these situations. Basically, one needs to produce a beer where haze stability outlasts flavor stability, because nobody is going to want to drink it after oxidation of the flavor components. Proper haze control can bring stability over 12 months, which is much longer than flavor stability for most hoppy beers.
First and Last of the Keg. Protein-polyphenol aggregates are going to come out of solution slowly no matter how well you clarify a beer. Almost every beer, given time, will settle out sediment in the keg, unless of course it is lagered for months, kegged, and put on draft in the next couple of days. In addition, forced carbonation of beer going into kegs will continue the cold crash, which will increase the amount of aggregates in the keg.
Therefore, the first couple of pints of the keg will be hazy. In most cases, the keg has to be moved into place to be tapped, so the sediment will get stirred up just a bit as well. It will settle quickly again, so by the 5th to 10th pint, you should be getting clear beer. But there is going to be sediment in the port of the keg anyway, so even if it wasn’t moved radically, the first pint or so might be a bit cloudy.
The process is reversed as the keg empties; the last few pints are going to carry some of the sediment out with them. And this is where we get to my declaration for the day – give me the first and last pints of the keg.” I really do enjoy the increased body most beers that have a bit of cloudiness. I don’t care what the beer guides say. So, if you want to appear prescient when you get a slightly cloudy beer, ask your bartender if they just put on the keg or if that keg is about to blow. Of course, that assumes you know which beers are supposed to be hazy all the time.
Prototypical of the lager style of beer, the pilsner is cold conditioned for weeks in order to take out almost all of the proteins and polyphenols, making it extremely bright and crystal clear. The wit on the right is the opposite, it is one of the beers that are made to be a bit hazy, when poured from the bottle, make sure to include the yeast sediment. Photo credits: Food and Wine and American Homebrewer’s Assoc.
Beers that are traditionally or hazy by fad. It’s amazing to me how beers that are traditionally slightly cloudy, like hefeweizens, wits, and zwickelbiers, stay hazy on draft for so long. Do the employees walk by and knock the keg every once in a while? Are there more compounds in the beer when it goes into the keg, so it takes longer for them to settle? Do breweries ship this beer out sooner, so the settling in the keg will be less by the time it goes on draft? Probably most of these play a role, or perhaps the aggregates are small even that they never settle, again like fog.
In a bottle it is easy to get the turbidity to your glass. There are yeast and other sediments that have settled to the bottom, but a good swirl of the bottle before it is completely poured will put this stuff into the beer and the product will regain it’s haze. Of course, many beers may be bottled conditioned, so they could be poured with sediment as well, but I leave it to you to decide whether you will leave the sediment behind for all but the hefeweizens and wits, as the BJCP style guide demands.
If you follow beer at all, you have probably heard about those hazy NE IPAs. The first was Heady Topper (2004) from The Alchemist in Vermont. The strategy behind these beers is that they’re meant to be hop bombs, not so much for the bitterness, but the aroma and flavor of the un-isomerized alpha acids.
Those people who make NEIPAs are quick to point out that the aim was to make an aromatic, flavorful beer by using tins of hops in the boil and in the fermenter/brite tank – the haze was just a natural artifact of this process. By the “process” I mean things like very late hop additions in the boil so there is less isomerization of the alpha acids, using yeasts that tend to produce more esters, dry hopping before fermentation is complete, using oats for increased body, and not filtering or post-fermentation cold crashing the beer.
Heady Topper was the first of the hazy NEIPAs. Now there are more than you can shake a stick at, although some come by their haziness in rather odd ways. Photo credit: drink.blog.repeat
As to as why these things produce a juicy, flavorful, but very hazy beer – late additions leave more of the hop oils in the beer (don’t boil off) and fewer proteins are available for the hot break, so there is more aroma and flavor. The Vermont yeasts do produce more ester, but also leave behind more particulates. The lack of filtering or long conditioning means that less of the flavor compounds are lost with the aggregates of proteins, hop leaf particulate, yeast cells, etc. But most interesting, the dry hopping while fermentation is still occurring allows the yeast to act on the hop compounds. This is called biotransformation and leads to some new flavors, as well as release of terpenes and other haze forming compounds. The result – big flavor and big haze.
These beers can be costly to make, especially if you are changing a water profile just for one beer and buying special yeast, so some breweries have taken to adding things to the beer in order to mimic the NEIPAs. Flour, applesauce, pectin, etc. can give a similar mouth feel and induce the same amount of haziness. Surprisingly, some excellent breweries have admitted to using these adjuncts. Tired Hands says it has used flour additions in its milkshake series, while if you ask the brewers, they will whisper to you that many breweries are doing just the same.
I don’t drink a lot of NEIPAs, mostly because I’m not a huge IPA fan – but perhaps I should re-evaluate based on my love of beers with body and big mouth feel. Walter can take them or leave them, she is more of a West Coast IPA fan because of their high levels of hop bitterness and more unbalanced nature. What’s more, the recent trend has been toward big hop aroma and flavor beers via dry hopping, but AFTER fermentation, so no biotransformation and less haze. You can find several very nice NE IPAs now that have only minimal haze.
Conclusion. If you see haze in your beer, the chances are high that it is supposed to be there, or you had the opportunity to include or skip it based on how you poured your bottle of beer. Chill haze is just an artifact of beer that’s too cold and usually doesn’t affect flavor, while permanent haze is probably an indicator of an older, hoppy beer. Brewers take amazing care to produce the beer that reflects their intent, so if you really want a bunch of turbidity and extra body in your draft, ask your bartender what just got tapped (although they often run it until clear) or what is just about to blow. Maybe you can get one of the first or last pints and pick up some extra protein and B vitamins.
In the end, it’s all a matter of preference. You can be the person who wants to learn beer as it is traditionally presented, or you can be the rebel who swirls the bottle of every bottle conditioned beer so you can get the sediment. You can quiz your brewers as to how they generate turbidity in their hazy IPAs, or you can just sit back, relax and enjoy your New England no matter what it looks like when presented, clear as apple juice or thick like pulpy orange juice. What power your have – you get to decide how you like it, and there are beers out there that are made just for your sense of style.
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