Another Chill Haze Question...

So I've been reading about chill haze and am a person who likes clear/bright beer. Every article states that you can combat chill haze if you chill your wort from a boil as 'quickly' as possible so that the haze causing proteins can drop out. My question is... what is the main factor here? the 'speed' i.e. rapid drop in temperature or 'speed' + reaching pitching temp (60-70F)?

I'm brewing 15 gallon batches and have no problem cooling my wort down to 60-70F with my Blichmann Therminator, but I 'NEED' to prepare a dedicated freezer with a huge reservoir (or a ton of ice) inside just for the cooling process. I think all this effort is a waste of time and space in my freezer. My tap water supply hooked onto my Therminator is so much easier and it can 'quickly' chill my wort down, but only to 100-110F and then I have to leave my fermenters overnight in the cold room and pitch the next morning.

I am well aware that during the wort cooling phase most brewers (including me) chill their wort to pitching temps to minimize the risk of contamination by pitching early and leaving no time for other microorganisms to outgrow the yeast.

Given this circumstance of having access to only warm tap water supply and assuming you have perfect sanitation procedures, would this alternative be able to achieve beer as clear as cooling it all the way down to pitching temp? I only tried the tap water approach with a stout I made so I could not tell the difference in clarity so I figured it was better to ask before I try it on beers I would like to have clear.

Interested to see what everyone says here. I've brewed a lot of extract and a few grain brews where I chilled with a copper wort chiller but my tap water only goes to 78ish in the summer. Then I topped off with cold water to bring it to pitching temps or lower and I've still noticed a hazy beer. I've never brewed without a chiller so I don't know what it's like without it but I'm wondering if chilling is even worth bothering with if I'm going to have hazy beer anyway.

A lot of people have to cold crash their wort in the ferm chamber prior to pitching the yeast. I dont think that has any affect on clear beer but if a person has the ability I'd definitely do it.

I think a more important bit of info is making sure your mash has complete conversion so all starch is converted and doesnt end up as haze. Also make sure you use lots of healthy high-flocculating yeast.

One other thing I've been doing with every batch (aside from yeast-driven batches) is fining with Gelatine, its very easy to do and it works. Just cold crash your beer to 32F, add Gelatine at 1/2 tsp per 1/4 cup water, heat it to 150 in the microwave (10 second bursts works great) and then add it right in to the primary. No need to even cool it down first.

I think it's more about the speed of the crash, but I don't know at what temp the cold break proteins form. From my experience, yeast flocculation is a pretty big driver of beer clarity so a cold crash in the fermenter for a week helps and the longer in the keg I keep my beers, the clearer they get. Cold conditioning makes a big difference.

Somebody posted a great article on clearing beer:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/craft-the-perfect-draft-clearing-your-beer.html

I get very clear beer and take pride in having clear beer. If you are doing all grain I think it is important to Vorlouf, that is recycle your runnings through the grain bed until they run clear before spargeing and running into the kettle.

After that it is important to get a good hard boil for a few minutes to get a good hot break. Then you need to add some whirlfloc or irish moss in the last 10 minutes of the boil to get the cold break to settle out when chilling.

When it comes to speed of chilling, I think the focus is more on getting it down below 100 in a reasonable amount of time. I don't think there will be much different if it takes 20 minutes or 45 minutes or an hour for that matter, but I think the spirit of the thought is do something to chill your beer rapidly and this is important for contamination reasons too.

Lastly, I use gelatin when I keg to drop our the rest of the yeast and chill haze. I typically get crystal clear beer.

Thought i would report back results. I tried this with a pale ale and only got the wort to 100d. I chilled it in my cold room for a day and pitched it. Fermentation was normal but i think the wort was more cloudy than i thought. I will cold crash it for a while and might use gelatin if it doesnt clear up

First I think this is more of a problem with Ale guys and gals. I suspect the Lager folks are benifiting from that long cold period to help them clear their beer. Since I only make Ales I can't say for sure. And I know "quick chill" is gospel for home brewers but I have moved on to no chill and found I can still get really clear beer by adding Irish Moss before the end of the boil. That mostly helped but what really helped the most was a tip I read somewhere on HBT that said if you're trying all the accepted tricks which includes using the right yeast, and you're still getting cloudy beer, you probably have starch haze. So... I started increasing my mash times to 90 minutes and SNAP. Really clear beer.
BTW, I'm NOT saying cold crashing is wrong. I'm just saying *I* don't do that anymore.

Jim311 said:

Interested to see what everyone says here. I've brewed a lot of extract and a few grain brews where I chilled with a copper wort chiller but my tap water only goes to 78ish in the summer. Then I topped off with cold water to bring it to pitching temps or lower and I've still noticed a hazy beer. I've never brewed without a chiller so I don't know what it's like without it but I'm wondering if chilling is even worth bothering with if I'm going to have hazy beer anyway.

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Is it just hazy or is it chill haze? Supposedly if you let a chill hazed beer warm to room temp it will get clear. Is that what you're seeing?

I think its just hazy. This one is a pale ale i made using S04. Primaried for 2 weeks then straight to keg for carbing at 32F for nearly 2 weeks already.
My last batch using S04 + wort cooling down to 60F was much clearer.

View attachment 1447673251607.jpg

I have never had trouble with chill haze.
Primary for 7 days, raise temp for another 7, dry hop for 7 (if dry hopping) and cold crash to 40 degrees for another 7 before the bottle. So 3 weeks for non dry hopped beers and 4 weeks for dry hopped beers.
I think the key is letting the yeast clean up before racking and if you take the yeast down into the low 30's too quickly then they go dormant and stop cleaning or clean up so slow that it takes forever to clear.
I don't use fining agents and I never take my beers below 40 degrees not even my lagers.

Ok next time I will try to give the yeasties abit more time. For now they I'm just gonna add some gelatin tonight.

I've noticed recently (anecdotal evidence only) that my beers with more Calcium in the mash are clearing (chill haze) better than those with less (I brew with rainwater, so close to no Ca to start with). They all drop crystal clear with chilling and gelatine anyway.

I'm not sure if there's any evidence that Calcium helps with clarity.

According to Palmer and Kaminski's Water Calcium at 50-150 ppm promotes clarity, flavor and stability in finished beer. It also promotes protein coagulation and yeast flocculation.

I take you adjust by adding in some gypsum?

MichaelBD said:

I think its just hazy. This one is a pale ale i made using S04. Primaried for 2 weeks then straight to keg for carbing at 32F for nearly 2 weeks already.
My last batch using S04 + wort cooling down to 60F was much clearer.

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I would not want to clear that up. I think it looks delicious, just like many of the really awesome IPA/IIPAs out there. It will probably get more clear with time, though. How many pints have you poured from the keg when that photo was taken?

MichaelBD said:

I take you adjust by adding in some gypsum?

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I normally add equal amounts of gypsum and Calcium chloride.

Try Gelatin if you are kegging.. it would probably even fix that hazy beer posted above...

I just added gelatin last night. Will wait report back results in 3 to 5 days! Next time ill just get a dedicated fridge for my coolant water

MichaelBD said:

I think its just hazy. This one is a pale ale i made using S04. Primaried for 2 weeks then straight to keg for carbing at 32F for nearly 2 weeks already.
My last batch using S04 + wort cooling down to 60F was much clearer.

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32 degrees!!!! I think that's what we call chill haze

I constantly get great results with Wyeast 1056 and 1272.

I always vorlauf until the wort runs very clear. I batch sparged this one with water at about 90-100*. I make sure to get a large hot break, keep it boiling hard for about 5-10 minutes, then start adding the hops. I add whirlflock in at 10 minutes and chill with a wort chiller recirculating water that I add ice to (unless its cold outside, then I just run straight from the faucet).

I cold crash at 40* for at least 48 hours prior to packaging in the keg. This produces VERY clear brews.

That's weird. It's not dropping out. I already pulled 3 glasses and it's still cloudy....

View attachment 1448106131978.jpg

Must be something in your brewing process or there was a mouse nest in your keg when you packaged.
Looks like a lot of gunk floating around in there.
How does it taste?

Lol everything is fine and the beer tastes great. I never had a contaminated batch. An interesting find though this morning... i had a bit of beer left in my glass which was left overnight at room temp and in the morning the yeast dropped to the bottom of the glass and the beer was quite clear!

Here are some more pics

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View attachment 1448250091315.jpg

Hmmm I would be interested in looking at that sludge under a microscope. I am thinking after gelatin and three weeks at 32 degrees that would be protein or starch.
A lot of this has already been covered but a longer mash (minimum 60 minute) assuming this is all grain, vorlauf a lot (maybe try some rice hulls in your mash if you crush fine), hard initial boil, quick initial chill, nice long fermentation (minimum 2 weeks the yeast will clean up a lot) and a good cold crash at or below 40 degrees.
Please report back. Curious if you can clear it up.

I think i can conclude now that water temperatures matter. Here is a picture of another beer i just kegged today. Its a different beer (lightly hopped) but with approximately identical gravity and brewing processes (ie. Temp, fermenting time, etc). I also used the yeast cake of the cloudy beer (S04). Its unbelievably clear.

View attachment 1448373727246.jpg

Can you elaborate more on water temperatures?

With ambient water temperature where i live, i could only chill my wort down to 100-110f. For this beer, i put w huge plastic buckets with water in my cold room and used it as y coolant. I got my wort temps down to 70-80f in my fermenter. However, I still had to wait overnight for my wort to deop down to pitching temps.

Ahh ok.
I am lucky that way in that my well water is very cold. I chilled a wort down last week to 52 degrees in under 15 minutes with an emersion chiller.
It does seem odd to me that you can only chill to 100 degrees. Your tap water has to be colder than that. But anyway, I think if you get the boiling wort down to even 100 degrees relatively quickly that you would create a cold break. The hot and cold break coagulate proteins to the point where they become so heavy that they fall to the bottom of your fermenter. So getting a cold break and getting to pitching temps ca be two different things. Lots of Brewers, from what I have read, chill their wort over several hours or even overnight to get to pitching temps but I would think that they get an initial chill enough to get cold break.
It does look like your latest brew is much clearer so maybe you already have it under control but if you think it may be your chilling methods maybe try an ice bath in a tub like this. View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1448388597.634254.jpg

@MiachaelBD did you happen to use WY1007 or a similar yeast?

EDIT: didn't read the thread thoroughly enough, sorry! SO4... weird issue

Op uses a plate chiller... He should easily be able to get his wort below 100 degrees by juyst throwing the chiller in a bucket of ice water... That along with the tap water and slowing the flow of the wort through the chiller to increase contact time will bring temps down further faster..

Is this correct for gelatine. Chilled beer to 38F for 24 hours. Mixed the gelatine into 180f water. Let sit for 10 mins pitched into chilled beer. How long do you leave it now before bottling. Been having a lot of issues with chill haze but never used gelatine and I don't use a wort chiller. Use Irish moss in the boil. Thanks

Izzie1701 said:

Is this correct for gelatine. Chilled beer to 38F for 24 hours. Mixed the gelatine into 180f water. Let sit for 10 mins pitched into chilled beer. How long do you leave it now before bottling. Been having a lot of issues with chill haze but never used gelatine and I don't use a wort chiller. Use Irish moss in the boil. Thanks

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You want to mix 1tsp gelatin into 2/3 cup cold water and heat it very slowly, 15 seconds in the microwave at a time until its at 150F or so and the gelatin is dissolved. You don't want to go over 170F.

Pour that while still hot into your beer and swirl the carboy/bucket but it don't stir it. then stick it back in the fridge for at least 48 hours more. It should clear right up after that.

TheMadKing said:

You want to mix 1tsp gelatin into 2/3 cup cold water and heat it very slowly, 15 seconds in the microwave at a time until its at 150F or so and the gelatin is dissolved. You don't want to go over 170F.

Pour that while still hot into your beer and swirl the carboy/bucket but it don't stir it. then stick it back in the fridge for at least 48 hours more. It should clear right up after that.

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Ok so I did it before reading this and followed as per a couple articles I had read said. I heated in 30 second intervals till it was over 160 but not over 180 and then pitched. It went to about 178. I didn't want to infect the beer so figured the closer to 180 the better. What's the reasoning for not going over 170?

Izzie1701 said:

Ok so I did it before reading this and followed as per a couple articles I had read said. I heated in 30 second intervals till it was over 160 but not over 180 and then pitched. It went to about 178. I didn't want to infect the beer so figured the closer to 180 the better. What's the reasoning for not going over 170?

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I believe it changes the structure of the hydrolyzed collagen and can make it behave differently, but I'm not 100% sure on that. You only need to heat to about 140 to sanitize against most things.

I now use 1/2 tsp of Knox gelatin and 1/2 tsp of hydrolyzed collagen (wife bought it for a different reason and I have and infinite supply). My hot tap is 130°F. A quarter cup of that and a 20 second burst in the microwave and a stir and 20 more seconds makes about the ideal 150°F. That dumped into an already cold crashed keg (24 hours plus at serving temperature) after about 48 more hours will clear just about any beer. The key is to throw it into already cold beer. Dumping onto room temperature doesn't work nearly as well.

Seems like the key is patience when using gelatin. I just checked my kegs again today and wow did it clear up.

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It is pretty amazing on how well gelatin works, isn't it?