Prevention of chill haze

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bobtheUKbrewer2

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First of all I am a UK brewer so I ferment 4 to 8 days, then bottle.

I have read up on the problem, and for a very pale bitter the advice seems to be:

1) add mashing water from the bottom to avoid stirring
2) mash out at 75 deg C for 20 minutes
3) do not over sparge
4) avoid splashing when transferring to boiler
5) cool as quickly as possible after boil

does anybody disagree with these and/or have any more ideas?

does anybody use papain?
 
First of all I am a UK brewer so I ferment 4 to 8 days, then bottle.

I have read up on the problem, and for a very pale bitter the advice seems to be:

1) add mashing water from the bottom to avoid stirring
2) mash out at 75 deg C for 20 minutes
3) do not over sparge
4) avoid splashing when transferring to boiler
5) cool as quickly as possible after boil

does anybody disagree with these and/or have any more ideas?

does anybody use papain?

I don't think #1, 2, 3, or 4 play a part at all in chill haze.

A good hot break is imperative for clear beer, and a good cold break (I use whirlfloc in the kettle) will get prevent chill haze from forming.
 
1 2 3 4 came from an expert who published - will dig out the reference and post it.

Cold crashing is not an option for me.

I boil vigorously for 60 minutes then cool down to tap water temperature in about 20 minutes.
 
Hot Side Aeration and Beer Stability by Micah Millspaw
Introduction This article was originally published in the American magazine Zymurgy and looks at hot side aeration and beer stability, the reactive effects of oxygen on hot wort and some methods for reducing the effects.

Oxidation and Melanoidins It is known that oxidation plays an important part in the formation of protein haze and that compounds known as melanoidins function as anti-oxidants and prevent the oxidation of protein. Oxidation also plays an important part in the production of colloidal haze, hence the name "oxidation haze", first coined by Helm, the German brewing scientist, in early part of this century.
Moreover, the formation of chill haze is also considerably increased by oxidation
Minimising Aeration
What can you do about hot side aeration?
There are several ways to limit aeration of your hot wort. It is best to start at the beginning, with the mash.
I will describe a mashing technique that is fairly simple, efficient and not too different from what is now common practice. Infusion mashing or step infusion in a combination mash / lauter vessel is very effective at achieving adequate starch conversion when using North American grown barley malt (with its abundance of enzymes).
The grain in the mash should be underlet or infused with hot water from the bottom up. This may be accomplished by simply adding a down tube to hot water inlet or by adding an inlet below a false bottom in a mash / lauter vessel. By infusing in this manner, stirring of the grains to insure uniform mixing of the grain and hot water is not necessary. By not stirring the water into the mash, hot oxygen reactions can be reduced.
At the end of the mash it is important to do a mash out, that is an upward (temperature) infusion step and rest. This mash out is a good time to add in the specialty grains. The mash should be infused with hot water sufficient to bring up the temperature to 77°C/170°F and hold it for 15-20 minutes.
I believe that a shortage of lipids may be a problem that homebrewers encounter because of their obsession with mash extraction yields. This need to eke out every trace of sugar from a mash, leads home brewers to practice wort recycling, vorlauf, and / or flaufing. These can be risky sparging techniques with regard to hot side aeration as well as stripping lipids from the wort.
. Some care should be taken in the transfer of hot wort from the mash / lauter vessel to the kettle. Splashing of the hot wort should be avoided.
 
I've heard of people trying to scoop of the hot break, I've tried it but didn't see much difference, although it did keep my beer from boiling over.

Never heard of adding sparge Easter from the bottom, I feel like you need to stir it up so you can get all the sugars off of the grains.
 
In UK we tend to ferment down to close to end point then bottle condition. I don't know of anybody in UK who leaves say 2 weeks in primary and 2 weeks in secondary. Once beer is down to say .002 of FG we bottle. Amazed nobody has mentioned bottle bombs, smiles.....
 
I think only #5, Cooling as quickly as possible following the boil, is the only item on your list that would influence chill haze. The rest frankly doesn't make sense to me. I certainly splash the crap out of my wort when I pour it into the brew kettle and I definitely stir the crap out of my mash as well (almost every homebrewer does this). Hot side aeration - it's very unlikely to happen to homebrewers and while it is remotely possible, I wouldn't lose sleep over it. There are many videos out there of large breweries doing this:

(Go to minute 6 and tell me if they're concerned about HSA.)

My beers come out crystal clear (I could watch TV through my last lager). If you want crystal clear beer the most direct way to do so is through a fining agent and extended cold crashing. If you keg, you can cold crash directly in the keg while it's carbonating.
 
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my beers are clear enough for me - but the pale bitter develops a haze after 2 hours in fridge.
 
bobtheUKbrewer2 said:
my beers are clear enough for me - but the pale bitter develops a haze after 2 hours in fridge.

I find the only thing that works for me is extended cold storage. I use Irish moss in the kettle and chill the wort quickly, but all my beers seem to have some chill haze. A week or three in the fridge usually takes care of it. Crash cooling and gelatin are supposed to work really well, but I don't really have a setup for crash cooling a carboy or bucket, so I haven't tried it yet.
 
I did a pretty detailed write-up on chill haze for my Irish brewing buddies back in 2008 while I was studying for the IBD brewing cert exam that I'll repost here; it covers prevention and removal and how it's viewed at the commercial level.

What chill haze is, how it forms and preventing and getting rid of chill haze:

What chill haze is/is not & how it forms:
Not all "hazes" in beer are chill haze; carbohydrates in solution such as unconverted starch (will fail an "iodine test") and Beta Glucan "gums" from too much poor quality malt or adjuncts like oats can also cause haze. Too much calcium can lead to the formation of calcium oxalate crystals which will also form a haze that's not technically "chill haze", but this source is rare.

Assuming that you don't have starch or too many beta glucans and your beer only gets cloudy when it's chilled, you're dealing with chill haze.

Chill haze is defined as a reversible bonding of proteins with polyphenols. The main proteins involved are polypeptides which come from the malt protein hordein, and may of the polyphenols are "tannins"; in this instance "polyphenols" and "tannins" can be used interchangeably.

The presence of dissolved oxygen is necessary to help bond the polyphenols and proteins, as is a very small quantity of iron or copper which helps the reaction out. The reaction occurs faster with larger quantities of oxygen and at higher temperatures.

Proteins come from the grain/wort and are really unavoidable and polyphenols come both from grain husks (especially if you over-sparge) and hop material; polyphenols are particularly high in concentration in the "braun hefe" or brown crud on the top of your krausen during an active fermentation, leading credence to the traditional German practice of removing braun hefe to prevent harsh bitterness. (Note: "Braun hefe"/ dark brown yeast crud on krausen also contains non-isomerised hop alpha acids; it's not JUST polyphenols.)

The reaction starts via electrostatic forces, the polyphenols and proteins are oppositely charged and attract each other but are not yet bonded; then loose hydrogen bonds are formed between the proteins and polyphenols; this colloid of proteins and tannins/polyphenols is insoluable at low temperatures in beer but is soluable at higher temperatures so the "chill haze" forms when the beer is chilled and is dissolved into solution when the beer is warmed up.

If the beer goes through several heating/cooling cycles or (and I don't understand this bit) as you get more and more "chill haze" particles in suspension, stronger covalent bonds are formed between the proteins and polyphenols; these covalently-bonded haze molecules are insoluable at both high and low temperatures; these insoluable haze molecules are referred to as "permanent haze".

Preventing/ Removing Chill Haze

Preventing:
Prevention basically involves preventing the introduction of oxygen, reducing the amount of polyphenols in the beer, reducing the amount of copper/iron in the beer, and reducing the extraneous amounts of protein in the beer.
  • ensure heavy metals (iron, copper, etc..) are removed from your water source
  • use low protein malt (heavily modified ale malt vs. undermodified lager malt (although most pilsner malt is actually low protein); use European malt varieties vs American varieties)- CHECK YOUR MALT SPEC SHEET!
  • ensure a vigorous boil to precipitate excess proteins via "hot break"
  • use kettle finings to assist in forming a good hot break and cold break (reduce protein loading)
  • chill wort quickly to ensure a good hot break (reduce protein loading)
  • skim off "braun hefe" from the top of krausen to remove excess polyphenols
  • don't over-sparge, which introduces excess polyphenols
  • ensure a strong, healthy fermentation as yeast will absorb protein to obtain the nitrogen in it during their growth phase
  • Modify your processes so you don't introduce oxygen post-fermentation
  • use a small quantity of "polyclar" (pvpp) as a kettle fining to drop polyphenol levels

Removing Chill Haze:
Removing chill haze generally involves using post fermentation finings which will precipitate or absorb proteins or polyphenols and drop them out of solution or even to break down proteins into smaller proteins or amino acids using enzymes.

Protein Reduction:
Adsorbants- these chemicals will act as a "sponge" and "suck up" excess protein and hold it within its molecular structure and then drop them to the bottom of the fermenter
-Silica Gels (acidified sodium silicate)
Big breweries will also use hydrogels or xerogels immediately prior to filtration but they really need to be filtered out and probably not useful for most homebrewers.

Protein precipitants- bentonite used to be used in beer but is now really only used in winemaking; I can't remember why but it's not an ideal option

tannic acid can be used, but it creates a thick layer of "fluffy" protein precipitate and causes a lot of beer loss if you're not filtering

Protein breakdown- big breweries often use an enzyme called "papian" which breaks down the proteins into smaller proteins or amino acids; they'll add it prior to running the bottled beer through a pasteurizer because it needs higher temperataures. The product remains in the bottled beer and if it works too well it will impact beer foam formation and stability.


Polyphenol reduction:
adsorbants- polyvinyl polypyrrolidone (PVPP)AKA "PolyClar" -traps polyphenol molecules AND whole chill haze molecules and drops them out of solution (must be filtered in the US to adhere to FDA food processing laws). Note: From experience, if used as a kettle addition PolyClar used with other kettle finings also results in extra fluffy cold break and increased wort losses. Polyclar used after fermentation may strip some flavor and color from the beer if used in too high of quantities and may lead to other flavor profile changes.

Oxygen Scrubbing:
Another solution that should help not only chill haze formation but also other oxygenation during ageing is to use "oxygen scrubbers" such as live yeast or vitamin c (ascorbic acid) at bottling so that any oxygen that does get introduced during packaging is automatically taken up by the yeast or ascorbic acid before it can react to form chill haze molecules.
Note: Only 0.5ppm of oxygen can create oxidation-related off flavors post fermentation; that's one thimble full of oxygen in 20,000 liters of beer; ascorbic acid & oxygen scrubbing caps probably aren't "good enough" to fully prevent oxidation reactions during extended storage/aging.

If you want to go crazy you could tackle it in 5 parts (for breweries outside of the US because this method doesn't filter polyclar):
1. Limit the introduction of oxygen in all steps of the process
2. Chill beer at -1C for 4-7 days so that chill haze is formed
3. Douse beer with silica hydrogel to absorb protein on the way to filtering (1 micron filters will get most chill haze; especially what's trapped in the silica hydrogel gel matrix; but 0.5 micron is required to get all free floating chill haze molecules)
4. Douse with PVPP after filtration to remove any remaining polyphenols or chill haze molecules (and leave long enough for PVPP to settle)
5. Add oxygen scrubbers (yeast, vitamin c, silicon dioxide (YUCK; I'm sure not RECOMMENDING this))

-IBD says that just chilling for 4-7 days, dousing with silica hydrogel, filtering, and then using PVPP can result in a beer that will resist the formation of chill haze for up to 18 months.


Adam

Original thread: http://www.beoir.org/community/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=6389
 
Again this is a repost from my 2008 post on the Beoir/Irish Craft Brewer forums. I edited the list below to move Polyclar from a post fermentation addition to a kettle addition as I've really only had bad first-hand experience with polyclar post fermentation and drinking plastic is probably not good for you.

I'm going to try to provide a "shorter answer" version of the above post with 5 best practices that home brewers can do to avoid/ remove chill haze; these techniques have the added benefit of massively decreasing any diacetyl, aiding clarity due to particulates, and removing excess harsh bitterness from polyphenols.

For the Home Brewer: 5 "Lessons Learned":
1. Ensure a vigorous boil and a rapid cooling after boiling to maximize "hot break" and "cold break" (also ensure that you transfer as little break material to your fermenter as possible)
2. Use kettle finings including a small quantity of polyclar/pvpp to aid the formation of hot and cold break and to absorb excess polyphenols(USE THE CORRECT AMOUNT; over-fining will just wastes beer and finings; look up "imhoff cone" and the procedure to use one if you're a commercial micro)
3. Avoid oxygen pick up after fermentation; specifically, warm conditioning/secondary fermentation or cold conditioning in corney kegs and bubbling co2 through the "beer out" of the keg after transferring will displace or take up introduced O2
4. Bottle Condition/"Prime" your beer with live yeast; nothing scrubs oxygen better (or removes diacetyl later as it forms better, either)
5. OPTIONAL: Chill to 3 degrees for 4 days then only if the beer still has chill haze consider dousing with fermentation finings and filtering at 0.5 - 1 micro to remove remaining chill haze


#5's temperature is a "compromise" temperature because if you chill the beer to -1 (which would be better for the removal of chill haze) you're going to flocculate almost all of your yeast and wont be able to bottle condition very quickly.
--Those of you who were advocating using some live yeast and priming sugar EVEN WHEN KEGGING were dead right; I think I'm going to start priming my kegs now instead of just using bottled CO2 for carbonating for this reason.


Adam
 
1) add mashing water from the bottom to avoid stirring
2) mash out at 75 deg C for 20 minutes
3) do not over sparge
4) avoid splashing when transferring to boiler
5) cool as quickly as possible after boil

does anybody disagree with these and/or have any more ideas?

does anybody use papain?

To answer your specific questions now...

#3 will help because it reduces the amount of polyphenols extracted from the malt husks
#5 helps because it reduces the amount of protein in solution via cold break formation
(The rest have nothing to do with chill haze.)

Papain enzyme would technically work except it can really degrade your proteins too much and you'll end up with a thin beer that won't head. I'd recommend against papian enzyme as the cure is worse than the disease.


Adam
 
Really hoppy beers are often just hazy (lots O polyphenols to go around). -Theoretically dry hopping with hop pellets instead of whole hops should result in less polyphenols because of less vegatal material so less hazy beer, but I know how most of the English brewing tradition feels about pellets. (Although pellets have been proven to result in more hop oils IN YOUR BEER GLASS, too.)

--Hmm... Technically higher oil content hops mean that you can use less hops and would get less haze for the same amount of hoppiness so higher alpha varieties could also result in less haze, too (because there's usually a direct coorelation between higher alpha content and higher oil content oddly enough). -Yes, I also know how most English brewers feel about those "new fangled" hop varieties that have been released in the last 50 years. ; )

Like JLem stated extended "lagering" at cold temps for 30 days will take care of ALMOST any beer haze. -But hoppy beers taste better fresh so it's a trade-off. -Yes I know how English brewers often feel about doing anything that could be considered "German", so just call it "extended cold conditioning" if it makes you happier. (Reminds me of Taladega Nights "But you do like creps; they're those itty bitty little thin pancakes; you love those! Just say "I love thin pancakes"")


The other super English option is just to serve your beer via a gravity fed cask warm so that chill haze doesn't form. ; )

Adam
 
Biertourist - thanks for some great posts. I am an english brewer but use cascade hops a lot and nelson sauvin if the big breweries haven't snaffled all the supply. I am experimenting with T90 pellets at the moment. If you plan to come to London ever let me know and I will buy you some beers in some super craft pubs.

I usually mash for 1 hour with no mash out - from now on it is mash 90 minutes plus 20 minutes at 75 deg C mash out.
 
Bob,

I just moved from Dublin to Seattle after spending the last 5 years in Ireland; I CERTAINLY could have taken you up on the London craft beer pub offer a year ago but my crazy travel days are behind me, hopefully. I'm a big Kernel and Oakham Ales fan. -Was lucky enough to make it to the Great British Beer Festival in 2012, too.

I have no plans to make it to London again for the foreseeable future, though. (Great Canadian beer festival is SOO close and the Barleywine festival in Alaska is calling my name, too, I think.)


Adam
 
Interesting that copper contributes to chill haze...I always thought copper was one of those essential micronutrients, so I always add a few inches of copper pipe to my kettle during the boil (I'd heard/read somewhere that this was a good way to get enough copper into the beer...not sure where...maybe I will stop doing this and see if it helps my chill haze)
 
Copper IS an essential micronutrient. You definitely want some copper. I'd probably focus on the other remedies first.


Adam
 
In UK we tend to ferment down to close to end point then bottle condition. I don't know of anybody in UK who leaves say 2 weeks in primary and 2 weeks in secondary. Once beer is down to say .002 of FG we bottle. Amazed nobody has mentioned bottle bombs, smiles.....

Just my 2 pence as a UK brewer: I think this is mostly because the average UK brewer is slower to keep up with developments in the hobby (but also less obsessed with getting crystal clear beer). In the US homebrewers tend to more cutting edge, spending their time on the internet reading up and discussing the latest science to perfect their methods (e.g. "beer continues to improve after fermentation if you leave it on the yeast a few weeks"). In the UK hombrewing is, sadly, still a bit of an "old boys" hobby with folks following the same method they did 40 years ago.

Things are slowly improving though, with Tescos and Wilkos now stocking supplies :D

Anyway, apologies :off:
 
Chill Haze? We don't care bout no stinking Chill Haze.
I have gotten to that point.:rockin: I use whirlfloc, I've tried HARD VIGOROUS boils, I use a wort chiller to get my wort down to pitching temp in 15 minutes or less, leave behind the break material....and I still get chill haze.
I figure..."Piss on it, protein is good for ya anyway!":cross:
 
I'm a UK brewer and I always leave in primary for two weeks, then depending on type, may transfer.
I am very interested in this subject, I am going to alter my set up to underlet in the future to see if that helps.
 
Hi guys,


Im a homebrewer from Chile, my last brew was an IPA that ferment in 3 kegs, 2 ferment for 5 days and then rack it to a secondary and the other one stayed for 11 days snd then was racked, all of them went into a keezer and after a month the difference bewteen them its huge. One its very clear and the other two are hazy.... So that can be taken on acount.

Cheers
 
fmonttb --WHICH ONE WAS CLEAREST ?????????

I know, I know! Pick me, pick me!
Our friend Stoke has already told us the answer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stokes'_law

-The one that sat the longest. (11 days).

Particles in a suspension naturally settle at a rate that is based upon the density of the liquid and the square of the radius of the particle.

This means the longer a suspension rests the more particles that will be settled out. It also means the larger the particles the faster they'll settle out (this is how finings work, they attract particles to the finings and bind them together in a much larger particle size so they fall out faster).

Tanks that are wider and shallower will settle faster, too because the particles have less distance to fall.


Beyond that there's all sorts of ways to "cheat" (centrifugal force via a whirlpool or forced filtration).


-I'm totally stoked about Stokes; he explains to us how lagering works! ; )


Adam
 
I'm a UK brewer and I always leave in primary for two weeks, then depending on type, may transfer.

I always did as well. 10 days to 2 weeks or so in primary then to pressure barrel for cask serving and/or bottling. I now sometimes primary for 3 weeks, or primary for a week then secondary for 10 days before bottling.
 
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