Hop variety and its influence on beer clarity

[ParanoidAndroid]

I recently brewed an American IPA with Amarillo, Citra, and Simcoe. The beer ended up cloudy. I didn't use any gelatin since I am trying to minimize oxygen as much as possible. Irish moss was used in the boil. I figured the cold crash in the keg would drop a good bit out, but it didn't work. Same cloudiness.

Moving forward...I had some down time, so yesterday I did the Bud Light Hop taste test. It is normally performed by opening a few bud lights (or any tasteless beer), drop a few different hops in each bottle, recap, and let sit for 1-3 days; essentially dry hopping it. This will let you taste the different hops to see what you like/don't like.

Instead of the dry hop method, I did 2 grams of hops in 60 mL of 170 deg water for 10 minutes, then drained and poured into equal amounts of Bud Light. Sort of like a small whirlpool addition.

Here is what I had in 60 mL of water:

2 grams Amarillo
2 grams Citra
2 grams Simcoe
1 gram Citra & 1 gram Simcoe

The intent was to taste, but the Amarillo addition came out noticeably cloudier than the rest. These are after 6 hours of sitting there at room temp.

Amarillo:



Citra:



Simcoe:



Citra/Simcoe:



I know about yeasts and how different strains are more flocculent, but does the variety of hops (or one of the components such is humulone, cohumulone, lupulone, beta acids, etc.) have an influence of the clarity? FWIW, the Amarillo had the lowest AA%.

 

[porterpounder]

This is only a hypothesis, but hops containing lower AA% maybe contain more plant matter, thus more polyphenols? Without protein to bond to in a water tea not a grain-based wort those polyphenols cannot precipitate out and lead to hazier tea, but not necessarily hazier beer. Science!