Ask The Brewmasters

Hi Everyone,
I'm hoping you can help me troubleshoot an issue.  We're sometimes seeing our hazy IPA's drop clear within just a couple of weeks, or even in the bright tank over just a few days.  This is a newish issue over the past year for us, so it's vexing -- people expect a certain appearance in these beers.  Here's some info:

*Typically our malt bills are very simple:  base malt plus 15-25% malted wheat and/or malted oats
*Dry hopping typically these days at end of fermentation with 3-5lbs/bbl of T90

Now, there is one obvious possible reason for this, which is that our yeast has slowly evolved into a different animal.  We have been top cropping and repitching our own house strain now for 300 generations.  It was originally a London Ale 3 type yeast.  The goal of our serial repitching being to evolve our own unique house strain.  Well, maybe we have evolved a strain that produces less stable haze.  Of course, I am hoping there is some other explanation because I love the character of our now-unique strain!  But I am at a loss.  It's frustratingly inconsistent.  Some things we've tried:

-playing with different pH at knockout and at DH
-dry hopping at various temperatures
-additions of dextrin malt to grist
-additions of raw wheat to grist
-removing late-fermentation dry hop additions, moving DH exclusively to post-ferm

Has anyone else dealt with hazy beers dropping clear and if so, how did you remedy?

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Joe Grimm
Brooklyn NY
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There's certainly things you can do process wise to promote haze stability, but it's always kind of a crap shoot to keep any kind of consistency with haze levels and haze consistency.  Particles tend to aggregate over time and once that happens gravity will cause things to settle more and more.  Haas is selling a product called Hop Haze and it's the first product I've tried that actually seems to work as advertised.  It's not terribly expensive and produces a consistent result that seems to hold up well over time.  The one thing to consider is that it shouldn't be added right next to your carbonation source (ie pinpoint carbonator).  My vote is to keep making the beer you are making since you seem to be happy with the flavor and touch up the appearance using some Hop Haze.

https://www.johnihaas.com/hop-haze/

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Jason Weihbrecht
GM of Brewery Operations
Oskar Blues Brewery
Brevard NC
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Jason, thanks for sharing your experience.  Are you seeing any sensory differences using the hop haze stuff?  I assume it's some kind of tannin like Tanal-A. Is astringency perception up?

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Joe Grimm
Brooklyn NY
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Original Message:
Sent: 02-21-2023 15:40
From: Jason Weihbrecht
Subject: Hazy IPA's dropping clear too quickly -- possible reasons

There's certainly things you can do process wise to promote haze stability, but it's always kind of a crap shoot to keep any kind of consistency with haze levels and haze consistency.  Particles tend to aggregate over time and once that happens gravity will cause things to settle more and more.  Haas is selling a product called Hop Haze and it's the first product I've tried that actually seems to work as advertised.  It's not terribly expensive and produces a consistent result that seems to hold up well over time.  The one thing to consider is that it shouldn't be added right next to your carbonation source (ie pinpoint carbonator).  My vote is to keep making the beer you are making since you seem to be happy with the flavor and touch up the appearance using some Hop Haze.

https://www.johnihaas.com/hop-haze/

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Jason Weihbrecht
GM of Brewery Operations
Oskar Blues Brewery
Brevard NC
------------------------------

We haven't noticed any perceptible sensory difference to aroma or flavor.  I know it is a hop derived product, but I'm not sure if it's tannin based or not.  For what it's worth I've trialed the Tanal products that claim to give a stable haze and they've all dropped clear within a few days so I suspect that it's not just a protein-polyphenol complex that a tannin product would give you.  We tested some product on a turbiscan (instrument designed to measure colloidal stability over time) and product with hop haze held up well over time.

Won't go into too many specifics, but I've probably spent more time than most thinking about and trying to solve for this problem.  In my opinion beer is too complex and there are just too many variables to control for to have the kind of control over haze levels and haze stability that you want.  You can make all of the process changes you want, and they will probably help, but I guarantee you will still have batches drop clear from time to time.  I say focus on making a quality beer that tastes the way you want and touch up the appearance at the end of the process with Hop Haze to keep your consumer happy.

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Jason Weihbrecht
GM of Brewery Operations
Oskar Blues Brewery
Brevard NC
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 02-23-2023 10:40
From: Joe Grimm
Subject: Hazy IPA's dropping clear too quickly -- possible reasons

Jason, thanks for sharing your experience.  Are you seeing any sensory differences using the hop haze stuff?  I assume it's some kind of tannin like Tanal-A. Is astringency perception up?

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Joe Grimm
Brooklyn NY
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Original Message:
Sent: 02-21-2023 15:40
From: Jason Weihbrecht
Subject: Hazy IPA's dropping clear too quickly -- possible reasons

There's certainly things you can do process wise to promote haze stability, but it's always kind of a crap shoot to keep any kind of consistency with haze levels and haze consistency.  Particles tend to aggregate over time and once that happens gravity will cause things to settle more and more.  Haas is selling a product called Hop Haze and it's the first product I've tried that actually seems to work as advertised.  It's not terribly expensive and produces a consistent result that seems to hold up well over time.  The one thing to consider is that it shouldn't be added right next to your carbonation source (ie pinpoint carbonator).  My vote is to keep making the beer you are making since you seem to be happy with the flavor and touch up the appearance using some Hop Haze.

https://www.johnihaas.com/hop-haze/

------------------------------
Jason Weihbrecht
GM of Brewery Operations
Oskar Blues Brewery
Brevard NC

Hey Joe, I can only imagine how frustrating this is. A few questions come to mind that relate to your issue:

1. How long is your boil?
2. Do you do add hops post-boil? If so what temperature is the wort? 
3. If you do add hops post-boil, when do you add them (specifically vis-a-vis whirlpool)?
4. What temperature is the beer when you DH?
5. Have you noticed any changes on the certificates of analysis for the malted wheat or oats?
6. Have you noticed that your house strain is floccing more heavily than it used to?
7. Also, the fact that you said that you only "sometimes" see the beer drop bright too quickly is quite interesting and is worth fleshing out: have you noticed any patterns for the instances where your beer drops bright too quickly? The lack of consistency of the issue makes me wonder if there's a factor that is external to your that is impacting the beer. 

In terms of #5, I can't help but wonder if the malted wheat and/or oats you're using are less modified than they used to be leading to heavier proteins making their way into your beer that are causing it to drop bright too quickly. To be clear, that's not my theory as to what's going on, it's just an idea of one possibility.  

I don't mean to answer your question with more questions of my own, but the factors leading to haze are so complex that it's hard to say what might be going on without more info!

Nassim

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Nassim Sultan
Brewer/Free Agent
nassimsultan@gmail.com
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