My fridges are in the garage with a short length of tubing exposed to the warmer air so I run a couple ounces into a clear plastic cup and then tap a beer. That clear plastic cup with a couple ounces in it is CRYSTAL CLEAR while my cold glass of beer is hazier. Right now my “cold” glass of beer just has 2" of beer left in it and that beer is also crystal clear because it warmed up. So what’s the solution? PVPP or Polyclar? Added to the boil or to the keg or what? This is the most obvious example that my beer suffers from chill haze so what’s the answer? Cheers Beerheads.
Forgive me if you’ve gone over this before. If you have please disregard.
Sorry for all the questions. I have no help with PVPP. Never used it.
How long do you boil?
Do you use tannins and/or a form of carrageenan in the boil?
How long do you go from boil to pitching temp?
How cold and long do you cold crash?
Could it be yeast haze? Have you tried gelatin?
Do you notice the haze with certain grist?
30 minute boil.
A Whirfloc tablet with 7-8 minutes left in the boil.
It takes 10-15 minutes to chill from boiling to about 70° and then another 20 minutes or so to get cooler (lagers) and then I would pitch. Less time for ales.
Once the beer goes into the keg it sits at about 35° and that time might be short (like 3-4 weeks) or longer but I notice the chill haze even on beers that sit cold for 10-12 weeks.
I use a gel solution on every batch. If it’s yeast haze then why is the beer only hazy when the beer is cold while the warm sample is clear?
The haze seems to come and go and I do switch grains regularly. Could be Briess, Rahr, Best Malz, GW, Montana Craft, Swaen, etc.
About the yeast: just tryin to be sure it’s chill haze.
Likewise with the grist: It would be interesting to keep notes on beers that have the haze vs the ones that don’t and correlate that with a malt or maltster. i.e. More haze with Continental Pils malt or XYZ malster.
Ever get the haze when you boiled more than 30 min? Old school used to say 60 min to knock out haze causing constituents. A lot of folks moved to shorter boils though.
You’re chilling faster than I do. I often stop at 140°F for 30 min to add whirlpool hops.
You let your beer mature longer than I do. Plenty of time to fall clear.
Did you get haze when you used Brewtan B in the mash? Some say tannins can help knock out the haze causing constituents.
I stopped doing 60m boils quite awhile ago and I stopped using BTB because there is nothing in my equipment that would require it. I still have some BTB but I don’t remember BTB making my beers free from chill haze. I remember buying some Polyclar 10 but I don’t think it helped either. It’s not killing me but when I looked over at that crystal clear sample and then back at my hazier glass of beer it made me wonder what the secret was.
Do you use floating dip tubes? I have decided they really help.
And a hair brained idea…
Maybe you should try pouring all the trub into the fermenter. That’s what I do. I get clear beer. 
There is an enzyme that was developed specifically to address chill haze. It is called Brewer’s Clarex, also sold in small quantities as Clarity Ferm (White Labs https://www.morebeer.com/products/white-labs-clarity-ferm-10-ml.html) and Clearzyme (Cellar Science https://www.morebeer.com/products/cellarscience-clearzyme-placeholder.html). You could try it and see if it helps.
Thanks for that. I did buy Clearzyme and I used the entire bottle over the course of 20 (or so) batches. It didn’t seem to help but that was before I made some simplifications to my process so maybe I should try it again. I feel like the problem is something unique to my brewing environment like my water or my pH control, etc. I would say my boil but I don’t know that the 30m boil is the culprit. Trying the Clearzyme is relatively easy although that stuff is like $20/oz which seems spendy but I would try it.
I do not use floating dip tubes but it seems like the wrong symptom… that seems like a yeast issue which this does not seem to be. This seems like an issue when the beer is cold or warm, not “sediment” that would be resolved by a floating dip tube. I do generally get very little trub into the fermenter. This is clearly just a visual thing. My glass was cold so there was condensation and the beer was cold and had some haze and meanwhile, 10 feet away is a clear plastic cup with warm, crystal clear beer in it and I just kept thinking “look how GOOD that beer looks!”. 
I use polyclar vt at 10 minutes left in the boil and I believe it helps with chill haze. Try a dose of (.5) grams per gallon of wort in the kettle.
I also use gelatin, whirlfoc, clarex and floating dip tubes but I agree the floating dip tubes are for yeast. I use the clarex for gluten reduction and I’m convinced it makes the beers more easily digestible . No matter though because my original recipe was whirlfloc and polyclar which resulted in chill haze free beer.
When I brew my annual hefe I omit all of the above and the beer is nice and hazy for most of the keg.
One other thing to check is your boil ph. What is it at the start of the boil and post boil?
Traditionally the way to deal with chill haze is to store the beer colder longer.
Can you tell me how you apply the Polyclar VT? Do you just add it as a powder, do you mix it with water, etc?
On the pH, I made a process change recently that seemed to be working nicely for BrewBama and I copied it. Basically get the strike water to a pH of 5.5 prior to the mash and hold any [very] dark grains until the end of the mash and add them then. As a result, the pH is falling in line for the mash but I have not taken the pH of pre- and post-boil wort for a very long time. If I were to do that, what should I be looking for? Also, I left out the fact that with about 10 minutes left in the boil I am adding a milliliter of lactic acid which addresses the concept that the boil pH should be one way but clarifiers like Whirfloc work better at a lower pH and the pH of the wort when the yeast is pitched should be lower than the boil pH as well. I’ll mention again that my beer’s flavor is excellent. All of the things I’m doing right now are producing delicious beer and I get compliments on all of my beers by anyone who drinks them so it’s really down to this chill haze issue.
That works for me. I bottle, and the beer has a chill haze. But when I leave it in the fridge for a week (two is better), the haze settles out and the beer is clear. I do think the floating dip tube would help with this also since it will pick up the clear beer on top, giving the haze beneath it more time to settle.
Yep, same here.
He’s storing cold 5x longer than that:
I run a pretty simple routine to eliminate chill haze. Basically the final boil pH is 5.1-5.2. The last 10 minutes I add 2 grams of PVPP per gallon, a whirlfloc tablet and some yeast nutrients. Once the beer is been fermented I crash it as cold as possible, 30-32F. After crash cooling it I treat with gelatin. 1 pack of Knox gelatin added to water that has been boiled. I add the gelatin after I remove from heat.
My beers are very clear 2-3 days after adding gelatin and are polished in 1 to 2 weeks at the longest. They are just as polished as any commercial beer. I do believe the cold route is the key. The closer the beer gets to freezing, the faster it clears.
I’ll have to check the temp of my “on-deck” fridge. Last time I checked it I think I cranked it up about as cold as it could go. Thanks to all for the help. There are a lot of variables here, no question.
Possibly the haze is composed of finer particles, taking a long time to settle. Or it could have become permanent haze. See Chill Haze...The More You Know | Stone Brewing. It states “And normally, when the beer warms back up, the haze disappears. You can observe this after you pour the beer into a glass and watch it clear up as the beer warms. Or take a bottle out of the refrigerator and let it warm up, and it will also get clearer. But eventually, especially if the beer is stored refrigerated (as it should be) the haze particles will not dissolve as the beer warms, and it then becomes known as permanent haze. Permanent haze tends to clump together in the beer and stay there.” The article goes into some methods of correcting it, but maybe nothing that is practical for a home brewer and hasn’t been covered in this thread.
This is one reason why I’m saying it’s not yeast or anything that a floating dip tube could fix. Picture it: I take a clear plastic cup and pour 2 ounces or so of somewhat warm beer because it’s in the line and the garage is warm. That beer is crystal clear. Then I take a chilled glass from the fridge and tap cold beer into it… that beer is clearish but there is a haze. As that beer warms slightly you can see it getting clearer and by the time there is an inch or two left in the bottom of the glass it looks pretty much like the warm sample. This is chill haze. Not yeast haze.
I’m more interested in why you use a cold glass.
Because I like cold beer. :)