I love a good Hazy IPA. Not only are they beautiful to look at, but a well-brewed one tastes delicious too. If you’ve ever brewed one before, there is nothing more frustrating than it dropping completely clear after a few weeks in the keg or can. You can’t exactly call it a hazy beer if its not hazy!
As a brewer, I have always been interesting in brewing Hazy IPAs with stable haze. That is, haze that sticks around for months on end. I’ve always wondered whether using kettle finings such as Whirlfloc towards the end of the boil will negatively affect the haze stability of my Hazy beers. Using my own logic, the idea behind haze is to ensure that you have enough protein / polyphenols in your wort that will help create haze. Surely removing it during the boil will remove the haze in your hazy beer? Well, it turns out this isn’t exactly true.
There is a lot of conflicting information on the web. If you look on Reddit, different pro brewers have different opinions on whether or not you should use Whirlfoc when brewing a Hazy IPA.
However, I recently came across the Omega Yeast brewing blog – Top Crop. The team at Omega Yeast have done a lot of research into Haze and some of the best practices around it.
I reached out to the Omega Yeast team to ask them about using Whirlfloc and this is the response that I got back.
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“In our haze trials we have done an experiment with and without Whirlfloc to help answer this exact question. We found that the yeast-derived haze that is generated by haze-positive strains with late dry hop is not impacted by Whirlfloc (that said, we used the recommended dose rate of Whirlfloc—without optimization). We think Whirlfloc is impacting more of the protein-polyphenol haze associated with chill haze, and is less effective against the haze-positive-yeast-plus-dry-hop generated haze”.
Summary
No need to wonder anymore – this science based testing has been done for us. It turns out that you can use Whirfloc and it won’t affect your haze stability. Great news!
Happy hazy brewing!
