Other, usually less troublesome, causes of non-biological haze include oxalic acid, oxidised polyphenols, powdery bits and pieces of grain solids carried across from the mash, and unconverted starch or carbohydrate also carried across from the mash. All of these are potential problems that are not issues related to fining, and are therefore outside the scope of this section, but these are fairly rare and can be attributed to bad mashing and sparging practice.

Dealing With Haze Problems

Many home brewers suffer persistent haze problems; Internet discussion forums are full of tales of haze woe. However, some people attempt to make far too many shortcuts in their brewing process, and in many such circumstances problems are inevitable. For example, often on the forums there are people bragging that they only do, say, a forty-minute boil and their beers are fine. That may well be true, although I doubt it, but nevertheless it is far from best practice. The problem is that such statements encourage inexperienced brewers to follow suit and tales of woe are sure to emerge. It is fair enough taking shortcuts if you know what you are doing and know that you can get away with it, but if an inexperienced brewer follows suit without knowing the hows, whys and wherefores of what he is doing, then he can be misled by somebody else's lack of taste. After all, one person's "fine" may be another person's mud. The quality end of the commercial beer market is a small fraction of the total beer market; a considerable amount of beer consumed is sweet, off-license fizz and foam. In some regions of Britain the majority of draught beer consumed in pubs is of a similar ilk. The same is true of home brewing; some people will drink anything as long as it has alcohol in it and others merely try to replicate the stuff that they are used to drinking. Your concept of quality may not be the same as someone else's. For this reason it is best not to trust magic "go-faster" techniques that are so often spouted, until you have assured yourself, by practical experience, that the methods are sound; quite often they are not if quality beer is your aim.

It therefore follows that to get to the bottom of a persistent haze problem you have to resort to best practice, at least until you have achieved a crystal-clear beer as a starting point, and only then gradually implement any short-cuts you may have in mind. This best practice is the use of a simple recipe using good quality ingredients, no cereal adjuncts; a reasonably long mash time; good slow sparging practice, taking precautions to ensure you are not leaching excessive polyphenols from the mash; a 90-minute vigorous boil, using Whirlfloc or similar in the last ten minutes; a yeast that is known to be trouble free and will clear down readily, such as Safale-04; and the appropriate use of finings if you are in a hurry. If you are still unable to achieve a clear beer, at room temperature at least, this indicates a water treatment issue, insufficient calcium probably, or a poor recipe.

Haze and Calcium

One thing that is a common requirement of all the beer clarification processes, whether we are talking about yeast or protein, is calcium. All the flocculation and fining processes require a minimum amount of calcium as a co-factor. It is quite common for people in soft water areas to have clarity problems due to a lack of calcium. If you are using hard water as your liquor source, then a calcium deficiency is less likely, but still possible. Ignoring the mash requirements, the minimum amount of calcium required for the subsequent processes is deemed to be 50 milligrams per litre. Should your water be deficient in calcium, an additional 50 mg/l of calcium can be achieved by adding 220 milligrams per litre of gypsum to the copper at the start of the boil, which amounts to 5 Grammies for a 23 litre batch. Five Grammies is difficult to measure, but it is a minimum requirement, as long as you add at least 5 Grammies to your copper the requirement will be met - no need for super precision here.

It has to be said that full and appropriate water treatment often cures haze issues, and sometimes demonstrates to someone who thought that he did not have a haze problem, that in fact he did.

Protein Haze

The causes of protein haze or chill haze can be poor sarge technique or over sparging, thereby extracting excessive polyphonous from the mash. An insufficiently long boil or an insufficiently hard boil is another possibility, as is the omission or incorrect dosage of copper finings. The good old calcium thing, mentioned above, should also be looked into. Don't overlook the part that poor quality ingredients or a poor recipe can play. This treatment should be more than sufficient for traditional British Ale that is consumed at sensible temperatures.

For beers that are likely to be highly chilled, chill-proofing is rather more difficult. It is not easily possible for home brewers to achieve the clarity of commercial super-chilled lagers or nitro kegs because commercial brewers chill their beers close to 0°C to deliberately throw a chill haze which is then removed by filtering it out through a fine filter. The most that home brewers can usually do to improve the chill stability of their beers is to use silica ted auxiliary finings and, perhaps, perform a protein rest at about 50° during the mashing stage. Adding isinglass or gelatin finings when the beer is a cold as you can get it, will also assist in reducing chill haze.

Of course, the best way to prevent chill haze is not to chill the beer in the first place.

Yeast Haze

All yeast should clear down unaided given enough time, and all should respond to isinglass or gelatin finings should accelerated clearing be desired. Occasionally a stubborn yeast will be encountered, but a persistent yeast haze, that occurs irrespective of the type of yeast used, will indicate that something is wrong with technique. Calcium deficiency or beer pH issues are likely causes, both of which are linked to water treatment.