Friday, September 6, 2019

The Magic of Science - Turning a Hazy IPA Clear

I made a hazy beer clear.  I bought a six-pack of Pizza Port/Modern Times' Gentle Reminder collaboration hazy IPA before I went on vacation.  I had my beer fridge set too cold and Gentle Reminder might have started the process of freezing while I was away.   I had had one or two of the beers before I left and they were clearly hazy. (I did not take a per-vacation picture, but a quick Google Image search shows Gentle Reminder is a cloudy beer.)  When I got home and poured an unslushied Gentle Reminder the haze was gone, replaced by a clear beer.  It tasted the same, a soft and sweey hazy IPA, even though it now looked like a West Coast IPA. 


My picture of the re-conditioned beer is crap.  This week's heat and humidity generated instant condensation on the glass and there is carbonation floating up from the bottom.  But trust me the beer is clear.  I have questions to which I don't know the answers:  Did the partial freeze provide the clarity?  or did sitting in the fridge for up to a month cause the haze to go away? or is there another explanation?  When pouring the beer there was no sediment at the bottom.  The taste was not impaired; the color remained a golden yellow; and the foam remained strong.  All that was missing was the cloud.  It's mystery, one I find cool.  Gentle Reminder is not the cloudiest IPA.  It does not look like a glass of pulpy orange juice.  But still, I was surprised to see the beer had turned clear and am not sure why.

2 comments:

Mark said...

I've definitely had hazy IPAs turn clear after a prolonged stay in the fridge. Even a Tired Hands Milkshake (infamously cloudy and intended to be so) turned clear one time. But in all cases there was plenty of sediment at the bottom of the can, so I'm not sure what's going on with this one. Haze can come from more than just sediment, so maybe that's the case here...

Beer Rover said...

That is interesting. I have had month's old Modern Times' beers stay hazy. Maybe it was time on this one, but I think a month or five weeks is not that long. I have another hazy from another brewery in my fridge that dates from April. I'll see what happens when I open it sometime soon.