Things to Consider When Brewing a West Coast Hazy ▪

Certain hop varietals (especially Australian and New Zealander varieties) can leave more haze than others.

A tall, skinny fermentor can clear a beer that would have stayed hazy in a fatter, shorter one.

If your drinkers are dead set on full-bodied, estery, hazy IPA, this will be different to them and may be perceived as “thin.” I personally like a leaner-bodied IPA.

I’ve been told that people brewing with White Labs WLP001 California Ale or equivalents (we use Gigayeast’s Norcal strain) have trouble keeping their beers hazy. Experimentation with haze-inducing grains and hop dosages may be needed to keep a West Coast hazy, well, hazy.

This is worth noting: If you need to make a hazy beer (i.e., the beer you are making is branded as “hazy”), these beers will occasionally drop clear or clearer than you may want. This means that if you were to submit beer to any of the “hazy IPA” festivals that began occurring on the West Coast around 2016, you would really need to guarantee haze. That would mean using an estery English strain, and not the California ale yeast, to ensure that you weren’t sending clear beer to a haze fest.