Wit Beer I'm guessing I don't wanna store it to clear?

Question

Often the advice with beer is to store it somewhere cool for a while before bottling for various reasons such as taste and clearing and removing chill haze.

I'm currently brewing a Wit Beer from BrewFerm and it has the generic instructions for all its beers to store the beer before bottling.

I'm thinking for a wit beer, I kind of want to keep it cloudy/hazy, If I store the beer will the majority of the yeast fall out, but still remain cloudy with other particles maybe proteins still give me a haze? Or will this completely clear my wit beer?

Answer 1

You're right - normally you'd store it cold so it can drop clear before packaging. With a wheat beer you don't want or need to do that, or at least not to the same extent.

Note that in a wheat beer the haziness comes from both the suspended yeast and the protein in the wheat malt. It takes a long time for the protein to drop out - several weeks, and at least a week for the yeast since it is non-flocculant (one a reason wheat beer has evolved as a style with the yeast in - mit-hefe.)

I would leave the beer to let the heavier parts of the trub drop out (any large clumps of yeast, flour, hop particles etc), and then package after a day or two while the proteins and yeast are still in suspension.

Answer 2

I don't think its really necessary to store beer before bottling. When the beer is done (another topic all together) its usually ready to go into the packaging phase. If you are observing best practices already with fermentation and the like store it to wait for something mysterious to happen isn't necessary.

That said, a week in storage isn't going to completely clear a Wit beer.