Does lactose add haze/cloudiness?
I don’t THINK so. Lactose is reasonably water soluble, and haze is usually called by proteins and other junk in suspension (ie they don’t dissolve).
Honestly though, I’ve mostly put it in darker beer so its hard to say. I made a light colored peach ale with lactose added once, which I seem to recall had a little bit of haze. But I always blamed the fruit.
yeah… i’ve only had dark beers with lactose too. adding powder always makes me wonder about haze. anyone have experience using lactose in a light beer?
Lactose really doesn’t seem to dissolve completely does it. On the other hand, in the amounts that you add to beer, I doubt it has any effect on the clarity of the final beer at all whatsoever, at least not that a human being is able to detect. I add it to my apple ale and I don’t recall any obvious issues. But maybe the beer was already cloudy so then of course I wouldn’t notice, would I. Not much help, are we…
As Dave said, Lactose is not a very soluble sugar, but it isn’t THAT insoluble. 1# in a 5 gal batch wouldn’t be a problem… Even 5# should not cause haze, but it might. I’ve been playing with lactose-based medium recently and noticed that it’s cloudy at first, but then clears up once Lactobacillus chews through it. So… I don’t know for sure…
