Haze and cloudiness

A clarity change that arrives after the product has left you, and that reads as spoilage.

Cloudy on purpose, or not

A product that is meant to be cloudy and is consistently cloudy is fine.

The problem is a product that is bright at filling and hazy in a fridge, because the customer saw it change.

Chill haze

The classic, and it comes from tea.

Polyphenols and protein combine as the liquid cools, forming a haze that clears again on warming, which is the diagnostic.

It is entirely harmless and entirely off-putting in a clear bottle on a chilled shelf.

Reduce it by extracting cooler or shorter, by using a different tea, or by fining or filtering the base. Or accept it and say so, which works less well here than for sediment because a customer expects tea to be clear.

Protein and pectin haze

From juice rather than tea, and it does not clear on warming.

Pectin haze responds to a pectinase treatment, which is standard practice in juice production.

Protein haze responds to fining.

Both are decisions to process the product further, which is a positioning question as much as a technical one for a producer selling raw and unfiltered.

What to do

Diagnose first: chill a bright sample and see whether haze appears, then warm it and see whether it goes. That five-minute test tells you which of the two you have.

Then decide deliberately between filtering, reformulating and labeling.

And test at the temperature the customer will see it, which for almost every drink in this property is cold.

References