Article: How Clear is Your Beer?
A few years back, when I was just learning to brew, I handed a friend a pint of my finest ale. She held the beer up to the light and said, “Who made this?” I knew right away that I needed to solve some haze problems.
Why does it matter if your beer is clear? Sometimes it doesn’t matter at all: Hefeweizen, for example, is an outstanding German wheat beer that’s supposed to be cloudy; its haze is due to the high protein content of the wheat and the poorly-flocculating yeast that hefe brewers traditionally use. But another thing that can make beer hazy is organic contamination. Haze can also indicate an old beer. Without any other visual cues, someone might judge your beer strictly on its clarity. Many other people probably prefer clear beer because that’s what they’re used to. As the saying goes, “the first taste is with the eye.”
How Clear is Your Beer?
http://byo.com/stories/issue/item/869-how-clear-is-your-beer