chunks in primary fermentation

[Eischman]

O.K. something is not right cuz I never had this before,
After one week in the primary while I was transfering to secondary their was like small chunks all sticking to the side of the pail as it emptied and now after a week in the secondary some of those chunks are still floting around and no sign of it clearing?
This is a Nut brown ale and yeast was pitched at 73 degrees, after the second day it was bubbling away like normal but i noticed that my heater was set to high in the closet (beer was at 77 degrees) so I turned it down
to like 73 degrees, the secondary has a thick blanket around it so the temp would not drop real fast but i think this might be the cause.
Any words of wisdom will help, Thanks!

 

[EarlyAmateurZymurgist]

The chucks to which you are referring sound like yeast flocs.

 

[TopgunTango]

73 degrees is a bit hot to ferment a brown ale at I believe, but what you are seeing are flocs of yeast and it is totally normal.

 

[Eischman]

thanks for the reply, do I need to run this though a strainer before tranfering
to the bottling pail or will it stop floating around and settle sooner or later?

 

[EarlyAmateurZymurgist]

What yeast culture did you pitch? The flocs from some yeast cultures take a while to settle. Whatever you do, do not run the beer through a strainer while racking to your bottling bucket. Carrying the flocs over to your bottling bucket will not hurt your beer. Running it through a strainer will result in the beer being aerated, which will result in rapid staling.

 

[Eischman]

I always use Wyeast Activator for all my brewing and never had chunks before thats why I was worried, so Ill just give it another week in the secondary to settle, THANKS for the input!

 

[bhanson]

What yeast? I did a brown ale with 1028, and it very much "clumps" up into chunks which float about during active fermentation. I also know if you fermented this strain at 73 degrees F, you are going to have a very estery, thin brown ale.

There are some other strains which are very flocculent which behave similarly.

 

[Eischman]

I have herd that twice now that 73 degrees is to warm to ferment a nut ale, (this is the first for me) I wish "Midwest Supplies" would have mentioned that in their instruction sheet!

 

[grimzella]

pics are always easier to help diagnose these kind of issues. totally understand if u cant post pics tho.