Yeast Nutrient Clumps?

Hi all,

Been brewing for a while now, guess around 10 years, and have been making starters for a while too, but not always. Started brewing higher gravity beers and decided to up my game and pressure can starter wort to make it easier on myself, but I am getting ahead of myself.

I've used yeast nutrient a few times and notice this clumping:


It doesn't seem to hurt anything and it always appears after the boil, never before. It's not DME clumps, that's well dissolved before I add the yeast nutrient.

Pressure canned and pulled them out just a moment ago, this is what I see:



The product is called Brewvint Yeast Fuel and I've had it for a while. It ALWAYS clumps the starter when I use it but everything seems to work out fine. Did some searching and didn't see any posts on it. Was wondering if this is normal with yeast fuel. It looks nasty as hell...

Thanks in advance.

That's hot break. Protein coagulation from boiling the wort. It'll settle to the bottom of the jar in time and you can just decant off it when making your starter. It's not going to hurt anything to be in the starter either.

Thanks for the reply. Is it possible the yeast nutrient can make it worse? It doesn't seem to do that when I don't add it. I've never had hot break look like that before. Thanks!

Edit - hot break is something I know about from reading and learning about brewing but never really saw much of, not like this. Did a little reading on it just now. I am an all grain brewer and it seems hot break happens like this with extract as opposed to all grain, so that would explain why it is foreign to me! That and this is glass, so you can see it all!! Brewed one extract, a hefeweizen, as my first brew, went all grain after that. Never use DME except for this.

This has been my "The more you know" moment and I love it! You never stop learning!

I also notice much more of it when using DME for canned wort rather than an all-grain starter. I haven't noticed a difference with nutrient use.

Thanks for validating me! I appreciate the response!