Floating yeast chunks?

Spotswood · May 12, 2015

Hello everyone, new to brewing and new to the forum. I'm on my second batch, the first one was black rock brewery nut brown ale, and it turned out great.
The one I'm working on now is black rock brewery pale ale, and it is looking different now that I'm ready to bottle. It's got yeast floating on top, is it ok to bottle like this? Should I filter this out?

fsr_racer · May 12, 2015

I had the same thing happen last night, but I was using a top fermenting belgian ale yeast, M27, so it wasn't entirely unexpected. I racked it off the trub to the bottling bucket, while adding the priming sugar and a smooth swirl for a nice even mix. I also expect to have more sediment per bottle, the trub for this wheat ale was at the gallon mark.

Hope yours works out well for you.

inkman15 · May 12, 2015

There's nothing wrong with bottling that, provided the gravity is stable and fermentation is complete.

m00ps · May 12, 2015

I dont really see any yeast floating. Just tiny bits. I've had yeast rafts much larger than that, its never an issue, no need to filter

aimlessbum · May 12, 2015

Everything looks fine. You're probably seeing stray protein/hop/yeast particles. I've had beer look like this, and everything turned out fine. Maybe a cold crash might help?

zippy84 · May 12, 2015

First, make sure your fermentation is complete with 2 hydrometer readings a day or 2 apart. Second if you batch prime in this vessel there's a chance that the stuff will sink as it becomes agitated from your gentle stir to mix in sugar solution. Or third, being that this stuff is floating on top, when you're bottling this will likely only make it into the last bottle. The last bottle isn't usually fully filled, with me anyway. You could drink it on the spot as I usually do or let it carb up and use it as the go to test bottle when you find you run out of patience waiting a few weeks to taste your carbed brew.

Either way, this stuff will settle in the bottles when you condition then chill!

unionrdr · May 12, 2015

That's just common krausen left-overs. Nothing to be concerned about. It should look like little spots of foam like that when it's done fermenting & the krausen sinks back in, for the most part.