Can I salvage my local breweries waste yeast

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CrankyBeaverBrewery

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My local brewery says they dump most of their excess yeast down the drain. If they allowed me to salvage the yeast can I use that as normal yeast ?
 
Lots of small breweries push the limits on re-use...meaning they go 10-15 generations on it. So it may not be true to the original strain. But you can't beat the price.

If I could get some, I'd use it in a heartbeat with no hesitation. Tons of fresh, free yeast? Yes please.
 
Sure...if they let you have it. Give them a sanitized container and they'll drop more that you could ever need into it.
 
You could use the yeast, but there is some risk. Personally, I don't care to expend the time, energy, and money to brew up a beer and fret over saving 6 or 7 bucks over yeast. I'm not looking to experiment. I want to get it right the first time.
 
As long as the yeast is kept sanitary between pulling off the fermenter and your container, yes. If this is yeast coming out of the lab I would feel more comfortable using it over trub getting dumped out of the fermenter into a bucket waiting for you to show up.
 
A lot of breweries give away yeast. Any brewery that I visit, when I tell them that I am a home brewer they offer up yeast.
 
CrankyBeaverBrewery said:
My local brewery says they dump most of their excess yeast down the drain. If they allowed me to salvage the yeast can I use that as normal yeast ?

Like the other poster said they reuse yeast to the max, but always ask first, maybe they have bad business practices and only use yeast once! :mug: if they say its 10-15 generations old I wouldn't even mess with it, but if its 1-5 generations old its good for a while and still has plenty of useful original strain characteristics left
 
I get yeast from a local brewpub all the time (waiting for him to call me back right now, lol) and have never had a problem. If anything, my lowest lag times are from pitching slurry that just got pulled from a conical there...
 
I've been thinking about this nonstop since I saw my local brewery give out a big jar of yeast. The customer took a mason jar filled with starsan out of his bag, the brewer dumped the starsan, filled it with yeast from the conical. Yay!
 
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