Do commercial breweries use dry yeast or liquid yeast?

I was wondering just out of curiosity

Many save their yeast from batch to batch and re-pitch, so I guess that constitutes liquid. I visited one brew pub that used Fermentis dry yeast exclusively.

The pros I know will use liquid yeast occasionally, but only when they are brewing a style that their house yeast can't handle. One does Belgians seasonally, so he buys a tube in the spring and cultures it until the late summer. Everything else, he ferments by re-pitching or building a starter from saved yeast.

Yuri_Rage said:

Many save their yeast from batch to batch and re-pitch, so I guess that constitutes liquid. I visited one brew pub that used Fermentis dry yeast exclusively.

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That's not 100% true. Typically there is a house strain that they keep but they usually cultivate it from their lab. Reusing yeast does occur, but you can mutate strains pretty fast if you don't keep close control on them.

A lot of the companies in San Diego use White Labs. It is a local yeast company with a good product. I know that Ballast Point uses Wyeast for some things too. The liquid yeasts are much more customized which provides for a more accurate representation of what they're looking for.

I know of one brewpub in the Detroit area that uses Wyyeast 1338 (Euro Ale Yeast) as their house strain.

There used to be a restaurant that had a microbrewery in it, and thier brewmasters would take a single smack pack and step it up to use in brewing a batch. I am not sure what size the brewing vats were, but I guess around 175-200 gallons. Talk about stressing the poor yeasties....
I wonder why they went under...oh maybe because the beer sucked.