Bulk yeast?

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Rbeckett

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Just wondering more out of curiosity than for a particular reason. Is Ale and Lager yeast sold or marketed in an affordable bulk container? I would love to see a 1 pound or 2 pound lined cardboard tube type of container with a scoop. Put your sanitized starter on the stir plate, and add a scoop of dry yeast. after a reasonable time to rehydrate the yeast, turn on the plate and treat as a regular starter. Anybody ever seen anything like that? Figured small breweries and micro brewers would have some sort of favorable packaging of ingredients like that available. Comments or links?
Wheelchair Bob

P.S. I looked in search but may have used the wrong search criteria or keywords.
 
I've seen 1kg (i think) metallized poly bags of nottingham and mauribrew. I expect that most dry yeasts are available in bulk for pro brewers - do you think they stand there opening little packets or something?

The questions are thus where to buy and how to store between uses. Anoxic and anhydrous is the ideal. Sealing the bag and throwing it in the freezer works for bulk bread yeast. I am down to the last few tablespoons of a 1lb foil pack of Saf instant bread yeast that my sister gave me in 2002 - which expired unopened and unrefrigerated in 1998. It's a little less viable than it was 10 years ago so these days i actually bother to rehydrate it when i make bread.
 
One kilo tins would be great, one pound would be even better. Dry yeast with a yeast nutrient mixed in, ready to hydrate and use. My question is with a virtually unlimited supply of cells it would be entirely possible to over pitch and quick ferment something too fast or make the internal temp too high. Thoughts. or suppliers?
WCB
 
When dealing with dry yeast, you don't normally make a starter. The price of the dry yeast is so low, it makes starters quite expensive by comparison.

Commercial breweries do this all the time. Operations without the volume to justify a basic in-house lab will just use dry yeast, and then reuse it a set number of times. That way they do not need to worry about propagation. Basically the same reasons homebrewers use dry yeast.
 
Keep in mind that once dry yeast packs are opened they lose viability quickly
 
Why not just create your own by washing yeast cakes after fermentation? I would do this over bulk yeast for the sole purposes of sanitation and freshness. How would you plan to keep that bulk container sanitary after you remove the first batch worth?
 
Keep in mind that once dry yeast packs are opened they lose viability quickly

I know that's what the manufacturers say, and i know that they should know what they're talking about, but i've stored open (folded over and stapled) packets of nottingham in my fridge for as long as 45 days and still successfully brewed w/o making a starter.

And like i said, i still make bread with instant dry yeast that expired in the 90's. It lives in a jar in my freezer. I know the yeast strain is different but it's SAF brand yeast, and i expect that it's preserved with the same process as SAFale and SAFlager dry yeasts.

I know that they say not to store dry yeast in the freezer, I just can't make out why. It works so well for the bread yeast.
 
Your homebrew shop should be able to get you .5 kg of most of the Safale/Safbrew/Saflager stuff. A few strains that aren't available in the 11.5g sachets (K97, S-189, e.g.) Brewers Supply Group in Denver carries them.
 
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