Yeast for 1bbl brew?

Where can I find yeast to ferment a 1bbl brew?? I don't want to buy 8pkgs of the wyeast or white labs to ferment the 31gal

I'd say you can find it at the bottom of a 5 gal batch! Seriously, think of a 5 gal batch as a large starter for your style. Use whatever yeast you want for your 1bbl batch and brew up a fairly low OG beer (1.050 or so) using the yeast you want to use, then just use the yeast cake once you are done with the 5 gal batch. Saves you money on yeast, and you get an extra 5gal of beer out of it!

erikpete18 said:

I'd say you can find it at the bottom of a 5 gal batch! Seriously, think of a 5 gal batch as a large starter for your style. Use whatever yeast you want for your 1bbl batch and brew up a fairly low OG beer (1.050 or so) using the yeast you want to use, then just use the yeast cake once you are done with the 5 gal batch. Saves you money on yeast, and you get an extra 5gal of beer out of it!

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This is what you should do. Both White Labs and Wyeast sell barrel pitchable packs of their yeast, but they are around $300 a pop.

I use six stir plates and some frozen yeast. Costs a heck of a lot less than $300.

Now I'm going to sound dumb but what's the best way to get the yeast cake out of the carboy for use??

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/yeast-washing-illustrated-41768/ You don't have to do all of the steps here if you plan on using the yeast the same day, but its the same idea.

Siphon the beer out of the carboy like you normally do, and whatever gets left over (generally around 0.25-0.5gal for me, leave a little more if you like), take that and swirl it around until all the yeast is up in suspension. Then you can sanitize the top of the carboy with some starsan spray and pitch it into your bbl batch like you're pouring from a flask into a carboy, just at a lot larger level!

Edit: Actually, good call on the washing if you've got the time. You'll get a lot cleaner yeast that way as you can get a bunch of the trub out of the yeast before pitching it into the big batch.