# "Real" Brewers Yeast in Pollen Patties



## tecumseh (Apr 26, 2005)

do let us know how your experiment works out.

the only information I have on brewer's yeast is via a bud who owns the local 'health food store' and he informs me that there are two ways to dry the basic raw product. spray drying evidently maintains some of the flavors that heat drying destroys. 

don't really absolutely know??? but it would seem to me that any heat would also effect the qualitiy of the basic amino acids.


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## danno (Dec 17, 2007)

*what to do with all that yeast*

Buy the book "How To Brew" and put that stuff to good use. I get jars full in winter and make alot of really good beer


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## alpha6 (May 12, 2008)

Thing is I don't need beer I need strong bees. In talking it over with some other beeks we can't think of why it shouldn't work as well as the dry stuff. As a matter of fact it should work better in the wet form.

Anyway, I plan to make up a batch and feed this weekend...so I will let you know if they eat it and look stronger or if I have some dead outs...course there is the possibility I will have a bunch of hives addicted to beer...great just want I need "hi I used to produce honey before I became an alcoholic...but its not my fault!!" :doh:


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## Ben Brewcat (Oct 27, 2004)

It's always been a compelling experiment that I won't try . Spent yeast will have different nutritive characteristics than dried pitch-able yeast. Be sure to completely rinse the yeast of all trub and beer/wine/mead/cider/what have you if you give it a go.

Maybe consider drying out some spent yeast and offer it next to some supplement or straight yeast, and see what the bees prefer. But the best would be a nutritional analysis.


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## Keith Jarrett (Dec 10, 2006)

Ben Brewcat said:


> But the best would be a nutritional analysis.


STOP... we have a winner.


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## alpha6 (May 12, 2008)

Thanks for the input. I actually am going to rinse it but like I said before, unless they add things to dry brewers yeast that you buy in health food shops or from Mann Lake, its the same thing only before its dried out. I think the reason it is dried is to extend the self life. The master brewer I spoke with said the life on this is about two weeks max.

Good thing I run mostly carnies...other wise this would be a waste on Italians..everyone knows they prefer wine.


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## Ben Brewcat (Oct 27, 2004)

Actually yeast is pretty different before and after fermentation. Well it's the same organism (or nearly the same), but the makeup will be different. The yeast that you get dried has been carefully propagated in a nutrient-rich medium under constant aeration to strengthen cell walls and provide for strong ferments even in nutrient-poor worts and musts (think Mcbeers like BudMillOors with high adjunct levels or meads) or stressful worts like high-gravity or off-pH environments. 

Then once they've completed a fermentation cycle they are oxygen-depleted (having by definition fermented ANaerobically to make a beer) and have lived in a medium rich in their wastes. Plus their inner chemistries (especially enzymes) have altered to work on the sugars in that specific wort, which is why sugar-based starter cultures (or juice-based ones) actually limit yeast performance rather than enhance it. 

Unless they were fermented in a fairly low-density wort to make non-alcoholic beer that wouldn't taste very good, they'll be very different critters than the freeze-fried yeast that they once were.

Now that doesn't necessarily mean that they won't be nutritively useful to the bees at all. That's just not a chapter in my geek resume .


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## alpha6 (May 12, 2008)

Thanks Ben,

The brewmaster was saying something about the number of generations yeast can be used before they start with a new batch, but it was all greek to me. He actually took part of the one I got to start a new batch, so I would guess it isn't totally depleted of its yeast qualities. 

Still planning on giving it a whirl this weekend... 

"Bee patties, nutritionally sound with a nice malt flavor and 12% alcohol by weight." :doh:


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## MapMan (May 24, 2007)

So Ben, are you saying that the yeast which one would buy as "Dried Brewers Yeast" in 50 lb sacks for use as a supplemental feed for livestock and bees isn't the spent yeast after fermentation, but rather the cultured pre-fermentation yeast?

And Keith - why would alpha spend big bucks to get a nutritional analysis at this stage for essentially a free waste product? I can understand if he goes on to either market the supplement or is concerned enough to want to know that information for feeding thousands of colonies. What did it cost you, for example, to get an full analysis of your feeding goop? If you went to a good lab to get accurate results, it wasn't cheap.

MM


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## Keith Jarrett (Dec 10, 2006)

MapMan said:


> And Keith - why would alpha spend big bucks to get a nutritional analysis at this stage for essentially a free waste product? I can understand if he goes on to either market the supplement or is concerned enough to want to know that information for feeding thousands of colonies. What did it cost you, for example, to get an full analysis of your feeding goop? If you went to a good lab to get accurate results, it wasn't cheap.
> 
> MM


MM, that's a good question.

First, if we ask ourselves what is "free" . 

When I leave my door step in the morning that's when free stops.

What about all the steps it takes from, supplies, mixing, delivery, applying ect... 
Those are not free steps. In this day a age success is where experience & opportunity meet, In this case, free & luck = ????


What is your risk to gain ratio???

Brewers yeast is CHEAP, @ a 20lb per hive fall( patties) my brewers yeast cost is $4.50 per hive.


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## Tom G. Laury (May 24, 2008)

*Yeast*

Whether it'd wort or lees aren't those mostly dead cells?


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## Ben Brewcat (Oct 27, 2004)

MapMan said:


> So Ben, are you saying that the yeast which one would buy as "Dried Brewers Yeast" in 50 lb sacks for use as a supplemental feed for livestock and bees isn't the spent yeast after fermentation, but rather the cultured pre-fermentation yeast?
> MM


I don't know for sure where they get it, but I'd be pretty surprised if it's re-used. I don't know any breweries that do anything but send it down the drain (though spent grain is frequently sold or given away as feed). Yeasts are cultured commercially in HUGE quantities, so it seems like it'd be more economical to buy dried yeast than to re-use liquid slurry that comes in relatively small amounts, dry it, re-grind it, re-package and distribute. 

But to be honest I've always just assumed that, I don't know for sure that it's first-run yeast.

Tom: actually the lees are live yeast, they've just completed their reproductive cycle and lain down to rest. Essentially that's how yeast survive. They're pretty amazing really. They can wait for years and years until some sugars and oxygen come their way, then they wake up and orgy frantically to build up lots of daughter cells so that the next time conditions are right, enough will be alive to do it all over again. They're one of nature's more amazing survivors. We brewers and vintners just align our practices to take advantage of their natural predilictions to have the output be what we are looking for (sound familiar?) 

With careful attention to yeast health, the cake of lees can be a great way to have a very strong pitch for a challenging ferment (barleywines, high-grav meads, low-nutrient ciders or cysers, etc). But you run the risk of the reasons Alpha's friend limits re-use to a few times: each time you're also increasing the numbers of any contaminant organisms right along with your selected strain (increasing risk of off-flavors), and even with great sanitary technique the yeast are reproducing over huge numbers of generations and some "drift" occurrs. The strain doesn't remain true to type for long without going back to the source strain.


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## MapMan (May 24, 2007)

Ben Brewcat said:


> I don't know for sure where they get it, but I'd be pretty surprised if it's re-used. I don't know any breweries that do anything but send it down the drain (though spent grain is frequently sold or given away as feed). Yeasts are cultured commercially in HUGE quantities, so it seems like it'd be more economical to buy dried yeast than to re-use liquid slurry that comes in relatively small amounts, dry it, re-grind it, re-package and distribute.
> 
> But to be honest I've always just assumed that, I don't know for sure that it's first-run yeast.


From wisbiorefine.org:

DESCRIPTION
Over the course of brewing, the yeast involved in brewing can quadruple in quantity. This spent yeast is removed from the liquid through filtering, suctioning or settling. As much yeast as possible is reused in the process; excess yeast is sold off. Brewers yeast is a fine, light brown powder.
CLASSIFICATION
Proteins
SOURCE INDUSTRY
Breweries
ANNUAL VOLUME GENERATED IN WISCONSIN
5-10 lbs/barrel beer
CURRENT APPLICATIONS
Process reuse, animal consumption, nutraceutical



MM


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## Ben Brewcat (Oct 27, 2004)

Interesting website! A laudable goal, good for them. I wonder, did anything come up as to whether that's the industry norm or are they pioneering reuse of yeast?


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## MapMan (May 24, 2007)

Ben Brewcat said:


> Interesting website! A laudable goal, good for them. I wonder, did anything come up as to whether that's the industry norm or are they pioneering reuse of yeast?


It's a common practice.

See: http://www.wyeastlab.com/com-yeast-harvest.cfm

Viable yeast stays in suspension longer than the spent yeast.

Since the U.S. produces in excess of 200 million barrels of beer, multiply that to the 5-10 lbs of spent yeast you can get per barrel, the amount of brewers yeast as a waste product in substantial. It isn't sent down the drain, at least for the major producers - they want to reuse a portion of the yeast, and send the older generation out to be processed for feed.


MM


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## MapMan (May 24, 2007)

Ben, I don't know if you have seen this page, but they have some excellent podcasts on homebrewing and talk about the process of reusing the yeast slurry:

http://yeastslurry.beerfeed.com/

Makes sense to reuse the yeast if possible - save on cost/batch.


MM


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## PCM (Sep 18, 2007)

Anheuser Bush has shipped it out to feedstock producers by the semi-load for years, I know the St.Louis plant ships as far as Nebraska, probably farther.

PCM


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## Ben Brewcat (Oct 27, 2004)

Learn something every day! I'm pretty familiar with yeast harvest for re-use in brewing, I even ranched my own yeast for a few years. One thing I've noticed also is that feed yeast is a different consistency than brewing yeast; the feed yeast is a much finer powder. Maybe this is why?


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## xC0000005 (Nov 17, 2004)

There's a research paper on bee digestion of yeast that I can't get ahold of (Peng, Y.S., M.E. Nasr, J.M. Marston and Y. Fang. 1984. Digestion of Torula yeast, Canadida utilis, by the adult honeybee, Apis mellifera. Ann. Entomol. Soc. Am. 77)- if someone else has it (and wouldn't mind sharing it) I'd appreciate it. Without knowning how yeast would be burst and where in the bee's digestive tract it would occur, I'd have trouble saying what value there is in different types of yeast. And without a protein/lipid/water soluable vitamine analysis it would be even more difficult to say what the maximum nutritional value could be.


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## alpha6 (May 12, 2008)

Update...

After several experiments I came up with the following results. 

Add liquid yeast to dry mix, not the other way around. The first time I ended up wasting a good amount of sugar that I am sure is producing some kind of adult beverage as we speak.

Second go around I added the yeast to sugar to make a thick paste then added canola oil, tyeme oil, and lemon grass oil. The patties came out a good consistency but I think the mixture is a bit off. Too much sugar and not enough yeast.

I left out too early to place them this morning, but plan to this evening. We will see how they do.

In the interim I am going to get cheesecloth and filter the yeast out and let it dry or at least get it near dry. I think I can control the mixture much better in this case and get more in line with the mix I would like.

Stay tuned.


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## alpha6 (May 12, 2008)

Further update.

The first patties are being taken by the bees. My strongest hives have already devoured them and the weaker ones are working feverishly on theirs.

After further reading I found that the brewers yeast bought at GNC and other stores is pasteurized or heated in some fashion to kill the active yeast. So after straining out the bulk I heated it in the oven to kill the active yeast. It's cooling right now, I will get the results of this latest test as soon as I get the results. 

The search goes on.


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## alpha6 (May 12, 2008)

*Success*

The heating of the brewers yeast was the key. After heating and cooling I was able to mix with sugar and the other ingredients to make a nice thick paste that I can now spoon into the hives.

The final formula goes as such:

3 lbs of sugar
3/4 cup of liquid (de-activated) brewers yeast
Thyme Oil, Spearmint Oil, Lemongrass Oil and water - 1/4 cup
Crisco - 1 Table spoon

This will make a little over 6 1/2 lb patties

Thyme and Essential Oil Mix:

1 Cup of hot water
1 Tsp of Lecithin
1 Tsp of Thyme Oil
1/4 Tsp of Spearmint Oil
1/4 Tsp of Lemongrass Oil

My costs are running about .35 cents per pattie or about .70 cents per lb.

The good thing about this is that in addition to boosting feed the bees are also getting treatment for varroa mites (killed on contact with essential oils) and nosema. 

More recently, the suppressive effects of thymol have been demonstrated against parasitic mites of
European honeybees (Apis mellifera) including Varroa jacobsoni (Calderone, 1999; Sammataro et al.,
1998) and Acarapis woodi (Calderone et al., 1997). Honeybees are tolerant to the use of thymol
(Imdorf et al., 1995). The action of thymol as a miticide is not clear, but it is known to be most
effective in the absence of honeybee brood (Calderone et al., 1997). Thymol is not detectable by taste
in honey at concentrations less than 1.1 mg/kg (Bogdanov et al., 1998). The toxicity of thymol (LD50),
as determined by oral dose in rats, is 980 milligrams (mg) per kilogram (kg) of body weight (Lenga,
1988).
*Anecdotal evidence suggests that thymol may suppress nosema disease in honeybees (Brown, personal
communication). Over a period of 20 years, wintering honeybees were fed sugar syrup containing
0.44mM thymol as a preservative. During this period of time, no incidence of nosema disease was
recorded in these honeybee colonies*


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## Specialkayme (Sep 4, 2005)

WAY late on this thread. Sorry Alpha. 

Do you still use old brewer's yeast? Is your formula still the same as above?

If you don't mind me asking, what temp to you cook the yeast to deactivate it?


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## LT (Aug 17, 2006)

Most of the wet yeast from a brewery is sold to a distillary usually close by that gets the alcohol out of the yeast to sell to gasoline companies for mixing with gas. ( Ethanol or Methonal)? Then it is dried to sell as everything from yeast pills, food nutrition additives, and livestock feed additives. Most seems to come out of the dryer at 40-45% protien. You can boil the alcohol out of it yourself. Search Beesource. A while back some one told how to do it. A pot over open flame I think


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## fhlowrimore (Jun 19, 2009)

This company, International Ingredient Corporation makes Bee Feed products.They have a 50# bag (Brewtech) Dried Brewers Yeast,preferred source of gently-dried,true brewers yeast for maximum palatabiity and yeast(@ 45% protein) for bees nutrition.
Their minimum shipping is 1000# equals 20 bags. I contacted Brushy Mountain(www.brushymountainbeefarm.com) for their support to add this product to their inventory on 01-14-2011. 
If you are interrested in this product Brewtech, email IICAG and request for
product specifications,analysis,features,and research information.
Then if you want less than 20 bags contact Brushy Mountain and let them
know your needs. Thanks Henry


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

Didn't notice the thread was so old. Sorry.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

? for Ben: What reading do you recommend for a newbie at making mead? I'll be getting Dadant's offerings and Brother Adam's book, but for now, I'm focusing on early profits in the bee biz - mostly increase colonies, queen rearing, and tons of woodwork. I get the feeling you may have a library. Others are welcome to comment.


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## c10250 (Feb 3, 2009)

alpha6 said:


> Thanks Ben,
> 
> The brewmaster was saying something about the number of generations yeast can be used before they start with a new batch, but it was all greek to me. He actually took part of the one I got to start a new batch, so I would guess it isn't totally depleted of its yeast qualities.
> 
> ...


I have to disagree with Ben. I've been a serious brewer for more than 20 years now, and I routinely re-use yeast for many batches of beer, some very high gravity beers too. The yest that you wind up with after fermentation is very similar to the yeast you start with (I only use liquid yeast). You can take this yeast right from the bottom of your fermentor, and put it into a new batch and BOOM . . . instant fermentaiton.

The reason you only go so many batches with the same yeast is because you inevitably will propagate contaminants (wild yeasts, and other micro-organisms) and start to get "off flavors". Some breweries that have good sanitation practices can go 20 generations. I generally stick to 5.

Ken


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## Specialkayme (Sep 4, 2005)

Red Oak Brewery gives a tour once a week and describes their brew system. You get to talk with their brewmaster and ask as many questions as you want. One question asked was how many times they re-use their yeast, if at all. The brewmaster explained that it depends on the type of beer (ale or lager). Ale yeast remains unchanged throughout the brewing process, so you can re-use the yeast indefinitely, assuming that you don't have any contaminants. He explained that there are some breweries that are claiming to have used the same yeast for over 100 years (somewhere in Europe). Lager yeast cells perform differently, though. The brewmaster explained that lager yeast cells are somewhat lazy by nature. They work for approximately 10 cycles before they start performing less economically than they did before, due mainly to the fact that the yeast cell changes somehow (I don't know the specifics). Red Oak produces lagers and replaces their yeast cells after 10 cycles.

Either way, a brewery will have excess yeast. Either they need to replace it every ___ cycles, or they re-use it. If they re-use it they still have more yeast produced from a barrel of beer than they will need to pitch the next barrel.

On a side note, I contacted a local microbrewery today about getting some yeast. He told me to come on in with some mason jars. Lol.


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## Taylors_Bees (Jan 17, 2011)

I know this post is old just seeing if I can git help To alpha6 I have a ? What temp do i set the oven at to kill active yeast I can get 5gal buck:scratch:ets of it to make protien sub paties


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## Specialkayme (Sep 4, 2005)

I've heard you just need to get it to 120 F, but I havn't confirmed that.


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## Taylors_Bees (Jan 17, 2011)

Ok 120F for how long in the oven


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## Taylors_Bees (Jan 17, 2011)

Ok 120F for how long in the oven


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## Taylors_Bees (Jan 17, 2011)

Ok 120F for how long in the oven


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## Specialkayme (Sep 4, 2005)

Wow, a Tripple Post! You don't come upon that every day! Lol, I'm just kidding 

You need to get the YEAST to 120F, not the oven. The time doesn't really matter, as long as the yeast is 120F.


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## Taylors_Bees (Jan 17, 2011)

Can you freeze pollon supplement if so how long


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## Specialkayme (Sep 4, 2005)

I'm not sure, but I wouldn't do it. The point of changing the temp is to 'deactivate it', or kill the yeast. Heating it kills the yeast for sure. When temps get lower, the yeast just goes dormant, or hibernates if you will. Freezing it may, or may not, deactivate it.

Just set the oven to 150, put it in there for 10 min, and you should be fine.


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