What to do with old or extra yeast?
If you brew and brew a lot, you may get an excess pile of extra yeast packets. Often with our Mr. Beer Recipes, you will use a different yeast and not use the one that is under the lid of the HME.
Now most people will just save the yeast, or they will even toss it! Don’t ever toss the yeast, its always good to keep some backup yeasts lying around. You never know when you’re going to misplace a packet or possibly lose a packet of yeast, which can be devastating!
Can you imagine you are all done brewing, then you go to pitch your yeast, and it's gone! Noooo!!! Always, make sure you are saving these packets, and it's always a good idea to just buy a few extra and store them in your refrigerator for long term storage.
Another thing you can do with the excess yeast packets is to use them as yeast nutrients for your brew. This will help give your yeast a little more life and get it to a strong and healthy fermentation.
To do this you can add 1-2 of the gold packets, the little 5 gram packets that come under the lid of your HME, to the last 15 minutes of your boil.
Now what this does is it will kill the yeast, but it will keep the nutrients their to promote healthy yeast growth when you do pitch your new yeast.
This is great for those big brews that are 8%+ ABV. Those beers have a lot of fermentable sugars for the yeast to eat so giving them something to help them grow will help your fermentation.
So, always make sure to store those extra yeast packets in the refrigerator for long term storage and make sure to keep a few available just in case one gets missed placed. A bad brew day is no fun for anyone.
Cheers!
Robert