Waste Management

[Tom]

I'm brewing 5 gallons-ish of beer once a week at the minute, and as my efficiency is about 60%, that can be quite a lot of spent material!

I'm not talking about grain (farmer gets those), or the hops (mulch or compost), but what do you do with all that waste yeast? I can only reasonable store one lucozade bottle of yeast slurry of each type in the fridge, and the rest...

I only ask because some particularly flocculant US05 is glued to the bottom of the toilet pan, and I'm thinking down the drain may not be the best long term solution.

[Tom]

But there's still exponential growth there, with three vials for every batch, which in turn creates three batches etc. It's the other litre-odd of yeast I'm concerned with.

I use lucozade bottles as vials because the airlock and bungs fit in the tops nicely. I do struggle to get the yeast back out though.

[Will_D]

My spent yeast / trub goes on the compost heap.

[Tom]

Compost sounds good and clever. How does it affect the compost though? Does it go on dead and decompose, or does it go on live and sort of ferment stuff, like apple peel etc?

[Spud395]

You could always try make marmite, although I cant see eating your way through 1L a week either 

[irish_goat]

Has anyone any experience with freezing and then feeding defrosted spent grain to hens?

I've bought a mash tun so will have a few kilos of grains every brew. My parents have hens but I can't guarantee they'll be able to collect the grain immediately after each brew so I'm wondering if I bag and freeze it will the hens still eat it? There's an AGA at my parent's house so they'd be able to dry it out easy enough anyway.

[LordEoin]

I looked into this recently and apparently there's no harm at all in putting the yeast down the sink/toilet even if you have a septic tank.
Some people say it will even improve the tank

I've not frozen/defrosted grain for my hens, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work.
Just don't freeze it as a single block

[Will_D]

Try freezing portions in yoghurt pots or something similar at about 1/4 to 1/2 a pint.

Then you can just put one out for the chickens to peck away at as they defrost - ideal in summer to keepthe chickens cool.

In cold winter defrost first in the house.

[TheSumOfAllBeers]

Just to confirm, you are not storing *all* of the yeast cake? The goal of washing yeast is to optimise the amount of live yeast cells. You dont want any of the break or krausen material, hops, lipids and proteins in your yeast jars.

The dead yeast can be cooked in soups - think of adding some to a french onion soup.

You dont need to be storing all of your yeast, I would probably only store very expensive liquid yeasts that worked well for me.

Also, if you start doing larger batches, that may require you to double pitch, that will eat into a yeast stock pile also.

Also look into options for freezing yeast. Its a bit more technical, but the cultures then become easier to store.

[Tom]

Think I'm going to get into slanting soon, but for now it's lucozade bottles with bubblers still. Probably over pitch, TBH.

As for grain, I have a local goat farmer who takes mine off me. I bin it if I can't get it to them within two days. The smell... it's firkin AWFUL.

[LordEoin]

Oh, I forgot to say.. I use the yeast on the compost heap sometimes too

[TheSumOfAllBeers]

That waste grain - you have got maybe a day to get rid of it. 2 is pushing it. I wish I had a better place to dump it than our apartment mutual skip. There is no way in hell I am taking regular waste down there after an IPA grist has been sitting there for a week.

If its dark I can feed the fishes in the canal (I like the crane that keeps visiting).

I sometimes feed the birds with it, and the water hens have a taste for it as long as there is no roast grains in the bill, but it gets messy when they dont finish all of it, and I would be concerned that it may attract rats.

There are a couple of city farms nearby that may be able to take some of it, if I time it well. But yeah wish there was better options for grain disposal.

[ColMack]

I've been chucking yeast cake onto my hops for the last few months, mixing it in with the manure.  Hasn't done it any harm I don't think.
Grain to the local hens (couple of neighbours have them), they love it and seem to lay better I'm told.  I generally get a half a dozen eggs in return for each bucket of spent grain.
Hops on compost heap and/or base of hop plant.

[Cathal O D]

Compost sounds good and clever. How does it affect the compost though? Does it go on dead and decompose, or does it go on live and sort of ferment stuff, like apple peel etc?

I had a small indoor composter when I lived overseas. Instead of the waste decomposing it fermented using "special cultures". We kept it under the sink. There was no smell unless you opened it and even then it was a nice sweet smell not unlike fermenting beer.

Turns out it was a type of yeast that you sprinkle on top of the waste each time you topped it up. It would take about 2 weeks to fill the compost bucket and then you burried it in the garden. It would turn into the darkest most fertile looking soil in a few weeks. They also recommended putting some "special cultures" in septic tanks.

So in short yeast is good for your compost and septic tanks.

[irish_goat]

I like the yoghurt pot idea, will try that. Should I try and limit the amount of dark grains? I could keep them to one side of the mash tun.

Yeast I don't keep just gets poured down the outside drain but I used to throw it over the compost at my parents.