Keeping dry yeast cold?

Yes keep the dry yeast in the fridge. Hops in the freezer.

I usually take the yeast out of the fridge when I start prepping and let it warm to room temp on its own.

 

I also suggest checking the yeast manufactures website. There is usually some good information on there on how to handle the yeast, how to rehydrate it if you want to and what temps are best for fermentation.

 

Refrigerating dry yeasts will maximize their shelf-life.

Assuming your kit's dry yeast will be pitched well before its max shelf-life of two years...there's no need to refigerate.

 

Colder is better, but it will keep months at room temperature. Viability will drop slowly with age, but there's plenty of headroom. I wouldn't sweat it.

 

i've kept bread yeast in the freezer...i'm sure you can keep brewers yeast in the freezer as well, but I always keep them in the fridge anyway.

 

You might be interested in this Q&A from the Danstar website:

I have always frozen my dried yeasts after purchase and before use. I have not noticed any detriment to the final product, but I seem to remember reading somewhere in that past year or so not to freeze dry yeast, perhaps even on a package. Is it acceptable to freeze dry yeast or is there some detriment to the practice?

Cheers,
Mike Dixon


RESPONSE:

Mike,

You are right; we had stated in our old technical data sheet that dry yeast should not be frozen. However in the last 3 years we had a project running to optimize storage conditions for dried yeast. We stored several lots of vacuum packed dried yeast at room temperature, in a refrigerator and in a freezer and determined viability, vitality and fermentation performance every 3 month for two years. The results indicated that freezing the yeast does not harm the yeast but is even better than storing the yeast at room temperature. BUT for all storage temperatures it is very important that the yeast is still vacuum sealed. Air/oxygen is doing more damage to the yeast than any difference in storage temperature.

Regards,

Forbes & Tobias

 

Interesting. I notice they didn't specify the temperature of their freezer though. There's frozen and then there's frozen. I wonder what the lower limit, if any, would be.

 

to add onto that, would the thaw cycle of most common freezers cause long term stress/damage compared to the fridge

 

I routinely buy Baker's yeast in 2# foil brick packs at Costco. After I take out what I need, I fold the top down, put a rubber band around the bag to hold it closed, and store it in the fridge. 2 years past the expiration date, it still does a fine job on bread. I'm not suggesting that this is a technique I would use with Brewer's yeast, but it seems that age and exposure to O2 may not be a damaging to dry yeast as intuition would have you believe.