What is the difference between brewers yeast and nutritional yeast?

What makes brewers yeast different from bakers yeast or nutritional yeast is that when it’s propagated/made it is going to be grown in a medium that is similar to its usage environment. So brewer's yeast for example will be propagated essentially in beer or something that very closely approximates beer.

Propagation of yeast requires four things in order to occur. Moisture, heat or temperature, food, in the case of brewers yeast sugar, and  time. It usually takes hours to a few days for a full propagation cycle to be complete.

One of the most common propagation techniques used for brewers yeast is called the one step, ten fold propagation, which is a long term that just means it's a single step where the yeast cells are multiplying ten times in each step. Yeast will be propagated as many times as it takes to get the proper pitch rate or total number of cells needed to allow the beer to ferment properly.

Once the yeast has been propagated to a proper cell count, we now have a liquid culture that is ready to pitch and make beer. But sometimes yeast manufacturers will take one extra step, with dehydration. This turns the liquid yeast into a dry yeast product.

Many breweries prefer dry yeast in some instances because it has a longer shelf life, and typically a lower cost.

Liquid yeast also has its advantages because it can be more customized to a brewery’s needs and there are more varieties of liquid yeast. The disadvantage of liquid yeast is that the shelf life isn't very good so once it's received by the brewery it needs to be pitched immediately.

Let us know what other questions you have related to yeast or beer in the comments!

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