Beer Yeast Powder: What It Is and How It Relates to Dried Brewer's Yeast

In short: beer yeast powder is dried, inactive brewer's yeast, the yeast recovered after beer fermentation and dried into a free-flowing powder. Brewer yeast powder, dried brewer's yeast and brewers dried yeast describe the same feed ingredient. The names differ by market and by trade habit. The specification, with crude protein of 40% or more for export grades, is what tells two offers apart.

Buyers meet this ingredient under half a dozen names on price lists, customs papers and labels. This guide sets the names side by side, shows which one each regulator uses, and lists the figures to check so that offers written in different vocabulary can be compared on the same basis.

Which names mean the same product?

What is beer yeast powder not?

Three neighbouring products are often confused with it. Yeast extract is the soluble fraction of the cell, sold at a much higher price for flavour use. Live yeast is an active culture dosed in grams per tonne, where beer yeast powder is an inactive protein ingredient dosed in percent. Nutritional yeast is grown on purpose for human food, where brewer's yeast comes from the brewery.

Which figures should a specification show?

Whatever name is on the offer, ask for the same short list. TBESBY dried brewer's yeast is specified at 40 to 46% crude protein, moisture below 10% and ash below 6%, with lysine at 30.5 g/kg of product. It is drum-dried at our own facilities in Vietnam from fresh brewer's yeast collected at leading international breweries in Vietnam, and it is inactive when it leaves the dryer.

• Crude protein, stated as fed, with the test method.
• Moisture and ash, because both dilute protein.
• Drying method. Drum drying gives a heat-treated, inactive product.
• Raw material origin: yeast from beer brewing, with nothing else added.
• A certificate of analysis for the lot being shipped.

Where is beer yeast powder used?

The main uses are dog and cat food, where it supplies protein, B vitamins and a savoury base, shrimp and fish feed, where it replaces part of the fish meal, and pig, poultry and ruminant feed. Inclusion rates by species are set out in each of those guides.

Where does it come from in the brewery?

A brewery produces two main solid co-products. The first is spent grain from the brewhouse, which Mussatto, Dragone and Roberto (2006) put at about 85% of all brewing by-products. The second is yeast. During fermentation the yeast multiplies several times over, and the brewery keeps only part of it for the next batch. The surplus is drawn off as a slurry, and in their 2020 review in Fermentation, Jaeger and colleagues at University College Cork describe it as the second-largest by-product of the industry and one that is rich in protein, vitamins and minerals.

That slurry is the raw material for beer yeast powder. It has to be collected fresh and dried quickly, and the drying step is what turns a perishable liquid into a traded ingredient. Feedipedia, citing Hertrampf and Piedad-Pascual (2000), notes that brewer's yeast is usually drum-dried. On a drum dryer the slurry is spread as a thin film on a steam-heated roller, dried in seconds and scraped off as flakes that are then milled to powder. The heat inactivates the cells, which is why the EU and UK feed catalogues can require the product to be inactivated and a drum-dried product meets that condition as made.

What do published feed tables report?

Feedipedia, the feed database run by INRAE, CIRAD, AFZ and FAO, pools 108 analyses of dehydrated brewer's yeast. Crude protein averages 48.9% of dry matter, with a range of 39.3 to 56.8%. Ash averages 7.0% of dry matter, lysine is 6.3% of the protein, and the datasheet calls the ingredient an excellent source of B-complex vitamins. The range is wide because breweries differ in yeast strain, recipe and how the yeast is handled before drying, so a buyer should work from the supplier's specification. The full amino acid table is in our amino acid profile guide.

How much is used, by species?

These are levels reported in the literature. The right rate for a given formula depends on the other protein sources and the target nutrient profile, and it is set by the formulator.

How should the name appear on your documents?

Trade names are fine on a price list, but the paperwork should use the name your regulator recognises, and it should be the same on every document. Ask the supplier to print one description on the specification, the certificate of analysis, the commercial invoice and the bag label. For the United States that is brewers dried yeast. For the EU and UK it is brewers' yeast, with the catalogue number 12.1.5 where your labelling team wants it. The customs description should point to HS 2102.20. When the four documents agree, border checks and your own intake inspection go faster, because nobody has to ask whether "beer yeast powder" on the invoice and "brewers dried yeast" on the label are the same goods.

The full TBESBY specification is on the product page.

Sources

• Jaeger, A., Arendt, E.K., Zannini, E. and Sahin, A.W. (2020). Brewer's spent yeast (BSY), an underutilized brewing by-product. Fermentation, 6(4), 123.
• Mussatto, S.I., Dragone, G. and Roberto, I.C. (2006). Brewers' spent grain: generation, characteristics and potential applications. Journal of Cereal Science, 43(1), 1-14.
• Feedipedia, Brewers yeast datasheet (INRAE, CIRAD, AFZ and FAO), feedipedia.org/node/72.
• Davenport et al. (2023). Translational Animal Science: dried yeast in extruded dog and cat diets.