Dry Vs. Liquid, techniques and my confusion

[othevad]

Hi guys.

So I'm in the planning phase of opening a Nano. I've been homebrewing for a number of years and like many of you are taking the jump to a larger stage.
I've visited with a few breweries in my area and sat in on brew days, asked tons of questions and got the general lay of the land.
The one thing that confused me about all the places I visited (varying from 3 to 10bbl brew systems) is that they all pitched a brick of fermentis directly into their fermenters.
Is this common practice? I've always used liquid and grown a starter for my own home purposes.
So what's the deal?
These places all reuse their yeast for a number of generations but were all labless breweries, so they don't have culture control and generally run about 5-8 brews before
pitching a fresh batch of yeast.
Anyone care to enlighten me?
Thanks

[JDrum]

We use Fermentis yeast as well, and pitch directly into the fermenter. My knockout temp is generally 82-84F, and my batches are 9BBL. With the time it takes to complete knockout (about 40 minutes), plus usually an hour or so, the yeast have enough time to rehydrate and get comfy. Before I leave for the day I turn the FV down to fermentation temp. By the next morning I can count on active fermentation.

This yeast does perform well on repitch; however I have never repitched more than twice so I can't speak for it's performance after that though I understand people have had success.

[Matt Dog]

In my experience most probrewers use liquid pitches from Wyeast or Whitelabs. Some buy full pitchable quantities and some grow them up from smaller pitches. Almost all repitch anywhere from 2-100 gens with somewhere between 6-15 being reasonably average. Nothing wrong with dry yeast. Less hassle, cheaper, but not nearly as much variety and its not as re-pitchable so it is not cheaper if you are going to repitch in the higher generations. Its all about your individual situation and what you will be doing regularly. Scheduling is a big determiner of what works best. If you are brewing constantly I would lean towards liquid and keep it fresh. Intermittently might be better suited to dry.

[SeattleBrewer]

The last brewery I was operating, we used US-05 as our house strain and we would pitch 1KG (2 bricks) directly into the ferm through the door while casting out. (15 bbl batch) We found that the ferment is a few days longer with the first pitch, but flavor profile is good. We didn't rehydrate either. Keep in mind that you are going to not get 100% out of dried yeast if you are not rehydrating. So overpitch a bit. We harvested and repitched this yeast upwards of 10 times without issues. In fact, around Gen 8, it was attenuative, fast, flocculant, and delicious. At $100 for a new prop of yeast for a full batch, it's a good deal for a brewery on a budget.
I've also used liquid cultures at other breweries and they are great. Propping them up can be a bit of a drag depending on how you do it. But you get more variety and can get exactly the yeast you are looking for.
Cheers and good luck
Greg