Distillery effluent from rice spirit production was utilized for high cell density cultivation of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Different modes of yeast culture, including batch, fed-batch and continuous, were carried out When pretreated stillage was used as the medium in batch culture, the yeast concentration reached 6 g (dry wt)/litre. Since the pH increased with growth during batch culture, a fed-batch technique with pH control was developed and cell concentration increased to 20 g (dry wt)/litre. In continuous culture, when the dilution rate was maintained at 0.016-0.036/h, cell concentration reached 70 g (dry wt)/litre and the average residual sugar remained below 0.4 g/litre. The results proved the feasibility of the use of thin stillage for yeast culture.