Performance of yeasts on industrial processes can be dramatically improved by immobilization of thebiocatalyst. The immobilization of Saccharomyces cerevisiae inside monolithic macroporous hydrogelswere produced by in-situ polymerization of acrylamide around a live yeast suspension under cryoge-lation conditions. Preculture of the yeasts was not necessary and this innovative and simple procedureis amenable to scaling-up to industrial production. The yeasts were efficiently retained in monolithichydrogels, presenting excellent mechanical properties and high cell viability. Macroporous hydrogelsshowed a fast mass transport allowing the hydrogel-yeast complexes achieved similar ethanol yield andproductivity than free yeasts, which is larger than those reached with yeasts immobilized in compacthydrogels. Moreover, the same yeasts were able to maintain its activity by up to five reaction cycles witha cell single batch during fermentation reactions.