snail

Recipes 

I always use Mr. Malty's Pitching Rate Calculator before I brew to make an appropriate starter. The viability of White Labs vials are based on the date 4 months prior to the best buy date. I just got three vials with May 6 2011 best buy dates. That puts the production date at 1/6/2011. Today is 1/5/2011, do I still use 1/6/2011 as the production date?

rockfish42

Recipes 

That's true unless they're bacteria or the sour mix which I think is 6 months.

snail

Recipes 

Yeah it's WLP007

Beerrific

Recipes 

This has happened to me as well but it has never been off by more than a day. Best I can figure is they aim for a date that will get them close to when it should be on shelves in the homebrew shop. I mean, they are printing these labels ahead of time, maybe with a specific date to fill as a goal and the yeast might be ready early.

Also "4 months" is not exact. Is 4 months from today 5/5? Or is it 30x4 days. Or 4x4 weeks? Anyway, just use today as the date for the Mr Malty (or maybe like 3 days ago) will get you close enough.

snail

Recipes 

Yeah thats what I figured. I was just going use Jan 1st and make the starter based on that. Still, thats impressive getting the yeast with almost 100% viability.

ajf

Recipes 

If you can use the Mr Malty calculator to enter a production date in the future, you're cleverer than I am. The calculator does not allow this.

-a.

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