My usual HBS will no longer carry Wyeast!

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starrfish

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Location
Florence, SC
My usual HBS will no longer carry Wyeast! "09/15/2011: We have decided to discontinue our long association with Wyeast Labs."

I'm really bummed about this!:mad:

good news is they are running a sale on it @ 25% off.
 
I can see at least one reason why. Follow my reasoning here. Yeast is a perishable product. There are two major suppliers of liquid yeast. Wyeast has 50 varieties of brewer's yeast, plus wine, mead, cider and sake yeasts. White labs, about the same.

So if a homebrew store wants to be THE local source for everyone who wants to ferment something, the owner must stock at least 100 strains of yeast. Now, I pay $7 for an XL smack pack. I don't know what the exact margin is, but a pretty standard retail markup is 100%, so for argument's sake let's say he paid $3.50 per pack. If he's smart, he'll stock multiples of the most popular strains, like 1056 and WLP001, so you can at least double the amount of units ordered, probably triple it.

That's a lot of inventory spoiling on your shelf.

If the locals aren't buying it - maybe they're using mostly dry yeasts or White Labs - it makes perfect sense to drop the line. If he doesn't he's going to throw good money after bad, letting smack pack after smack pack go out of date (spoil). That's loss. A good business doesn't tolerate loss.

Bob
 
I can see at least one reason why. Follow my reasoning here. Yeast is a perishable product. There are two major suppliers of liquid yeast. Wyeast has 50 varieties of brewer's yeast, plus wine, mead, cider and sake yeasts. White labs, about the same.

So if a homebrew store wants to be THE local source for everyone who wants to ferment something, the owner must stock at least 100 strains of yeast. Now, I pay $7 for an XL smack pack. I don't know what the exact margin is, but a pretty standard retail markup is 100%, so for argument's sake let's say he paid $3.50 per pack. If he's smart, he'll stock multiples of the most popular strains, like 1056 and WLP001, so you can at least double the amount of units ordered, probably triple it.

That's a lot of inventory spoiling on your shelf.

If the locals aren't buying it - maybe they're using mostly dry yeasts or White Labs - it makes perfect sense to drop the line. If he doesn't he's going to throw good money after bad, letting smack pack after smack pack go out of date (spoil). That's loss. A good business doesn't tolerate loss.

Bob

Exactly what I was thinking; he's tossing too much expired yeast. I'd rather have a shop that carries most everything that one supplier has, than one that just carried the top sellers from both providers. There's so much overlap between the two suppliers, anyway.
 
I can see at least one reason why. Follow my reasoning here. Yeast is a perishable product. There are two major suppliers of liquid yeast. Wyeast has 50 varieties of brewer's yeast, plus wine, mead, cider and sake yeasts. White labs, about the same.

So if a homebrew store wants to be THE local source for everyone who wants to ferment something, the owner must stock at least 100 strains of yeast. Now, I pay $7 for an XL smack pack. I don't know what the exact margin is, but a pretty standard retail markup is 100%, so for argument's sake let's say he paid $3.50 per pack. If he's smart, he'll stock multiples of the most popular strains, like 1056 and WLP001, so you can at least double the amount of units ordered, probably triple it.

That's a lot of inventory spoiling on your shelf.

If the locals aren't buying it - maybe they're using mostly dry yeasts or White Labs - it makes perfect sense to drop the line. If he doesn't he's going to throw good money after bad, letting smack pack after smack pack go out of date (spoil). That's loss. A good business doesn't tolerate loss.

Bob

This is exactly why the hbs in the Quebec area will usually stock only the top 5 strains from their liquid yeast provider (mainly wyeast, I know one guy who has white labs) and 4 times a year, you can place an order for whatever yeast you want and they get a fresh pack from the manufacturer for you.

It's a bit more hassle than just walking in and buying what you want, but at least it allows the shops to continue to carry liquid yeast.
 
times like this makes me glad my LHBS is Northern Brewer.

wyeast i bought yesterday was manf. last week.
 
With the price of dry yeast going up more, and the price of liquid already high, I'm preparing to wash and freeze my yeast so I can have a decent selection on hand all the time.

Got my canner for sterilizing, and some Glycerin to keep them from being damaged too badly by the freeze. Just need to pick up some more vials.
 
Just wash yeast and/or harvest from commercial examples. I have brewed nearly 1000 gallons of beer and have purchased only five units of liquid yeast. I choose my strains carefully and wash yeast from the first fermentation (generation) on strains I want to keep around.

Heck, if you wash WLP001 or 1056 that can really brew almost anything...
 
Bob is right. I work in a homebrew shop and while we use to carry both brands we ended up dropping Wyeast. People were having a lot of problems with it and it was too expensive to have at least 2 of each strain in stock. Hell, the smack packs were swelling up in our shop before we could even sell them. You could return them ... but who wants to put up with all that hassle? IIRC Wyeast was more expensive shipping & product wise, too. They're product also takes up a lot more room.

You would not believe the price of shipping on yeast. The yeast itself is not cheap either, it's not a huge mark up like you think it is. If we marked up the same as we do other products the cost would be $10+ a vial.

I would not be upset with the LHBS, they are making a move for the better. Sure there's some strains that only Wyeast will have but most of them have White Labs equivalents. They can't cater to everyone. I would just do like others suggested; buy some Wyeast and wash it.
 
I guess I need to give white labs a try... and wash the wyeast I have in stock.
just never used white labs in any brew always have used wyeast or dry.
 
Take me back in time and explain why the price of yeast has skyrocketed recently. I used to buy Fermentis products for $1.50 a pack...Now it's $4.50 an pack.

Wyeast and White Labs has gone up as well right along with Winsor and Notingham from Lallemand. What is driving this?
 
Take me back in time and explain why the price of yeast has skyrocketed recently. I used to buy Fermentis products for $1.50 a pack...Now it's $4.50 an pack.

Wyeast and White Labs has gone up as well right along with Winsor and Notingham from Lallemand. What is driving this?

demand? also liquid yeast, for me, hasn't gone up....
 
Why freeze stressed/washed yeast when you can farm it ahead of time and freeze it while it's nice and healthy? Check out my post.
 
Take me back in time and explain why the price of yeast has skyrocketed recently. I used to buy Fermentis products for $1.50 a pack...Now it's $4.50 an pack.

Wyeast and White Labs has gone up as well right along with Winsor and Notingham from Lallemand. What is driving this?

It's probably a combination of factors, including demand. As everyone is aware, energy costs are skyrocketing, too, and producing a biological product which spoils at the drop of a thermometer is extremely energy-intensive. Packaging in plastic is price-dependent on petrochemical prices. Transportation costs have gone WAY up.

Frankly, I think the price of those products has been kept artificially low for quite a long while (like fuel prices in the USA).* What chefchrish wrote above bears this out: Retailers would rather reduce their margins on yeast because if they marked it up to where it should be, their customers would suffer apoplexy. These increases are probably just a natural market adjustment to a more appropriate price point. Really, for all that goes into a vial or smack-pack of yeast, we really ought to be paying well over $10, probably closer to $20. Don't like it? Make friends with your local pub- or micro-brewer. If you're cool, you can probably get all the yeast you want for free. ;)

Cheers,

Bob

* Probably because homebrewers are by and large parsimonious and bitchy. ;) We really do ***** a lot about prices and start using horrid words like "ripoff" when prices adjust naturally, or when confronted with a premium product. It's funny - the same guys who'll buy a bottle of Pliny for any price will kvetch like a pauper if they're asked to pay another $0.25 per pound for pale malt. :rolleyes:
 
Starfish, I'm guessing your in the CLT area??? I have used both the smackpacks ans the White Labs yeast, while i'm no master yeast yoda or anything. Only diff I could tell between the two in my two Oct fest's was one was cool to watch swell the other made me feel like a mad brewer.

Moe:)
 
I'm actually down in Florence SC, but the shop in CLT is the closest I've found that has what I need most every time. I online order, and have my stuff in a day or two.

It's really no big deal I just need to relearn all the yeast numbers and find equivs. I just don't like change. Wyeast has been good for me. :mug:

Have a few more batches to go before I use up my stock of washed and unopened packs.
 
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