How to mail yeast for a trade

I was wondering what are the options for mailing yeast other than shipping in a cooler with ice of a slant or frozen yeast? Is it possible to ship a slant at room temp?

I don't have any actual experience shipping yeast but I don't know that a slant (being that it's such a small portion of yeast) would do too well at room temp. I'd ship in a well insulated package with cold packs to keep the temps down as low as possible.

freeze with dry ice and send it on its way.

Dry ice and over-night shipping. it isn't going to be cheap.

Maybe not what you're looking for, but I would make a starter, decant and put it in a sterilized White Labs vial or similar. I think slants are such a small sample size that it's too easy to get damaged while shipping.

you really don't need to go to any great lengths to ship. Throw the slants in a plastic bag and put an ice pack in there. I've done slant shipments between LA and TN and there was no problem. I just recultured the yeast upon arrival. A couple slants I waited over two months to even touch and still they cultured fine. Not sure how much died in transit, but in none of the slants did ALL yeast die.

ekjohns said:

I was wondering what are the options for mailing yeast other than shipping in a cooler with ice of a slant or frozen yeast? Is it possible to ship a slant at room temp?

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I think you can go for it and send it. Ideally the samples should be sent cold but I send other organisms through the mail all the time without putting them under ice. In fact freezing them and then sending them will drastically reduce viability as they thaw. In the summer it is a bit hot but you could send a liquid yeast culture in a screw top vial to get a lot of yeast growing in there in case any die.

I am starting up a Home Brewer's Yeast Collection that will deal directly with mailing yeast cultures through the mail.