New Nottingham

Anyone buying Nottingham anymore? The new packaging is lovely but I wonder if tripling the price makes it worth buying anymore....?

I somehow got some in the new package but at the old price. Where I got it has since raised the price.

I got some for $2.50, roughly double what I used to pay. I'll just harvest a bit to get back to the old price!

At northern brewer is costs 75 cents more than us-05

I haven't seen the new packaging yet. I was at my lhbs and they still had the old package at $1.49.

I noticed the up in price too. It's sad because I was justifying not washing yeast anymore since Notty was so cheap. Now back to more work for me!

What about just making a starter and harvesting out of that? It would be easier than washing yeast. I plan to do this now that I have a stir plate.

ozzy1038 said:

What about just making a starter and harvesting out of that? It would be easier than washing yeast. I plan to do this now that I have a stir plate.

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I used to harvest and freeze all my yeasts until I started using Notty, now I just do for specialty yeasts I plan on using again (Belgians and such). Either way, harvesting is more of a pain than not.

Yeah. My point was to take notty and activate it and make a starter. Harvest half and put in the fridge. Thereby stretching your dollar.

I am a total noob and I have what may be a stupid question. In stead of any
harvesting whatsoever, exactly what prevents one from taking one of the bottles
from a batch and simply pouring it into a starter wort and going forward? Isn't
a bottled batch effectively a yeast farm? All you need to do in that case is keep
track of the strain used each particular batch? Is my thinking sound?

F me! I can remember a few years ago yeast was like $1.50 a packet. I can't fathom why they feel the need to raise prices 3x in a few years.

If these prices are staying, then the investment in keeping yeast in the freezer just got a higher priority!

In the very least, I'll have less incentive to choose dry over liquid for bigger beers.

Honestly, in the homebrewing world, they will very likely see a dramatic drop in sales.

chazzman said:

I am a total noob and I have what may be a stupid question. In stead of any
harvesting whatsoever, exactly what prevents one from taking one of the bottles
from a batch and simply pouring it into a starter wort and going forward? Isn't
a bottled batch effectively a yeast farm? All you need to do in that case is keep
track of the strain used each particular batch? Is my thinking sound?

Click to expand...

You certainly could do that. However, there are a couple problems you may encounter:

1) By only using the yeast from bottled beer, you are selecting the least flocculant of the yeast as your starting point, because the more flocculant yeast already settled out and never made it to the bottle. So you're essentially putting selective pressure on your yeast population towards lower and lower flocculation. You may or may not be concerned about this.

2) Since none of us are perfect about sanitation, you always have to consider the impact on yeast/bugs ratio that you have going on. A beer that has been sitting in the bottle for a while allows other microbes a chance to develop a bit bigger foothold, which means when you ramp that bottle up, the yeast/bug ratio will probably be less favorable.

And then there's the fact that you'll probably want to do a multi step starter to get a bottle's worth of yeast up to a pitchable quantity, but if that floats your boat, then its not really a "problem".

This may be a tangent, but did anyone else notice that White Labs now has Nottingham as a liquid (WLP039)? I'm wondering about the motivation for this (more expensive, but better QC maybe?).

yep, it's more expensive then us-05 now, but I still like it for english style ales.

frazier said:

This may be a tangent, but did anyone else notice that White Labs now has Nottingham as a liquid (WLP039)? I'm wondering about the motivation for this (more expensive, but better QC maybe?).

Click to expand...

I believe they always had liquid Notty. Some people prefer liquid, and Notty is #1 yeast used in UK breweries, so it's popular amongst home brewers all over the World.

strange that here its still more then 1$ less then us 05

Did USD and Euro fall that much more then CAD???

I am new so it was never that cheap for me. My LHBS has 05 50 cents cheaper. I might try notti tonight tho just because I have never used it before.

I buy my Notti off ebay for 1.99 a pack. There's a 2.00 shipping fee, so I get 10 at a time to average out to $2.20 a pack, not bad...

I paid 4 for the notti. To me 4 bucks is nothing. If I was using it as my house strain I suppose I could try to get it cheaper... Might be easier just to wash the yeast and stretch that 4 bucks way out.