Nottingham Yeast recall

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I brewed 10 gals. of pale ale last Friday and I split the batch into two carboys. 3 days later I had to re-pitch a second pack of yeast into one carboy and a few hours later it was bubbling away. The other batch started fermenting the first day. I had no idea about this recall until I found this thread, I will have to dig in the trash and see if one of them has the right number.
 
I was a little nervous using my Notty yeast yesterday. I pitched the packet I had, which of course was the recall batch. I am happy to report though that fermentation began within 24 hours. So as long as it doesnt poop out or something, all is well.
 
Ya know what I think is kinda sad...there is nothing about the recall on their site. I went into my LHBS today looking to get some stuff and swung through the dry yeast. There is a bin full of the recalled yeast.
 
interesting, i had some slow to start batches with notty. but my last beer did finally start and seems to be doing well, i haven't checked the gravity though, i'll have to do that tomorrow or sometime soon.
 
I picked up a notty just to keep it around last week and wouldn't you know it is one of the bad batch.

At least I found out before I pitched it.
 
Pitched a packet from this batch a few days ago and fermentation took off fairly quickly. But, still have the other three packets i got at my LHBS from the same lot and will be returning those and alerting the shop about their recalled yeast.

Kudos to Danstar for letting this be known!
 
Thanks for the heads-up. I found one bad packet in my small stock.

Notty's reputation as a great dry yeast is obviously well earned. Here's hoping the problem is resolved. The more options, the better.
 
I brewed yesterday and when I went to pitch the yeast, I had 3 satches purchased at 3 different times. All from the recall lot. Still nothing today. I'm going to the LHBS tuesday on my lunch break so I'll just grab something else when I'm there and ship my other 2 back. I could probably find the one I pitched yesterday in the trash and send that one too.
 
Too late for me...

Back in late July I brewed 15 gallons with this lot of Notty...

A Nut Brown never really finished-FG was .021 should have been .012

An American Amber-again finished at .016 should have been .011-.012

A Maris Otter Irish Red. Never started....051 OG, .051 after 76 hours. Finished at .016. I even mashed this one low at 151F to get it to dry out more.

None of these really "took off" like any other Notty brew. I'm going to switch over to S-04 and S-05 for a while.
 
I've been having problems too for months. The beer seems to finish off well, but the lag has been unusually long.

I brewed my last beer on a Sunday and it was not until that Wednesday when it started to take off.
 
guys - it still works fine - there's just a longer lag time than normal

(but I sent my two packs back :D)

I've been waiting a few weeks to see if I can confirm the sentiment above.

I disagree.

My 5-gal porter is ruined. It has an overriding flavor that is hard to describe: something akin to old bananas with aromas of trash-can.

I've been brewing for 4 years. I'm careful and meticulous, and this is my first bad batch of anything.

Synopsis:
***
In August, I pitched a hydrated Notties onto a porter wort. At 48 hours, nothing was happening. So I hydrated another pack of Notties with precise temperature management and pitched that.

At 84 hours, nothing was happening, so I racked to a clean carboy (to leave the sediment behind) and pitched a hydrated packet of Coopers. Bang - it took off in 6 hours.

The beer spent 10 days total in primary, a week in the secondary, and a week in bottles.

It's not toxic or poisonous. It doesn't smell bad. It smells like beer. But it tastes really bad.
***

I googled "slow start with Nottinghams", and discovered the recall.

Both packets that I pitched were from the bad lot. I also had one more unopened packet from that lot.

According to what you read on this and other brew forums, some of that lot of Notties works fine, and some doesn't.

That seems curious to me. It's possible that some of the lot was killed somehow during transit, but honestly, dried yeast is pretty hard to kill. Another possibility is that Danstar's recent packaging change has been accompanied by some QC problems: perhaps more than one lot of yeast actually made it into the "bad lot", or the packaging job went bad, etc.

Lot's of folks are saying that this yeast "is okay, it just starts slow".

That's a nice spin, but probably untrue.

If a yeast takes 4 days to start, that's 4 days during which undesirable bugs have an opportunity to gain a foothold in the absence of competition. Not good. We rely on our yeast to launch quickly. A quick launch means billions of "good" organisms that interfere with the development of significant populations of undesirable organisms. That's a primary goal of yeast fermentation.

If a yeast takes 4 days to start, it's not brewers yeast. It's more likely a pack of dead brewer's yeast that also contains a tiny percentage of some other strain of yeast that is still viable. It starts really slow because it is few in number, and it makes rotten beer because it's not actually "Nottingham's yeast", rather, it's the ugly cousin "Rottingham's" that unavoidably accompanies Nottingham's as a tiny percentage of total volume. And it makes bad beer.

Anyway...

A week ago, I mailed my two empty packets and one full packet from the recalled batch to the Lallemand address in Canada. Mail from USA to Canada is SLOWWW.

Today, I emailed Keith Lemcke at Lallemand to tell him my porter is ruined and ask how his company might make it up to me for my lost time, effort, and ingredients.

I'm interested to see whom else here has had a beer ruined by this bad lot of yeast, and also how they've been treated by Lallemand-Danstar after the fact.

Lot's of folks are giving kudos to Lallemand for "standing behind their product." Maybe it's a bit soon for that just yet...

Let's see how they handle folks with ruined beers.

DCS
 
The beer spent 10 days total in primary, a week in the secondary, and a week in bottles.

It's not toxic or poisonous. It doesn't smell bad. It smells like beer. But it tastes really bad.

No offense, but judging a porter that's been in the bottle for only 1 week may be pre-judging.

What happened with me was the fermentation happened in the normal time - I just didn't notice as much airlock activity as normal, but the hyrdometer didn't lie.

Sorry about your beer if it is indeed ruined...
 
No offense, but judging a porter that's been in the bottle for only 1 week may be pre-judging....

:) None taken.

I usually go 2 weeks in secondary and 2 weeks in bottle, but I've "hurried" this beer a few times in the past with no ill effect.

A young porter drinks fine, it just tastes immature. It makes you want to stop drinking it for a while to allow it to reach its prime. Whether or not you actually do that depends on what else is in the fridge. :D

This particular Notties-porter is not immature, it's plain bad.

I should add that I'm pretty new to dry yeast. I started experimenting with it a few months ago. I've made the same porter with Coppers and Safale, and they have been just fine.

I should also add: I've never taste-tested from the bottling bucket in the past, but I definitely will in the future.

Bummer.
 
Anyone gotten thier replacement packets yet? I sent mine out a few couple weeks back, just curious.
 
Nothing here yet, but that doesn't surprise me. It takes forever to send mail to Canada. Customs is probably still trying to figure out why there are a bunch of envelopes full of yeast packets coming through.
 
Just as a note, I just used packet of Notty that I had bought earlier this week. It started fermenting in 4 hours and was so vigorous that it blew the top off of my fermenter. This is with a blow-off tube in place. Just thought I would add this to add some balance to the conversation.

Didn't catch the batch #, but I will check my LHBS tomorrow, should all be the same. Didn't read it until today or else I would've checked...
 
I believe regular postage to Canadia is more than the current $.44 rate anyway, so I say no. Don't recall what postage actually was though.
 
I'm guessing HBT helped with that - I know it was EdWort that got the dude from Danstar to chime in on here....

HBT - saving the world one yeast recall at a time.

But like I said in my other post - the slow starts I had haven't seemed to affect the final product....

See, that's why I'm wondering why so many have made a big deal out of this. I had two slow-starting batches from Notty, but the final beers were just exactly as expected. I don't have a problem with less vigorous activity, so I'm not sure why it's such a huge deal.
 
I pitched my notty and got little to no activity and could only get a 1.052 brew down to 1.025. Repitching did nothing as well. It goes beyond a slow start.
 
Damn straight! If it wasn't for HBT and the threads on this I would have actually thought I was the one that did something wrong. That's just not possible! ;)
 
From Oregon, mine was 79 cents for a envelope with 2 empties and 1 full pack of yeast.

ETA - in my personal opinion, I think it's likely that Can customs will halt a good number of these. No offense, but they are a royal pain.
 
See, that's why I'm wondering why so many have made a big deal out of this. I had two slow-starting batches from Notty, but the final beers were just exactly as expected. I don't have a problem with less vigorous activity, so I'm not sure why it's such a huge deal.

Yeast conversion of sugars to alc releases CO2.

There are some posts on this topic about how "my beer went from 1.55 to 1.15 with no airlock activity and all is well."

Hmmm. Where'd the gas go? Is it magic yeast?

Other posters comment on a slow start and fermentation, but conclude that all is well, no big deal.

I'll betcha that if Lallemand came out and said that they had found a new yeast strain that is guaranteed to start within 14 days and may take a month but will get the job done eventually, and they were abandoning their other product lines in favor of this one yeast, and by the way, maybe you'll get some bubbles and maybe you won't, well, they'd be out of business pretty quick.

I mean, let's don't kid ourselves. They have a problem of some kind. Sure, there are some loyal Nott-heads :)D) sticking up for them, but how long would that last if Lallemand were to come out with something outrageous like the unlikely scenario above?

This same lot of yeast is either...
- perfect
- slow but okay eventually
- dead and rotten
...depending on who's talking.

That is some really sucky quality control somewhere. Isn't a "lot" supposed to be a description of a batch of product made and packaged during one production run, and expected to exhibit consistent and reliable characteristics and performance? How big is this lot? How long have they been making it?

In my case (a rotten beer), it's a "huge deal" for me.

I'm not retired. I have kids who play sports and I have a job and I fish and hunt and play golf and blah blah blah.

If I put 8 hours into a batch of beer, I want the beer. That 8 hours is not meaningless to me.

YMMV.
 
Just pitched a Schwarz Ale with Notty... I ordered this mail order this week, knowing about this recall. My packet wasn't in the recall lot, but... The damn thing was open, the bottom seal wasn't joined completely. I didn't notice until today as I was laying out my materials and couldn't get to the local store to check for a different brand. My starter was flat and I'm pretty worried about this. I mean dead, not a single bubble, no bread dough smell, even the fruit flies in the garage were ignoring it. I'll be calling the HBS tomorrow, but I'm thinking about trying to find a suitable replacement to repitch ASAP and avoiding this brand in the future. Any suggestions?
 
My 5-gal porter is ruined. It has an overriding flavor that is hard to describe: something akin to old bananas with aromas of trash-can.
I have a batch of Ed's pale with this exact same flavor. It's beyond horrible, but mine has been in bottles for 5 weeks.

And if anyone's curious it fermented at 66F.
 
What I would really like to know is how many brewers have used Nottingham packets that were manufactured AFTER the alleged bad lot, and how the yeast performed.

Anyone?
 
That's hard to say, my packet didn't have a packaging date on it, and who knows if the lot numbers are consecutive...

I'm pretty upset that 1) this packet left the assembly line, it was obviously opened, 2) that this packet left the HBS in a mail order, it was obviously opened, and dropping yeast grains, 3) that I didn't pay closer attention when checking my order on Wednesday for a brew session on Sunday, it was obviously opened!
 
I have a batch of Ed's pale with this exact same flavor. It's beyond horrible, but mine has been in bottles for 5 weeks.

And if anyone's curious it fermented at 66F.

I have a batch of Centennial Blonde that's been bottled for one week. Beyond horrible is a good description. I would describe it as something between rotten onions and clove. Just nasty and nothing like the previous lot. I'm considering just dumping the whole batch to avoid ever tasting this again. I highly doubt it will improve enough to be drinkable. :mad:
 
I have a batch of Ed's pale with this exact same flavor. It's beyond horrible, but mine has been in bottles for 5 weeks.

And if anyone's curious it fermented at 66F.


Yipes. I have a small batch of pale ale with the same problem and fermented at 65 deg. I'm hesitant to blame the Notty because there are still weak points in my process. Throw in a touch of wet cardboard, and the flavor is close to described.

This just for the record. My process is far from perfect.
 
Okay, just a theory here. Nottingham switched their packaging company. Since the switch, there has been a recall of one batch of the yeast, however, home brewers all across this board have mentioned, slow starts, poor attenuation and hugely off flavors. To be fair, there have also been brewers who have stated that their beers fermented fine and the flavors were fine.

Let's look at the one thing that changed: the packaging. Is it possible that there is some chemical being used that is killing off the yeast while it's in the package? (Slow to start ferments because of fewer yeast cells to begin with) and is it possible that if there is some chemical doing this that it's also contributing to the off flavors? If so, how do we account for the brewers who have had good luck with the Notty?

I know there are a lot of chemists that brew and frequent this board and a lot of brewmeisters who have been doing this for years. Can anyone maybe pinpoint a chemical used in packaging processes that might be affecting the yeast in this manner?
 
It's a little hard to follow this, but I'm trying to figure out if there are still problems with the yeast outside of the particular lot number. I've used Notty before and liked it, and was going to get into brewing some more English ales.

Is it safe to say they solved the problem?
 
It's a little hard to follow this, but I'm trying to figure out if there are still problems with the yeast outside of the particular lot number. I've used Notty before and liked it, and was going to get into brewing some more English ales.

Is it safe to say they solved the problem?

Notty is just a highly flocculant and clean yeast... you can use 1056, S-05 etc. as a sub. Would you prefer something like Windsor or S-04 for an english ale?
 
Hope someone will let us know when they get their replacement.... I sent in several packets nearly 3 weeks ago and nothing.
 
Hope someone will let us know when they get their replacement.... I sent in several packets nearly 3 weeks ago and nothing.

I sent mine in as soon as this recall came out... but in hindsight I dont expect to see any replacement packets. They have so much bad yeast out there to replace, I dont have much faith that my little envelope will make it through. I could be wrong though.

I am glad that they did the recall and everything, but I think I will stick with S-05 from here on out so that I dont have any question about yeast quality.
 
Folks, we have to remember a few things here...first, Canada is a different country. All these envelopes full of little packets have to go through Customs. That can take FOREVER. I'm going to guess that most of us didn't put a customs form on the envelopes. This will delay even more.

On top of that, not only are they going to have individuals sending back in yeast, but retailers as well. I was in my LHBS last week and they had no Notty and a sign informing about the recall.

In my experience with these sorts of things I say wait 6 - 8 weeks minimum...That's just the way it goes.
 
Notty is just a highly flocculant and clean yeast... you can use 1056, S-05 etc. as a sub. Would you prefer something like Windsor or S-04 for an english ale?

I could, but US-05 is clean, not flocculant. Notty's clean AND flocculant nature, as well as being a dry yeast, is what is attractive to me.

Just wondered if the really figured this out yet before I go back to it.
 
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