Do Omega Yeast offer anything different ?

[HuskyOz]

I know the Norwegian ale yeast appear different but what of the other yeasts?
Thanks

 

[madscientist451]

They have a comparison chart that shows which strains are exclusive to Omega:

https://omegayeast.com/uploads/general/Omega-Yeast-Homebrew-Strain-Poster-7.pdf

 

[Biobrewer]

I notice they only draw comparison to Wyeast and White Labs and leave some comparisons blank, namely in the Voss Kveik and DIPA. This gives the illusion that those don’t compare to anything, which is a bit disingenuous. Those do compare to other strains on the market, they just happen to be strains from smaller labs that they are probably competing more with which is why they don’t want to list them. As the owner of The Yeast Bay, I can tell you the DIPA Ale compares to our Vermont Ale and the Voss Kveik would compare to our Sigmund’s Voss Kveik. The DIPA Ale also compares to strains from Gigayeast (Vermont IPA), RVA (Hoptopper), etc, and the Voss Kveik likely has a comparable strain from Mainiacal, which focuses primarily on Kveik strains.

 

[Bobby_M]

I notice they only draw comparison to Wyeast and White Labs and leave some comparisons blank, namely in the Voss Kveik and DIPA. This gives the illusion that those don’t compare to anything, which is a bit disingenuous. Those do compare to other strains on the market, they just happen to be strains from smaller labs that they are probably competing more with which is why they don’t want to list them. As the owner of The Yeast Bay, I can tell you the DIPA Ale compares to our Vermont Ale and the Voss Kveik would compare to our Sigmund’s Voss Kveik. The DIPA Ale also compares to strains from Gigayeast (Vermont IPA), RVA (Hoptopper), etc, and the Voss Kveik likely has a comparable strain from Mainiacal, which focuses primarily on Kveik strains.

It makes perfect sense to compare strains to the mega incumbent labs that everyone recognizes and leave out the smaller peer companies. Are you listing the Omega comparisons on your own packs?

 

[Biobrewer]

It makes perfect sense to compare strains to the mega incumbent labs that everyone recognizes and leave out the smaller peer companies. Are you listing the Omega comparisons on your own packs?

We don’t list comparisons of any of our cultures as to my knowledge, aside from the two I listed, they are all exclusive to The Yeast Bay. And even with respect to those two, we were the first to offer and make them widely available. A comparison column makes little sense for our strain guide as almost everything is an exclusive but if I did have a comparison column, yes, I would definitely list Omega/Giga strains for Vermont Ale and Mainiacal strains for any Kveik I offered that was similar.

Personally I would not use a comparison column even if we were offering a lot of the same strains that are already out there as you're basically giving another lab free advertising and exposure on your own marketing materials. It's my opinion that larger labs already have close to saturation point exposure, so listing them doesn't really have the same effect as listing smaller companies some people may not have heard as much about. Listing smaller labs with comparable cultures will likely have the effect of someone then googling the comparable culture lab and exploring their website, greatly increasing their exposure off of another labs' marketing material. Again, that's just my opinion as to why "smaller" labs are left off of these charts.

Not even sure how you qualify what is a "smaller" lab, as all yeast labs are privately held and no one discloses numbers for sales, not even Wyeast or White Labs. On most weeks though The Yeast Bay goes through 200-400 pitchable bbl (40-80 L of concentrated yeast) of Vermont Ale alone, not sure I'd call that small. I would presume some of the other labs that are "smaller" are going through similar amounts based off of my discussions with pro brewers and knowing what they use in house.

My point is if you’re going to have a comparison column and draw comparisons to existing cultures, don’t leave a blank space next to cultures that clearly have widely available and widely used comparable cultures, even if they are from "smaller" labs.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

One measure of “influence” is the reach beyond the home market. The UK must be one of the largest markets ex-US for liquid home brew yeasts, but up until this year all you ever really saw was the big two (plus TYB via WL distro, often only Vermont though). So when Omega came to the UK market it would be daft to compare to East Coast or Escarpment or whoever, as we never see them. It’s changing a bit now, I know of two websites doing Imperial, one with Omega and a bit of Giga - but to be honest it’s only worth ~US$14+ for retail packs of really “different” stuff - like Omega is doing with kveiks.

 

[Biobrewer]

One measure of “influence” is the reach beyond the home market. The UK must be one of the largest markets ex-US for liquid home brew yeasts, but up until this year all you ever really saw was the big two (plus TYB via WL distro, often only Vermont though). So when Omega came to the UK market it would be daft to compare to East Coast or Escarpment or whoever, as we never see them. It’s changing a bit now, I know of two websites doing Imperial, one with Omega and a bit of Giga - but to be honest it’s only worth ~US$14+ for retail packs of really “different” stuff - like Omega is doing with kveiks.

For very small labs, I think you're right, especially for comparisons in foreign markets where certain products simply are not obtainable. However, I have seen more Omega, Imperial, Giga and Yeast Bay in the UK and European markets. For The Yeast Bay, we have 15-20 homebrew stores across the UK and Europe that have carried vials across our entire line up. We also sell to a fairly large chunk of craft breweries in the same area, many of whom came from a homebrewing background using our vials they sourced from European homebrew stores. I certainly think comparisons across these labs is warranted given the larger distribution they are seeing.

 

[HuskyOz]

In Australia we can get White Labs , Wyeast , The yeast Bay, Giga and Imperial but only the most popular strains.
There are many strains we have never seen in Australia and some only once every 3 or 4 years, there are some
in WL Vault that would be great to use but no chance of them coming to Oz.