Idea... Well a proposal to brewing supply companies

[SoCal-Doug]

Yeast... It basically has a 6 month shelf life if treated properly and the stars line up. I propose that retailers pro-rate the price of yeast based on that 6 month window, thence the distributors pro-rate the wholesale cost back to the retailer. In other words, if its 3 months old, you can buy it for 50% off. It kinda makes sense because you are not getting what you pay for as the yeast ages. By 5 months or more, your viability is crap and you will [well, you should] be doing a multi-cycle starter. DME costs money and the older the yeast gets, the more it costs the brewer

What made me think of this? I'm brewing a kolsch on new years day. I prefer the Giga-021 because (1) I think it's the best Kolsch yeast available (2) their package claims 200 billion cells when fresh. In other words, yay! no starter. I get to the supplier today and the freshest is three and a half months old. Crap, break out the flask and the stir plate.

Just a thought to ponder on.

 

[RPh_Guy]

if its 3 months old, you can buy it for 50% off

That's exactly what my nearest LHBS did before they closed.

 

[WBB]

Do you give your employer a discount if you’re late with a project deadline? What if you had to give back 50% of your salary for being 6 months late on a deadline?

You really have two choices. Keep paying full price for older yeast and being able to revive it with a starter, and keep your LBHS open for business or buy online and probably still have to make a starter and then your LHBS goes out of business.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m right there with you, but in reality it would mean a small business going under. And in this day and age, a small business can sometimes be hanging on by a thread, especially a LHBS.

I buy some stuff online, but also try to keep the LBHS alive and buy some things from them even if I have to pay a few more bucks.

It’s a hobby. Start worrying about finances when it’s a business.

 

[tgolanos]

One of my brew shops gives half-price liquid yeasts if it's close to expiring. I've even gotten a few free-bees from them for stuff that was well off. I don't expect to get them for cheap or free, but it's always a nice surprise when I find something I need for 50% off.

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

Even after it is expired it can still be used if it was stored properly. Since the store likely cannot return expired yeast it is a loss for them. To give a 50% discount at halfway to the expiration date would mean little to no profit on that item.

 

[mongoose33]

It's really hard to have a successful business model dependent on elements one cannot control--such as how quickly customers resell the product, how well the product is stored awaiting purchase, and so on.

I know my LHBS tries to balance having fresh yeast with having enough stock so when I come in he's got in stock what I want.

I can do a starter...in fact, with liquid yeast I always do. It's not the end of the world.

 

[user 246304]

Did I misread it? I thought Doug was talking about a program of reimbursement to the retailer, so the retailer is ultimately out nothing. Right now I can't see a way for it to work, but from a marketing point, I am intrigued. "If your yeast is more than ___ out, we stand behind our freshness, and behind you, the homebrewers who use us. Go to _______ for ....", whatever.

TBH, I think it would be in the manufacturers' best interests to have something in place. We've all been in Doug's place. I fill an order with a LHBS online for pickup, they have it in stock, awesome, go there and it's...all but dead, way past code. So is every container of that yeast in that store. I want to support the LHBS, but no more than as a chef could I sell "well-aged" wild quail, or "special ammoniac-tinged black cod," should it be right for anybody to knowingly sell stale wares to someone. So, I hear Doug's point and would think there's a way to deal with it.

PS: Maybe I'm just b!tching about the restaurant biz - talk about trying to project out demand on rapidly decaying product. Yep, b!tching, lol.

 

[day_trippr]

Kinda/sorta.

"I propose that retailers pro-rate the price of yeast based on that 6 month window, thence the distributors pro-rate the wholesale cost back to the retailer."

Different metrics, though. Eg: 50% off retail is likely quite a bit more $$ than 50% off wholesale, so the retailer is still out some amount (though I reckon their actual cost would be covered, so maybe that's not so bad).

But I'd be concerned about folks gaming such a system...

Cheers!

 

[S-Met]

A jug of milk or dozen eggs or box of crackers has a best-by date several weeks or more from its stock date. They aren't typically discounted 1/2 way through their shelf life. Its a nobel thought, but not a viable model.

 

[Conehead]

I live in Canada and rarely get yeast younger than 60 days. No lhbs where I live, so everything is done online. Their policy I assume is first in, first out. I don't mind, as more dme doesn't make a dollar difference. I re-use my yeast, so I do get my money's worth in the long run.

 

[Saboral]

Kinda/sorta.

"I propose that retailers pro-rate the price of yeast based on that 6 month window, thence the distributors pro-rate the wholesale cost back to the retailer."

Different metrics, though. Eg: 50% off retail is likely quite a bit more $$ than 50% off wholesale, so the retailer is still out some amount (though I reckon their actual cost would be covered, so maybe that's not so bad).

But I'd be concerned about folks gaming such a system...

Cheers!

Homebrewers gaming a system? Never. Homebrewers are the most straight laced upstanding crowd of do it yourselfers you’ll ever meet. I’ve never met a homebrewer who wanted something for free. ;-)

Really like the idea of some sort of freshness rebate. I don’t know that you’d be able to successfully employee something like that at the distribution chain level. Too many hands changing money to add another process to it. I think you could find manufacturers who might do something like a freshness rebate where you can use a system to verify your yeast batch and then maybe they send you a new package (or maybe a half-sized rebate pack) to get you back to your original freshness level.

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

A jug of milk or dozen eggs or box of crackers has a best-by date several weeks or more from its stock date. They aren't typically discounted 1/2 way through their shelf life. Its a nobel thought, but not a viable model.

Not where I live. Several grocery stores will apply a dollar or two off sticker on meats a day before the “sell before date”. Let’s not forget the “sell by” and “Best Buy” dates are not magical extinction of quality timers.

 

[Braufessor]

I see what you are saying...... but, I don't see that as very practical from the home brew store perspective. Home-brew stores have enough work to make a go of it. Customers are also paying $ to have a large variety of yeast readily available at a whim.
I used to communicate with my home-brew store owner and he would let me know when he got fresh yeast in, and he would also collect suggestions from customers as to what they wanted.... So, as soon as it showed up, we went in and got fresh yeast. If he had really old yeast he would often do a 2 for 1 on it and let you know that you would still need to do a starter or two to bring it back up to speed.

In general, if a person is picking up ingredients to "brew tomorrow".... they are kind of rolling the dice a bit. Always best to have stuff on hand a week or so ahead and have it planned out in case they don't have something or a starter needs to be made.

 

[Moose_MI]

The proposal is based at least in part on the premise that you’re buying a number of cells and as cells die over time the price should come down. In other words, you could do math to determine $ per cell cost of a given package at a given time.

I don’t think you’re buying cells...you’re buying a product that will effectively ferment 5G of average gravity wort. The fact that the product has extra cells at 1 month vs 4 month doesn’t effect the value as long it still does what it’s supposed to at 4 months.

Once the product can no longer be assured to properly do what it’s supposed to, then you can find it in the discount bin and expect to invest time and $$ in making a starter so that you can achieve the goal of healthy fermentation

 

[passedpawn]

My LHBS hates selling liquid yeast. He says he makes no money on it due to the high shipping costs and massive loss due to old yeast. But he MUST carry it, or lose customers.

My thought is that White / Wyeast should ship direct. They wouldn't have to give the dealers a cut, and use that money to get me 2-day free shipping and some sort of packaging that preserves the yeast for that trip. I don't think there is a way to do it economically though.

 

[passedpawn]

What would be neat is if the liquid yeast package was clear, and included a stain that let you visually see how much viable or dead cells were in there. For those of us that have stained yeast cell like this, you can easily see dead ones under the microscope - they are solid blue or purple because their useless cell walls don't reject the stain.

This, of course, is just another ridiculous idea that has no chance of working. I'm full of those today

 

[Braufessor]

Also, almost anyone who is looking to be a bit frugal with their money in regard to yeast is generally reusing the yeast. I would say the minimum number of beers I ever brew off of 1 vial/pouch of yeast is 3-4. Generally, it is more like 6-10. That pretty much makes yeast "free" for all practical purposes already.

 

[mongoose33]

This is the perfect opportunity for some entrepreneur-minded homebrewer to develop a model of yeast delivery/guarantee that would would work, economically.

********

I think of my LHB club and think on how many of them care about any of this. I'm going to guess...maybe 20 percent. They tend to buy kits from the LHBS, almost always with dry yeast as part of that kit. They don't experiment (much), and the desire to push the envelope is not evident in more than 2 or 3 of them.

It's easy for us to look at the reaction here and presume there's great demand for some sort of yeast guarantee or some such...but we're in an echo chamber with like-minded individuals.

I question whether there are enough of us to provide the necessary customer base to make any of the above ideas work.

And since there is a readily acceptable method to deal with this, i.e., make a starter, I think we'd find the increase in yeast prices that resulted would push more to doing starters, harvesting yeast, and so on...enough that the model would collapse.

 

[Braufessor]

There is a model (of sorts) for this.... The Yeast Vault from Whitelabs..... I think it does reflect some of what mongoose points out. Those of us who are super focused on this sort of thing are few and far between. Even acknowledging many of the yeasts in the Vault are unique - it can still take "forever" to get some of them.
https://www.whitelabs.com/yeast-vault

 

[Moose_MI]

Respectfully, I would again say that the premise of pro-rating the price based on age is predicated on assigning value to the packet based on the number of healthy yeast likely to be contained assuming proper storage and normal loss over some number of weeks.

This is not how yeast is sold.

 

[Oginme]

OK, so a home brew store purchases yeast based upon speculation of what is most likely to turn over in the next couple of months. They are taking a risk that demand for each strain will match their projection. As with most stores, my go-to store errs on the side of having sufficient inventory of a yeast strain when the customers want them, but do not want to run out. Most of the time, their yeasts are within 3 months of the current date and sometimes they get caught with their pants down and there is a rush on a given strain which they did not plan on. It is difficult enough to manage this type of inventory control let alone start to lose sales margin just because the customers suddenly switch their typical buying habits. Add to that the difficulty of trying to account for the elapsed time since the packaging date at the cash register and you have made the job of supplying home brewers increasingly complex.

While a nice concept, I just don't see this working well for the LHBS; too much work with little upside gain.

BTW, my LHBS of choice sells 5 to 6 month old yeast at half price to move it before it expires. Add to that when I have purchased yeast that is 4 months or older, I often get a viable cell count much higher than the yeast package aging models predict.

 

[eric19312]

I'd like to see the liquid yeast companies move to a system of guaranteeing the count of viable yeast cells as of the expiration date assuming the product was continuously stored at 2-8C.

Imperial and other newcomers are actively promoting cell count at packaging as a way of differentiating. But who cares how many cells were included at packaging? I believe most of us care about how many cells there are when we use the yeast. I also think most of us who pay attention to yeast cell counts, given choice would err on side of over pitching rather than under pitching.

So if a yeast manufacturer is going to label a product as having 200 billion cells and place a best buy date of December 31, 2019, then they should be claiming that they expect the package to have 200 billion viable cells as of December 31, 2019 - if stored and shipped as recommended.

I work in pharmaceutical industry and when we sell a product and mark it with a shelf life we are guaranteeing based on our rigorous testing that the potency of the product (mg of active drug substance/tablet) will fall within a certain range (typically +/- 10% label strength) from day it leaves the factory up until the expiration date. The not "too much" is important in pharmaceuticals to avoid overdosing patients and we have to work hard to make products very stable to last at room temperature for 2 years, exposed to air and possibly humidity, and not lose potency.

I get it that brewers yeast is a more unstable product, but again I don't mind getting extra yeast, I just want to know that I got at minimum the full labeled potency of the product. From a marketing perspective I think this would encourage the yeast manufacturers to worry more about their containers and distribution to assure delivery of the guaranteed pitch (thinking White Labs pure pitch packs might stand out but don't really know). I think it is unreasonable that we homebrewers are all using the same degradation calculators (mr malty, brewers friend, beer united) for different strains of yeast packaged in different packages by different suppliers. The yeast manufacturers knows their products, they should take responsibility for the accuracy of these calculations.

 

[S-Met]

Not where I live. Several grocery stores will apply a dollar or two off sticker on meats a day before the “sell before date”. Let’s not forget the “sell by” and “Best Buy” dates are not magical extinction of quality timers.

1-2 Day before - yes, but do you see an incremental decrease from the date it was stocked? Say item is $4 and sell by is 4 weeks, do they drop the price $0.50 a week? No. Dropping the price on the last couple days is clearance pricing.

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

@S-Met, right, forgive me I misunderstood your first post... we are on the same page and I need a f-ton of coffee apparently to wake my old brain cells up.

 

[Bassman2003]

I totally agree with Eric. This issue is on the yeast companies. They need to be working backwards from the end date. The whole smoke and mirror game of 100 billion cells in the factory and whatever less the end consumer gets is what they get is lame imho. I don't want to put LHBSs in a tough spot but we should be allowed to be consumers. A few years ago my cousin and I were brewing and the LHBS sold is a vial of WL that was totally past expiration. We did not notice this as we were making a starter. When the starter showed nada after 24 hours I looked at the vial and was pissed. We went back and demanded a new vial. They balked but eventually gave us one.

In my mind, they should be reimbursed by WL for a portion of the yeast. Or have some sort of system. Maybe they do but I should not be expected to tank my batch of beer just because it is hard to get the supply chain correct.

Obviously this was an issue that led WL to update their packaging. There still seems like room for further innovation. Something that would center around the consumer waking the yeast from a deeper, life preserving state to allow for extended shelf life. Like dry yeast but viewed as equal to liquid.

Or offer mega packs. But I have seen an improvement with WL since they moved to the new packaging. So it is probably as good as it is going to get.

 

[TallDan]

I'd like to see the liquid yeast companies move to a system of guaranteeing the count of viable yeast cells as of the expiration date assuming the product was continuously stored at 2-8C.

Imperial and other newcomers are actively promoting cell count at packaging as a way of differentiating. But who cares how many cells were included at packaging? I believe most of us care about how many cells there are when we use the yeast. I also think most of us who pay attention to yeast cell counts, given choice would err on side of over pitching rather than under pitching.

So if a yeast manufacturer is going to label a product as having 200 billion cells and place a best buy date of December 31, 2019, then they should be claiming that they expect the package to have 200 billion viable cells as of December 31, 2019 - if stored and shipped as recommended.

I work in pharmaceutical industry and when we sell a product and mark it with a shelf life we are guaranteeing based on our rigorous testing that the potency of the product (mg of active drug substance/tablet) will fall within a certain range (typically +/- 10% label strength) from day it leaves the factory up until the expiration date. The not "too much" is important in pharmaceuticals to avoid overdosing patients and we have to work hard to make products very stable to last at room temperature for 2 years, exposed to air and possibly humidity, and not lose potency.

I get it that brewers yeast is a more unstable product, but again I don't mind getting extra yeast, I just want to know that I got at minimum the full labeled potency of the product. From a marketing perspective I think this would encourage the yeast manufacturers to worry more about their containers and distribution to assure delivery of the guaranteed pitch (thinking White Labs pure pitch packs might stand out but don't really know). I think it is unreasonable that we homebrewers are all using the same degradation calculators (mr malty, brewers friend, beer united) for different strains of yeast packaged in different packages by different suppliers. The yeast manufacturers knows their products, they should take responsibility for the accuracy of these calculations.

There is no guarantee because it's effectively impossible for the yeast makers to do it, and even harder for you to verify it. Even counting cells with a microscope is an estimate with a large margin of error. Ever wonder why the packs of yeast never explicitly state a cell count?

Lance from Omega has talked with my homebrew clubs a couple times. (Great guy, BTW!) He said that he stands by the cell counts for his packages, but that homebrewers are much better served to focus on pitching healthy yeast than obsessing over cell counts. He said that they observe different viability and cell multiplication rates for each different strain of yeast. Quoting their FAQ:

How many yeast cells are in your homebrew packs?
Through our proprietary process, we generate the optimal number of yeast cells, which varies from strain from strain, to yield the best and most consistent performance for each. As a result of genetic differences, we have observed strain to strain variation in cell counts even under identical growth conditions. Certain strains may contain up to 500 billion cells per pack while other strains may contain slightly less than 150 billion cells per pack. Most importantly, all packs contain the optimal number of viable yeast cells to ferment 5 gallons of wort up to 1.060 OG at the time of packaging. The number of cells in the pack do not define the success of the brew.

https://omegayeast.com/resources/homebrewing

While Wyeast and White Labs are larger than Omega, and may have some more advanced processes, I'd bet that Omega is just more honest about cell count and viability. So, they can't possibly make any real guarantees here when the yeast leaves their door, much less once it's been handled by a shipping company, a homebrew supply store, and you get it home.

...and my LBHS's mark yeast packs at 50% off when they're over a certain age. They've even given me and other homebrew club members free yeast that was way past it's dates.

 

[eric19312]

Like dry yeast but viewed as equal to liquid.

I do suspect dry yeast is packaged and labeled to guarantee delivery of specific cell count at expiration dating. I believe this is difference between reported measurements of nearly 200 billion cells per packet of dry yeast vs typical label claim of > 66 billion cells per packet (US-05).

 

[Bassman2003]

It is easy, just overshoot so in 6 months the cell count would not dip below 100 billion cells. Have some integrity with your product instead of letting the marketing overshoot. Companies like Omega and Imperial are trying to exploit this gap.

 

[mongoose33]

Omega yeast has solved this problem for us. 150 billion cells instead of the 100 billion normally found in Wyeast or White labs.

So if this is truly an issue, there's already a solution.

Now, I don't want to see anybody responding to this that they can't easily get Omega yeasts.

http://www.ritebrew.com/category-s/2013.htm

 

[brewswithshoes]

This all comes down to forecasting for the LHBS on what the customers will need/want.

I would be willing to wager that your LHBS would gladly notify you if asked when a specific strain came in fresh, almost guaranteeing you get the highest cell count you could get (given the supply chain time to your LHBS) On that same vein, if you are the gambling/saving money type, i'd also bet a large number of shops would sell you, at a discount, yeast that just hits their expiration dates, if you were willing to commit to buying a certain qty per year of it.

Example:
My LHBS sells yeast for about 8-9 bucks a pack (liquid). Now if they were to sell something like a punch card for 5 packs of date expired yeast that i could redeem throughout the year for say $20-ish up front, i would jump on that and consider it a win-win for both of us. I would get to try new yeasts, and they could mitigate their financial risk somewhat for expired yeast. I'm going in knowing that i won't get to request a specific yeast and will have to build starters on whatever i get, and the LHBS doesn't have to worry as much about those odd packs going end of life. I also doubt this would reduce my spending on the specific yeasts i know i'd need/want throughout the year.

Market is as the "Yeast Adventurers Club" or something. May even drive up add'l visits to the LHBS to see what is nearing "expiry" which tends to lead to other purchases.

Just a thought.....