Since I live around 2 hours from Toronto and have no lhbs, this is the downside of online ordering. Yes, they have everything I want, but there is a downside of fresh yeast. I just received my yeast ( Wyeast 1335 II ) from one of my frequent homebrew shops that I order from. Manufactured Jan 15 - 2017. That makes it 114 days old. 100 billion cells? Yea, far from it.
How soon do you need it? I would send that back or at least call them, maybe get them to rush ship something fresher out of good faith
Really depends how it’s been handled. I once cell counted a year old pack just for giggles and got 99% viability. I didn’t believe it and actually called Wyeast. They said yah, entirely probable.
We’re in a small community and have a great LHBS, but he doesn’t have the kind of turnover the bigger town stores have. He marks the price down a dollar a month on yeast, and after 6 months or more generally gives it away. I’ve gotten a lot of beyond best by yeasts (which according to my understanding is 6 months from that manufacture date) and as long as the pack swelled nicely, they have performed completely satisfactorily. If it doesn’t swell then there just aren’t enough viable cells left to ferment a starter before the wort sours.
I wouldn’t sweat a 4 month old pack as long as it swells up nicely within a day.
In my experience (an hour away from NB) the online yeast is much better than the yeast at my local shop. The turnover at the online stores is so much higher you are almost always going to get fresher yeast from an online vendor. Local shops packs languish for months, particularly if you are looking for non cal ale strains.
+1; Also consider dry yeast.
I have a gift card to my LHBS, but they often don’t either have what I’m looking for or don’t have it in the size I’m looking for. It isn’t a perfect world no matter how you try source your needs.
I recently got rescued by my local craft brewery when I needed some brown malt. I couldn’t find it at either of the two LHBS and needed to brew the next day. An online purchase with 24-hr or 48-hr delivery would not have made it in time, and it would have been at least another week before I could find time to brew.
while its ideal to get fresher yeast, its not that hard to do a 2 stage starter (or a bigger 1 stage). I mean I hear you - it would be nice to get yeast packaged yesterday, but its an easy fix.
Since I live in Canada, yea, getting fresh yeast is hard to do. I don’t mind a month or 2 but 114 days? Should of got a discount. It would be nice to make Wyeast in Canada.
Last year I got sent some out of date yeasts from an online shop. When I complained they said “Best by date isn’t a big deal in dry yeasts.” I e-mailed them back and told them that if I’d gone into their shop I would not have purchased out of date yeast unless that was all they had and I absolutely had to have that particular strain. I also said I probably wouldn’t be buying anything more from them. Later in the week I got replacement yeast with a far away best by date.
FWIW, I’ve been using up a bunch of dry brewing yeast I bought 30 some years ago during my first foray into homebrewing for bread making. So far out of the 8 or 10 packages I’ve tried, only one failed to properly rise, but I’m not brave or foolhardy enough to risk a batch of beer on decades old generic beer yeast. Some of the packs made some damn fine bread through.
This is interesting. I have often wondered about using beer yeast for my bread baking projects. I have a Biga fermenting now for this evening’s Ciabatta.