Effective June 1, 2025 Omega Yeast will discontinue the sale of their 400 series yeast to home brewers, making sales only to professional breweries. The 400 series represents Omega’s efforts in making genetically modified yeasts for increased thiol production in hazy style beers with the popular strains Comic Punch and Helio Gazer. The following is the statement I recieved from Omega on this decision:
I’m sorry to say that it is true that we are discontinuing our 400 series in the home brew format. This really was a difficult decision. And we knew it was not going to be a popular call because home brewers have found creative ways to use our innovative strains like Helio Gazer. The self-replicating nature of yeast makes it exceedingly difficult to control where our yeast strains end up. In the last year, we had a competitor take several of our bioengineered, patent pending strains and sell them to their pro brewery customers. After alerting them that the products are the subject of patent applications and they needed to stop, they agreed to do so. We found out recently that they removed them from their website but continued to sell the strains to customers. While we have patent applications to protect us in these situations, enforcement is expensive and stealth activity like that makes it hard to find when competitors are stealing and profiting off our technology (adding insult to injury, they’re selling these strains without the R&D costs and without paying royalties to the CRISPR inventors, unlike us). The worst part of all of this is that the home brew shops and home brewers themselves are clearly not the problem. If we had a workable way to ensure that the strains were literally only used by home brewers, we wouldn’t be doing this. It really is an example of a few bad actors ruining it for everyone else. We feel bad about disappointing home brewers but we need to have tighter control of the strains we have put considerable resources into creating. I hope this at least helps you understand why we made this decision.
As for a replacement, the best bet is going to be British V. That’s the parent strain of Helio Gazer. While it does not put out thiols, it is the gold standard for a fruity and hazy IPA with a soft mouthfeel.
I have done extensive experimenting with Omega’s various strains and British V is not a good replacement option. I understand Omega’s need to protect their investment but feel homebrewers are being unfairly punished in this decision. I am considering organizing a homebrewers boycott of Omega yeast. Thoughts on this—as a homebrewer do you feel we where unfairly punished and would you consider a boycott?
Good point, so maybe make it temporary ( with a stated timeframe ) to show Omega how important homebrewers AND homebrew stores are to their sales? They essentially admit that in their statement. Perhaps an additional track would be to pursue AHA to write Omega expressing dissatisfaction with this?
To me, it seems like the cat is now out of the bag. To produce and sell a GMO with patents and the like is to take on the risk of the genes that you paid to engineer to get out of your control. Part of the business of doing so is to have a plan to protect your investment if and when that happens. I’m not sure this move does all that much to protect the patent and the investment.
The decision has been made and I’m sure they’ve calculated any losses from the homebrewer market. As an infringement driven decision, it was most likely initiated by their attorneys who don’t care about sales. I’ve never been an Omega fan because I don’t believe their yeast is worth 2x-3x more than similar yeasts. But, I understand some people are brand loyal.
getting a bit off topic, but i reallllyyyy enjoyed their yeast during the few years i had access to it. and it was priced the same as white labs at that time, but were bigger sachets. if i had access again i would order it above any others tbh.
Yeah, that’s what I don’t quite understand about the decision: for the strains they’ve already been selling, isn’t this closing the barn door after the horse is already gone?
I understand limiting new strains, but the old ones are already out there. The dinosaurs are already on the mainland.
It seems like now they just added an extra step for anyone who wants to culture the yeast… it’s not as if yeast ranchers haven’t perfected the art of culturing up from commercial product.
This of course leaves aside my feelings on patenting organisms and biotech hype…
It’s hard to find an exact number but Monsanto’s expenses for enforcing their patents have to run well into the millions. They’ve initiated hundreds of lawsuits over the years.
I don’t know exactly how big Omega is, but I don’t know how one, as a small-to-midsized business, effectively enforces patents on an organism that is inherently able to reproduce itself.
Instead of going out of our way to make life more difficult for the folks at Omega after they’ve been done dirty by theiving competitors, by organizing a boycott maybe we should try to organize a support activity for them, it could be a buying spree of other Omega yeast strains. Omega has been supportive of homebrewers, how can we return the favor? They were one of the leaders in larger cell count packaging for homebrewers. They’ve been kicked by unscrupulous competitors and are trying to maintain a little control of their product line lets not pile on and be on the same side as the a-holes.
What liquid yeast are you using that is 2x or 3x cheaper? 200B cells for about $10 a pack is about the best you’re going to do. White Labs is about 1.50B cells for $15. Wyeast is still 100B cells. Imperial is 200B but that’s still in the $13-15 range also.