Yeast Freshness

How fresh is Escarpment yeast? 

We prioritize fresh liquid yeast to ensure great performance while balancing the very diverse needs of our customers. In order to meet the timelines required by craft brewers, many of our strains are produced "for inventory" while some less popular strains are made "to order". Some strains can only be produced every couple of months due to low popularity. In general, most pro yeast pitches will be very fresh when shipped.

We always take care to match our available stock and upcoming schedule with your desired brew date to achieve the best results for your beer. 

Homebrew yeasts (pouches for 20L batches) are always less than 3 months old when shipped from Escarpment to customers (homebrewers or homebrew shops). 

What is the shelf life of Escarpment yeast? 

Once the yeast is made, we set a fairly conservative shelf life on our liquid yeast products. For pro brewers, this is typically one month. For home brewers, our pouches average 6 months although making a yeast starter is always a good practice with homebrewing, because you can save a bit for the next batch. 

I wasn't able to brew this week, is the yeast still good to use next week? 

In cases when brewers experience delays prior to brewing, our yeast propagation medium is carefully formulated and monitored to ensure excellent performance during storage. While we wouldn't recommend it, we have used homebrew pouches in excess of 6 months old in-house with good results. 

If you ever have any questions or concerns about yeast freshness, you can always reach out to us and we will help. 

Resources 

Check out our Blog Post covering a study we did on our liquid yeast's shelf life!