Two Big Advantages of Brewing Beer With Ollie Ops’ Yeast Management Tool

Photo by Elevate on Unsplash

As a brewer, you understand the importance of a fresh pitch, but also the advantages of re-pitching.

Fresh yeast is expensive, so reusing healthy yeast across multiple batches of beer can be invaluable to saving you money in the long run.

But you’re walking a bit of a tightrope when re-pitching yeast.

Ask ten brewers their preference on how many generations of yeast they like to use and you’ll probably get ten different answers.

“That’s kind of a brewer’s preference that gets argued over sometimes,” says Ollie Brewery Consultant Dustin Jeffers. “But once you pull [the yeast] from one tank to another…you’ll see it kinda works a little bit like a bell curve where, after gen three, your yeast starts fermenting the beer quicker and it’s done quicker, so you have a sweet spot for the yeast and then it degrades again.”

If yeast dies, there’s no turning back, making yeast management a valuable part of your standard brewing procedure.

But how do you monitor the health of your yeast to make sure you’re getting the most out of it in the brewhouse?

With the help of Ollie Ops’ yeast management tool, you can keep track of what yeast is in what tank and what generation the yeast is on, helping you determine whether the yeast is safe to continue using or should be discarded.

“I can keep track of if it’s time to kill it off and dump it or if I [can] keep reusing it or if I need to order more,” says Jeffers.

It’s an invaluable tool when you’re trying to maximize your margins in the brewhouse.

Photo by Elevate on Unsplash

Perhaps most importantly, Ollie Ops’ yeast management tool also allows you to track the true cost of goods sold (COGS) across multiple batches of beer.

If you are re-pitching your yeast, you’re undoubtedly saving money, but how are you tracking that cost across the brewhouse?

“When you add your initial pitch of yeast into a beer, the costs can be very high,” says Jeffers. “Depending on your size, a fresh pitch of yeast can cost you $1,000+ dollars. Usually this cost will hit whatever batch the yeast was first used in. When looking back at previous batches, you will always have this large spike in the COGs of the batch due to this initial pitch.”

When you brew the next batch, your yeast cost won’t be in it; it’s all in that first batch, which can throw things out of whack. Essentially, the COGS is trapped on that first batch, which causes a surge in the cost of that beer.

What we allow that’s different from other systems...

Dustin Jeffers - Ollie Brewery Consultant

Ollie Ops’ yeast management tool, on the other hand, allows you to see the true COGS of your beer across all of those batches.

“What we allow that’s different from other systems is that we allow you to capture that cost and then move it from an initial batch into the next one,” explains Jeffers. “Say you have that initial batch that has $2,000 worth of yeast and I pitch that yeast into another tank. I can pull that cost of goods and move some of it over to the next batch. I can move it over and over again and again so I can start spreading that yeast cost down that road. So that first batch…spike begins to even out across all batches.

In your business, it’s imperative that you understand where your money is across all functions of the brewhouse. Ollie Ops’ yeast management tool helps you monitor the true cost of each batch of beer as you re-pitch your yeast.

Ready to Add Yeast Management to Your Brewery Operations? Get Ollie.

Balancing your brewing expenses is a delicate process. That’s why a cost management solution like yeast management is included with Ollie Ops.

Ollie’s user-friendly interface extends the brewer’s natural workflows for brewery operations, including the yeast management tool, so you can start brewing your best-tasting beer! Request a free demo today.