Yeast

I am getting ready to order a few beer kits and am worried about ordering
liquid yeast (which is what I normally order) because of the heat this time
of year and it arriving dead. First thing is should I be worried or will the
cold packs be fine or should I just order the dry yeast and do a starter?
Second I have never done a yeast starter, how should I go about it?
Thanks for any info. you can give.

I have ended up with smacked or inflated packs and NB replaces quickly. They are also good about packing them with an ice pack too.

FWIW by the time I receive yeast from NB this time of year its always warm even when shipped with multiple ice packs. I aways buy mine from my LHBS.

I ordered four kits from NB last month. I have smacked two of the packs so far. Neither inflated within 8 hours. One I had to get a starter going. After two days I have some nice activity (Wyeast 3068. The other one, Wyeast 1469, took 10 hours to partially inflate. I pitched it and it is now fermenting nicely. When I told NB about it they quickly said they would send out 4 replacement smack packs. The original order had 4 yeast packs in the same envelope with one ice pack. The pack they are sending next has 4 ice packs so I think they have learned.

[quote=“shm56”]First thing is should I be worried or will the
cold packs be fine or should I just order the dry yeast and do a starter?
Second I have never done a yeast starter, how should I go about it?[/quote]Sounds like you have the starter requirements backwards - unless you’re brewing small batches or your OG is under 1.040, you typically need a starter with liquid yeast, but you never need (and should not make) a starter with dry yeast, which is one of its biggest pluses (along with not needing to aerate the wort).