I finally ran out of Flameout and am using MOM Nutrix Fish Oil 6000mg from Amazon. Two capsules have 2400 mg of DHA; it’s not Flameout but has too due until its restocked.
Thanks @jread18 . I’ll give that a look.
I went ahead and just bought a bottle. Great find! It’s been difficult to find a fish oil with more DHA than EPA, but this product has that correct ratio. I still have some flameout left, but now when I run out I’ll have this ready to go.
Thanks again @jread18
I hate to even post this, but I’ve been around since the early days. And by the early days, I mean the Testosterone print mag. I mean when EAS launched Phosphagen and Myoplex. I mean when TC used to put footprints in Bill Phillips’ office carpet right after he vacuumed pretty stripes in it.
I think we have to face the facts here - Biotest is a company that makes outstanding products and has great intentions but is terribly run. I know, I know, “we only use the finest, blah, blah… we’re not like other companies, blah, blah… we don’t cut corners, blah, blah.” We’ve heard it all before, and at some point, the excuses just don’t matter. Solve the problems, hire someone who can, or fire the people holding you back.
Ultimately, when you have “unavoidable supply chain problems” year after year, the issue lies in the mirror, though few will actually perform such introspection. I’ve seen this time and time again in the business world: Blame will always be shifted to “the other guy,” you’ll see very little in the way of acceptance of responsibility or meaningful change, and the problems will continue to occur. Regardless, your customers should not bear the burden every time you reformulate a product or simply change the product label design. These delays are simply the result of poorly thought out or implemented processes.
I spend a conservative $200-$300/month on supplements, and I’d happily give Biotest more of my hard-earned cash if there were actually products to purchase. Currently, Biotest has 16 products in their lineup. Only seven products are in stock. Seven. Less than 50% of the entire inventory is available. Can you imagine walking into a Walmart and finding 60% of the store empty? That location would stay open days or weeks, not months, and the manager would be shit-canned immediately. You can blame one or two items being OOS on the supply chain, but when over half of your products are unavailable and no one can even give remotely accurate restock dates, the problem lies with leadership.
I want Biotest to succeed, I really do. I’ve rooted for them for nearly three decades and evangelized their products to more people than I can count. Unfortunately, I can no longer sing their praises, as it seems like failure is inevitable. The good(?) news is that even the faithful like myself will eventually leave out of frustration, and they will no longer have supply chain issues, as there will be no demand. Then again, perhaps that’s what Biotest leadership secretly wants.
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I remember all of this as well! I was in high school when their products started coming out…I saved up my money to buy this coveted, super-advanced product called “HMB” as it promised superior muscle gains. Yeah, phosphagen HP, myoplex, Muscle Media 2000, etc. etc. Boy, that seems like so long ago. I remember ol Bill Romanowski hawking EAS products.
But I wanted to thank you for such an excellent post that hit exactly on everything I was thinking/feeling. It’s tough because like you, I love & believe in their products, the science that goes into it, and other than another company’s WPI and Micellar Casein, and creatine, all of my supplements are Biotest supplements. As I said earlier, their Flameout and Micellar Curcumin have to be what have helped my elbow, and other joints, feel so much better these past few years. I take them religiously everyday, and had 4 or 5 bottles of each on Amazon autoship every couple weeks (I usually took double the serving size due to being bigger than the typical 180lb person). The cost of each order was quite sizable, yes, but to me it was worth it as I will gladly pay more for a superior product, rather than pay much less but take something that is garbage.
And you are probably right as well, it seems like the way this company is run is just awful….one of the most important foundational elements of any successful business is “customer service/keeping the people giving YOU money, happy”. But these past few years that doesn’t seem like its of any care nor concern of the people who run this company. Your analogy to a Walmart, or similar business, being run this way was spot on, and it actually made me really think about if that happened and when I did, I thought “Damn, that would never happen and if it did, heads would roll!”
I guess you will be doing what I’ve slowly been doing here lately, searching the internet wide and far for similar products that maybe can TRY to come close to the effectiveness of Biotest’s products. I don’t even know if anyone else makes a micellar curcumin, but if one exists I’ll find it…..eventually.
The more I think about it, the crazier it gets to me….As a company, you have MANY loyal, repeat customers WANTING to give you their hard earned money, and all they require is that you produce and stock the products they wish to buy. Crazy. It’s like all these fists full of cash waving at you, and you just walk away from the money. But it sure seems like the desire to retain customers has left the building.
Amen, brother. We must be close to the same age, as I was also in high school and then college using their products. I grew up near Quantico Marine Corps base, as my father is ret. Army, and I was so pumped when they started carrying EAS products at the PX, as they were significantly cheaper.
I tried HMB as well, along with most EAS supplements. I clearly remember loading creatine for the first time with PhosphaGain (I was a skinny dude), which was a mixture of a vanilla Myoplex-like MRP and creatine. Four servings a day for 5 days, and I could bend over and shit through a keyhole by the end of day 2. Man, that was a rough loading phase!
I do still have all the Supplement Reviews and Poloquin books. I subscribed to MM2k for a while before Phillips killed it in July 1997 with the “Gold Man” issue. Think I finally gave up on it around 1999. Hell, on the bookshelf behind me I still have the EAS Grand Spokesperson Championship contest brochure with pictures of 150lb me in 1997. Wish I’d saved some of those MM2k back issues for posterity, but I threw them out ages ago.
Take care!
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Same here. I got into working out thanks to MM back in 1996. I did the Body for life challenge with the lambo giveaway. Still have the workout book 
Anyway, Given the supply chain issues, I’ve decided to look into Granite Nutrition. Given that John Meadows (RIP) was involved, I feel comfortable trying out their products. I’ve only used Biotest since the beginning once I switched over from EAS after Bill Phillips sold the company and they went to shit. I’m not completely walking away from Biotest, and hope they get their shit together, but for now I need alternative to fill the gap, and Sports Nutrition Store | Bodybuilding Supplements Online – Granite Nutrition seems to be legit.
Thanks for the tip. Like you, I’ve only used EAS and then Biotest for the better part of 30 years, with the occasional bag of whey protein from Costco, MyProtein or Ascent here and there.
I’ve actually looked at the HBCD at Granite, as I’m probably going to formulate my own Surge as best as I can replicate it. Anyone gotten close to the Lemon?
BTW, summer 1996 was exactly when I stopped running competitively (I was a D1 5000m / CC runner) and started bodybuilding. One of my best friends showed me an MM2k mag and the rest was history… Time flies, eh?
Thank you for this thread and the great contributions. I’m 60 and have been using Biotest products from the beginning of the company and have a similar story to others that are posted. I love Biotest and TNation but it looks like it’s time to move on.
My Surge replacement from Amazon:
Nutricost Pre-X Xtreme Pre-Workout Complex Powder, Fruit Punch, 30 Servings, Vegetarian, Non-GMO and Gluten Free
Another long time user / member here. I think we all have the feeling that Biotest is on the way out.
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For my surge “replacement”, (I never thought it cost effective to buy surge/igniter, when I could make it myself)
I use 1 scoop HBCD unflavored from Nutrabio (25g carbs)
10g creatine monohydrate from Nutrabio
1 scoop Preworkout from Nutrabio (I believe it’s called Pre) Ingredients below.
I also add 1 scoop, 25g, WPI from Nutrabio
I take all this in a shaker cup and drink it about 20-30 minutes before I workout and it does the job! And while all of the 4 ingredients/bottles cost more than surge, you also can get more servings than surge and it has everything you need. Give it a try.
Oh, and i use the lemon-lime preworkout flavor and I use the blueberry muffin Whey Isolate flavor, tastes great, shakes/mixes just fine, and no digestive issues whatsoever.
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NutraBio is a great company - they used to have Pre Extreme (Pre is their current pre workout) that included 15G of Cyclic Dextrin
Ha, correct! Which is why I now have to buy their unflavored HBCD and add a scoop (25g) into my pre-workout cocktail. No idea why they took that out as it was an excellent addition, but they did. Probably a cost control measure as that stuff isn’t cheap…..well, cheap like waxy maize or something.
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Anyone used BulkSupplements.com? I know T-Nation writers linked to their creatine product a while back after Biotest stopped making it in one of the “stuff we like,” articles. They seem to have many of the ingredients needed to make both Surge and Mag-10.
In some of the fine print they indicate they sell wholesale by the ton as well, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re raw ingredient the supplier for many other supplement companies as well. I’m just always leery of trying new supplement companies, and I’ve heard some complaints about them.
Nutricost is another that has many of the raw ingredients, but again I’m not familiar with the company or their practices. I see that at least a couple folks here have had good experiences with Nutricost.
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I don’t tolerate more than 200 mg of caffeine very well, so I’m not sure how well I’d fare with the preworkout, but I appreciate the recommendation.
Understood, and yeah, it does get me pretty damn wired! Nutrabio also makes a stim-free pre-workout which has the exact same ingredients MINUS the mega caffeine hit.
NutraBio also has a pre called Base that is only 200 MG of Caffeine; Raw Nutrition Essentials is only 200 (great company) as is Transparent Labs Bulk
I’m finally almost all out of indigo. I see Transparent labs sells C3G and may give it a shot. I’m sure it’s not as well absorbed as Indigo would be but at least it’s available for purchase. I’m curious as to how Transparent labs can be selling this while Biotest can’t seem to source the ingredients and have it in stock……
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Pssshhh, In my opinion, it feels like they have just given up….or as @GVR_4 said above, that they don’t really care. The fact that we’re on here talking about using other companies’ products, which ones to substitute for which Biotest products, and nobody from Biotest is jumping in, saying “whoa, hey guys, I’m here and we’re working on it, don’t give up on us” is, as the comedian famously says, “your sign”.
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OK, sorry for the double post but I just checked my email and lo and behold, I’m still getting email blasts from Biotest pushing out Igniter and whatever the hell their protein is called. Speaking of that, I call it expensive and not near as good as Nutrabio’s Micellar Casein. But yeah, they keep plastering up ads all over this site for their products, pushing them, offering deals, emailing us non-stop pushing products but make no attempt to address their constant out of stock problems with several of their offerings….I don’t know, it’s actually offensive to me. “hey, buy this product of ours!” yet we will have zero customer service kinda rubs me the wrong way big time. Especially when I can look back at all of my Biotest orders for just the past year or so and see that I’ve spent thousands of dollars. So it’s not like I’m that customer that buys 1 bottle of something and then raises hell and becomes a royal pain in the ass….no, I WAS a loyal customer, like many of you, who haven’t even had the decency to at least be told what was happening.