So i brought a sample

Since I work in a lab might as well test my beer:

Color: Amber Beer
Clarity: Hazy
Smell: Malty Sweet
OG: 1.045
FG: 1.020
PH: 5.0
Proteih: Trace / <=2.0 mg/dL
Calcium: 11 mg/dL
Glucose: 23 mg/dL
Triglycerides: 2353 mg/dL ===>>wow!
Magnesium: 10 mg/dL
Ethanol : 3517 mg/dL=> the ABV estimates @ palmer's book is pretty close.

Electrolytes: Analyzer is having a fit when I try to run these test so gave up after 5 tries.

Microscopic: (use of asceptic technique)

10 mL spun Beer ( 3 min: 180 sec @5,100rpm ) Clarity:CLEAR!

Moderate Yeast cells (rare budding)
Rare Cocci and Bacilli ==> Will have to ask for the supervisor if I want to do Cultures and ID on the babies.

Still will do a bunch of test if I get a go signal from the boss to use the microbiology lab for beer.

At what magnification(s) did you use for the microscope? I've looked at beer under a microscope and had similar results to yours (except more yeast since the sample was taken at racking). I could see some bacillus even without staining.

Does your lab have a UV/Vis spectrometer? You can check out the actual color value of your beer - I posted a thread about this, and I need someone to verify my work on it. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/measuring-srm-169872/ for the procedure.

A pH of 5 sounds abnormally high for fermented beer. I'm interested to hear about the bacillus counts as well.

George Fix stated something along the lines of "In my experience, the most common reason for sub par homebrew is a very small, non-obvious bacterial contamination".

menschmaschine said:

At what magnification(s) did you use for the microscope? I've looked at beer under a microscope and had similar results to yours (except more yeast since the sample was taken at racking). I could see some bacillus even without staining.

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I was using the HPF with a total of 400x magnification with direct mount (my sample was from a 2ndary fermenter chilled for 4 days) It's still hazy and the culprit was the yeast. If you have a field that's full of junk and stuff, you can do wet mount (1 drop KOH + 1 drop Beer) that should clean everything up except the yeast.

swankyswede said:

Does your lab have a UV/Vis spectrometer? You can check out the actual color value of your beer - I posted a thread about this, and I need someone to verify my work on it. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/measuring-srm-169872/ for the procedure.

Click to expand...

Sadly we don't have a stand alone spectrophotometer . Just a food for thought though... The Law on light absorption and transmittance is called...BEER'S LAW

lamarguy said:

A pH of 5 sounds abnormally high for fermented beer. I'm interested to hear about the bacillus counts as well.

George Fix stated something along the lines of "In my experience, the most common reason for sub par homebrew is a very small, non-obvious bacterial contamination".

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I have no idea what's the optimum ph for fermented beer but for yeast growth it ranges around 4-6 some to 7, just depends on the specie. I'll do the bacilli and cocci ID when I get a green signal from the microbiology boss. Until then off to brew!:rockin:

swankyswede, i am working on a research project and ran some beer on the UV-VIS using your method in our lab...seemed to be quite accurate

sw341034 said:

swankyswede, i am working on a research project and ran some beer on the UV-VIS using your method in our lab...seemed to be quite accurate

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Awesome, I'm glad someone else tried it. What were the predicted and measured values?