Microscope Pictures of Dried Yeast

Took some pix of hops a few weeks ago... here are some up-close images of dried yeast. Look sorta like Tic-Tacs...

Awesome! Thanks.

Awesome! Is the sheen just some condensation from coming out of the fridge, some effect from your scope lighting, or just how the yeast looks?

I'm not sure about the sheen... they were room temperature when I took these pix. There also appears to be small, semi-translucent globules here and there on the surface. Maybe they're coated with something to help keep them together. Anyway... if I can, I'll put up some electron-microscope pix later. Love working in a science lab..!

mmm...tick tacks...

Maybe the sheen is the emulsifier? Tell us about your microscope. I've got one that would never do this well.

I'll bet it's the emulsifier- hadn't thought of that.

very cool...thanks for posting

Now for some really cool pix.... I took these with a scanning electron microscope of the same sample of dried yeast.... little beasties lying in wait for a sweet wort...!

30x Magnification


100x Magnification


500x Magnification


2,000x Magnification


4,500x Magnification

Fantastic. Used to love getting extra time on the SEM when I was working in the lab. Neat pics!

Wow! That's awesome

Very cool.

"Praise science!"


Fascinating pics, thanks for posting them!

Cheers!

You should do a side by side with some rehydrated yeast.. You know for science..

Badass. You should repost your hops pics here and just have this as the microscope photo thread. What do lupulin crystals look like in the SEM?

4500X? That is awesome. Love the pics. I was suprised to see a dimple on each yeast cell.

tally350z said:

You should do a side by side with some rehydrated yeast.. You know for science..

Click to expand...

If I remember.... I'll take some pix from the yeast cake of the big RIS I have going. Those yeasties should be pretty tired after working that beer..!

Next time I have some leaf hops handy, I'll see what I can do with them on the SEM. Guess I should look at some grains next..?!

I would like the original image file, I must have a print of this in my office.

Just wondering, is this yeast that is dried, coming out of the package? Or is it yeast that has been rinsed, and then dried? Coming out of the packet aren't they surrounded in what is basically a clay/nutrient innoculate? Maybe I'm thinking of something else. Too bad for those yeast, they won't be doing much active fermentation anymore

thatjonguy said:

I would like the original image file, I must have a print of this in my office.

Click to expand...

PM me ....

This is dried yeast right out of the packet...

Pix appear to be all gone. Were they on a discontinued service?

(Yes, I know: ancient thread. It's the one I found when searching.)

olie said:

Pix appear to be all gone. Were they on a discontinued service?

(Yes, I know: ancient thread. It's the one I found when searching.)

Click to expand...

Made me curious, so I searched google images. Search terms: microscope pictures of dried yeast homebrewtalk

This, I think, was one of them:

mongoose33 said:

Made me curious, so I searched google images. Search terms: microscope pictures of dried yeast homebrewtalk

This, I think, was one of them:

View attachment 659886

Click to expand...

What's the magnification on that? At my age where I keep taking off my glasses and sticking my nose right up on stuff, I think that's what the granules actually look like... [emoji16]

Robert65 said:

What's the magnification on that? At my age where I keep taking off my glasses and sticking my nose right up on stuff, I think that's what the granules actually look like... [emoji16]

Click to expand...

Geez, I don't know. When I use my microscope at 400x, I get a picture like this (and this is actually one of my photos). But these are live yeast cells (well, not the blue ones ), not dried yeast which, I'd expect, would look like they were solid somethings. I don't know how to tell, as what if I'd taken my pic below, grabbed the six cells in the upper right corner, and blown them up?

So, I don't know. I don't know if the picture above is blown up, and by what factor. But would we expect the individual cells above--assuming that's what they are--to be about the actual same size as the ones in my pic? I'd assume they'd be larger, but by maybe 50 percent or so.

Those are dried yeast pellets. Yeast is made up of >90% water. If dried up it will shrink to about 1/10th the original size or about 1 micron. You'd need an electron microscope to image that with any visible detail.