Equipment to start seriously yeast ranching?

Hey guys,

I want to seriously start ranching/banking/saving/reusing my yeast. It's my favorite part of the brewing process.

I've asked for a pressure cooker for Christmas, but what else do I need to pick up? I have an idea, but what is more important than others?

What I have:
-Stir plate
-2L flask
-1L flask
-using old yeast packages for yeast nutrient in the boil
-Pint size mason jars
-lighter
-paper clip 'innoculating loop'
-a few tubes for slants (my LHBS is preparing them for me now)

I think I may need:
-more slant tubes
-petri dishes
-scale
-agar
-pressure cooker

How does that sound? Am I missing something?

Thanks!
Amanda

Well, it really depends on the process you will be using. As for a "bare bones" approach, all you really need are containers for the yeast (mason jars or small test tubes), sanitizer and a fridge to decant off any liquid. I freeze mine so I also use a gylcerin mixture.

I forgot to mention that. After reading the new yeast book, I've settled on doing yeast slants for banking and petri dishes for streaking/bottle harvesting. I've recently gotten heavily into sour beers, so I think that petris would be good for bottle harvesting the good stuff from lambics/oud bruins/other sours.

I really think you need a microscope to do this right. You've got all the right equipment to isolate cultures but it seems like the microscope is essential for confirming the purity of your yeast. Also, how will you be creating a sterile work area?

I just finished the yeast book as well and it simultaneously got me excited and discouraged about the purity of my yeast. I want to do something like you're describing but the microscope is such a big hump for me that I think I'll put my money elsewhere in the brewery for now... I can dream, though...

kanzimonson said:

I really think you need a microscope to do this right. You've got all the right equipment to isolate cultures but it seems like the microscope is essential for confirming the purity of your yeast. Also, how will you be creating a sterile work area?

Click to expand...

The scope will really only help you for 2 things:
1) You can see bacteria vs yeast (you will not be able to see mutated yeast vs desired yeast except for the exceedingly rare mutation that causes a colony growth to be visibly differentiable). If growing up on plates, you should be able to detect the "pure" colonies by plain eyesight. Bacterial or wild infections should be obvious vs the original.

2) If you perform viability testing with methylene blue you can see viable vs dead yeast cells under the scope.


And to the OP, get yourself a real innoculation loop. If you are going to be stepping up from colony scrapings from a petri dish, you may want a 250 or 500 ml flask as well for your first step.

How about an oxygen stone for oxygenating the initial wort? Comes in handy in the brew house too.

Also good to have a clean working space and an alcohol lamp or burner used to create an updraft.

My plan is 5 ml glycerol storage in the chest freezer in a biomed styrofoam container and some freezer gel packs. This should last 5+ yrs according to the SWMBO yeast geneticist.

Randar,
Thanks for the suggestions! I don't think I'll be picking up a microscope, but I will probably go ahead and pick up an alcohol lamp, loop and smaller flasks. Do they make smaller stir bars for smaller flasks or do you just do a shake method on that one?

Oh, and I forgot to mention that I have a couple aeration stones. But is it really needed if I have a stir plate? I thought oxygen got in that way... hmm.

-Amanda

I was looking at scopes on ebay last night. I'm no expert, but useful scopes ought not be that expensive, probably around 70 bucks. If you have kids, the scope can double as an educational tool. Thats what I will tell the SWMBO anyway.

nutty_gnome said:

I was looking at scopes on ebay last night. I'm no expert, but useful scopes ought not be that expensive, probably around 70 bucks. If you have kids, the scope can double as an educational tool. Thats what I will tell the SWMBO anyway.

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Haha, good call.

No kids for me. I'm 23, single and do what I want with my brewery. Hooray!:rockin:

Braufguss said:

Randar,
Thanks for the suggestions! I don't think I'll be picking up a microscope, but I will probably go ahead and pick up an alcohol lamp, loop and smaller flasks. Do they make smaller stir bars for smaller flasks or do you just do a shake method on that one?

Oh, and I forgot to mention that I have a couple aeration stones. But is it really needed if I have a stir plate? I thought oxygen got in that way... hmm.

Click to expand...

Microscope is definitely overkill for the homebrewer, but I admit to having looked at them online on multiple occasions.

You can only get ~8 ppm of dissolved oxygen into wort via stirring and exposure to typical atmospheric air/gas mix. It is recommended to get 10-15ppm, so I would venture to say that stir plate does not help achieve anything more than the "shake method". However, it keeps the yeast suspended and in more consistent and non-stratified contact with the fermentables and nutrients, and IMO this is what leads to higher growth rates and the more exponential log phase compared to non-stir-plate methods.

You can get smaller stir bars but you have to be sure they will work with your stir plate. Most of the homemade ones have a sweet-spot range of stirbar sizes that will work for them based on the spacing of the magnets, the distance between the magnets and where the stirbar will be sitting, etc. You will only be able to determine this by testing your stirplate with some various sizes. However, as long as you aren't splashing around, you should still be able to use larger (1.5 or 2") stir bars with the smaller beakers (as long as they fit, obviously)

nutty_gnome said:

I was looking at scopes on ebay last night. I'm no expert, but useful scopes ought not be that expensive, probably around 70 bucks. If you have kids, the scope can double as an educational tool. Thats what I will tell the SWMBO anyway.

Click to expand...

Buyer beware with the cheaper ones. The strength/uniformity of the backlighting and quality of the optics is going to be really bad on the very cheap ones. Suitable eBay scopes I have seen run in the 250 range, typically. Still a fun toy. I'd love to get one with the integrated USB camera, but that ups the ante quite a bit.

I would strongly discourage a microscope. I really can't see the usefulness in one. Randar is right that the cheapo ones on ebay aren't going to be good enough. You need more than 400x (10x eyepiece and 40x objective) to see bacteria, and if you aren't in a lab environment with good optics and back-lighting it would be tough to tell they are bacteria at that resolution. To actually see bacteria on a light microscope you would probably want something that can image at upwards of 600x, which isn't possible without at least a $200+ microscope.

My procedure is pretty simple, work up a starter out of a wyeast or whitelabs vial, when finished fermenting streak some of the trub on a slant and let sit out for 1-2 days and then in the fridge. For a starter I just use my loop to scoop up some cells from the slant and stick it in the starter, done. Just make sure you heat your loop till it's red hot before you touch any yeast. The slants safely last about 3 months but can probably go longer no problem and trub from the fermenter will last a month or so in the fridge. I like the idea of glycerol storage for long term, 50% should do it in the freezer and last indefinitely.

Growing yeast isn't hard, just smell your starters before you add them to wort as a quick check when growing from slants.

Confirming what everyone else has said, an $80 microscope from ebay will be useless. Some people here have mentioned magnification concerns, which are true, but it's worth pointing out that $50 microscopes from Walmart will happily claim "2000X magnification!)". I suppose they're not lying, strictly speaking, but you'll never see anything past 60X -- the optics are too terrible. More to the point, though, there's almost no reason you'd have use for one.

best reason I can think of is to methylene blue stain and count cells if you are going to estimate viability of long term storage methods. I suppose you could see if bacteria is present, but as others have pointed out, you need good optics and lighting at a minimum of ~400x (40x objective and 10x eyepiece) to see well enough to do so.