Universal Beer Agar?

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FrostyBeverage

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Is UBA worth it? I'm looking to do some slants and was wondering if this product was a better choice than just some general agar from the science stores?
 
old post -- sure

but I ran across UBA on a website and I'm curious if it is better than the usual agar from the grocery store. I've used the process from the link DKershner gave.
 
http://www.neogen.com/Acumedia/pdf/ProdInfo/7574_PI.pdf

The pH is on the high side for brewing yeast, but can be adjusted down. I make MYPG plates for growing and isolating single yeast colonies from time to time. The nice thing about UBA in our case is that it is a full mix with no need for separate bottles for additional nutrients. For me at school I use a plain agar with malt extract, yeast extract (dead yeast essentially), glucose, and peptone. I use that though because we have it on hand. It works fine. I would think for your purposes plain agar with malt extract, some dead yeast and a little beer would be close enough for home slanting needs.
 
Thanks for the info.

What I usually do is make a batch of generic beer with whatever base malt I have on hand, no hops and then add nutrients, yeast extract and the like. And then mix it with the square tubes of agar from the Asian food store, can it and then pressure cook it. That works well, I just was wondering if this UBA stuff would work better. But it seems that it wouldn't matter much.

So adding "a little beer," do you mean fermented wort? What does that do? I've just always used wort.
 
Wort or beer should be fine. I think the hops addition helps which is what they advise for use with UBA. A little sugar source helps but because they're aerobic/frozen it's not a huge deal. When exposed to air or slowed down the yeast utilize much less sugars than when they are operating anaerobic.
 
hops, is that for the antibacterial properties of hops?

I have heard they are not all that great and are much over-rated. -- of course every body is an expert, so I usually go with the convincing argument, since I've never run an experiment, or seen on run on it. :)
 
I've come to believe it's less for the antibacterial properties and more to just make the growth environment more like beer. If you wanted to keep certain bacteria from growing you can use specific antibiotics and other compounds to prevent bacterial growth.
 
I know this is an old post but what the hell.... UBA is for culturing beer spoilage organisms more than beer yeast. If your into sours it will support lacto and pedio. But it also supports and selects for things like ecoli.... check it out on sigma aldrich....
 
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