Culturing Lactobacillus and Pediococcus

[Eigenbrau]

For those of us who enjoy culturing their own yeast, I think i may have come up with a few ideas for doing the same with bacterial strains used in certain beers (i.e. Lambics or Berliner Weisse).

Bacteria cannot be cultured in the same way as yeast and require special handling, media, and environments to thrive in. I've done some research into how to do this and will be doing some experimenting in the near future and posting results for anyone who is interested. I'll be building a cheap incubator using an old toaster oven (no, the coils won't be used, just the case) and a temperature controller. I will also be playing around with different media compositions. My main concentration will be on Lactobacillus, with some minor experimentation with Pediococcus in the future.

If anyone has tried anything similar (or thinks this is all futile), get with me and we can hopefully share some ideas!

 

[shanecb]

Awesome idea.. I've been meaning to try doing the same! What temp. range are you aiming for?

I've been getting much more interested in lacto the last couple of months. Got a lot of good info in this thread if you'd be interested in reading: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/lactobacillus-delbrueckii-questions-183524/

 

[Eigenbrau]

I'll be shooting for 37* Celsius (human body core temp). I'm still trying to find some decent references on their metabolism, something more than just "eat lactose, produce lactic acid". I've got a good recipe for a proper media to culture them on that someone else had posted: http://www.bd.com/ds/technicalCenter/inserts/Lactobacilli_Agar_&_Broth_AOAC.pdf

Purchasing actual Lactobacilli MRS Agar is pretty price prohibitive.

 

[shanecb]

Cool, I assumed it would be pretty close to body temperature. Calling White Labs might help you net some of the information you've been looking for. I gave them a call and they were more than willing to give me some pretty good info on lacto (which I posted in the thread I referenced previously). I'm sure they'd be able to help you out.

 

[Saccharomyces]

Very interested to see what you find.

Totally unscientific, but I took a SWAG at culturing the bugs for a big pitch into an 11% beer and it soured up really well. To do it, I did a 2 gallon starter of 2% dextrose, 1% yeast hulls and some whey protein, and pitched that into 50 gallons of beer after about 3 weeks as warm as I could manage to keep it. Within 4 months the beer was sour enough to make you pucker.

 

[TheWhaleShark]

I responded to a thread about Lactobacillus culture a while back.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/lactose-busillius-wont-grow-slant-160000/#post1851134

The trickiest part is the preparation of the media for propagation. Standard malt extract agar won't work.

EDIT: Ah, I think someone else beat me to it.

And yes, buying dehydrated media, unless you're a laboratory with a contract, is pretty prohibitively expensive.