Microscopy pictures - Are those Brett?

[kerosin]

Hy guys,
I am a homebrewer from Switzerland and reading posts in this category since a long time but never posted anything... Unfortunately, sour brewing is not that common here within the homebrewer community and thats why I hope you guys could help me: I threw some dregs from a commercial beer into one of my beers and could see the following cells with my microscope (sorry for the bad quality):

And I am wondering, are those Brettanomyces? The beer has a very distinct cherry flavor. It could therefore be even B. lambicus? Could that be? I am a bit confused because the brewer of the commercial beer told me that he is not using any Brett in his beers...

Thank you for your support and cheers from Europe
Samuel

 

[moti_mo]

What is the brewery and what is the beer? I'd have to look at my Wild Brews book when I get home to make sure, but it seems like those could be lactobacillus. Lacto is rod-like, so it seems like it would fit.

Is the commercial beer a sour? Brett doesn't really sour beer like lactobacillus or pediococcus, and pedio aren't rod-like.

 

[kerosin]

Hy there, the dregs are from BFM La Torpille Brasserie des Franches-Montagnes - La Torpille.
This brew tastes slightly sour but nothing like a Berliner Weisse. It can't be Pediococcus because they are round. I will have to take a sample directly from the sediment in the fermenter since the sample for the pictures above is from the beer itself. I am not very convinced that these cells should be lactobacillus as I expect the beer to be sour and due to the size. With my microscope it is very difficult to look at bacteria in general due to the lacking magnification. But I have to take another look at the sediment and maybe at a yogurt as well to see some lactos.

 

[dstar26t]

This is Wyeast Brett B. from an all Brett beer I brewed recently, less magnification.

Your middle slide sort of looks like a Brett strain, when they connect head to tail. I haven't seen them "branch" like in your pic though.

 

[smokinghole]

It's really tough to tell with out knowing one of two things. The field of view of your microscope and the magnification which would allow us to estimate the size of your microbes. Or a plain ole scale inserted via the microscope. I know not many scopes have the ability to imprint a scale.

My guess, based on extensive microscope use, is that you have some sort of brett strain. I suspect bacteria like lactobacillus will be much smaller even with the 100x oil immersion objective.

 

[michaeltrego]

Those look similar to the slides of Cantillon dregs that Jason recently posted on his blog

 

[phattysbox]

Those look similar to the slides of Cantillon dregs that Jason recently posted on his blog

Actually, we have been talking back and forth a bit. I'll have to say, those cells look they belong to Dekkara. However, its hard to say what strain.

If the beer was not spontaneously fermented, good chance it can be traced back to some commercial version of Dekkara. If it was, you could have a new strain unknown to the brewing world

Only genotyping the strain will prove it beyond a doubt.

One thing it is NOT - lactobacillus or pedio. Those cells in the image are too big.

 

[kerosin]

Thank you guys. I will do some further pictures in the future and use a counting chamber like dstar26t to have an idea about the size of the cells. I agree that these cells are no Pediococcus (not round) and no Lactobacillus due to the size. And I also discussed the whole matter with Jason already on my page: Microscopy pictures of BFM La Torpille dregs | Eureka Brewing.
And about the magnification of the pictures. As I was watching at them the magnification was 800x (20 x 40). The pictures were made at a magnification of 40x. I then cut out the most important parts of the pictures. It is therefore quite impossible to define a magnification. Will use a Neubauer chamber in future to prevent that issue.

 

[kerosin]

As promised, I repeated the whole thing for a second time. And here is one of the pictures.

The squares from the counting chamber in the picture have a width of 50 µm. There are some yeast cells visible (round ones) and the cells (longish ones) which I am interested in what they are.

As I was really not in the mood of resizing all the images for this reply, I just refer to my post with additional pictures: To the pictures

I am now sure that those cells are definitely no Lactobacillus or any other kind of bacteria. The cells seems to connect to others and form a kind of network. The Brettanomyces in Jasons picture seem to do the same thing. I thought a lot about it now and can not figure out what other organism that could be. I do not know about (wild) yeast strains that form this kind of longish cells and connect to each other like in my picture. I am now pretending that these cells are Brettanomyces . Thats fine for me. I do not need to know what kind of Brett they are. They made a very tasty beer out of my wort so far... Thank you guys for your help. Really appreciate it.

 

[phattysbox]

As promised, I repeated the whole thing for a second time. And here is one of the pictures.

The squares from the counting chamber in the picture have a width of 50 µm. There are some yeast cells visible (round ones) and the cells (longish ones) which I am interested in what they are.

As I was really not in the mood of resizing all the images for this reply, I just refer to my post with additional pictures: To the pictures

I am now sure that those cells are definitely no Lactobacillus or any other kind of bacteria. The cells seems to connect to others and form a kind of network. The Brettanomyces in Jasons picture seem to do the same thing. I thought a lot about it now and can not figure out what other organism that could be. I do not know about (wild) yeast strains that form this kind of longish cells and connect to each other like in my picture. I am now pretending that these cells are Brettanomyces . Thats fine for me. I do not need to know what kind of Brett they are. They made a very tasty beer out of my wort so far... Thank you guys for your help. Really appreciate it.

Was the beer spontaneously fermented? You could have something other than Brett. Perhaps Pichia, Klockera, or even Candida...

The larger cells in the middle might not be yeast, but rather acrospores. They may be haploid and are in the sexual (as opposed to asexual budding yeast) state of whatever you have. Also, the branched structures are teleomorph of whatever strain this might be.

 

[kerosin]

@phattysbox: The beer was not spontaneously fermented. And the beer where I put the dregs in either. Lets hope it not Candida....

I am very limited with my spare time right now but I will look at all the cells in more detail and try to use my oil immersion objective. And read about mycology (as Wikipedia is down today... luckily the German version is still available). Thank you for your information. I guess I am at the right address here to get further ideas about my mysterious cells. I might name them X. mysteria Cheers everyone

 

[smokinghole]

Here's a couple pictures of what I suspect to be brett that I grew on a WLD bacteria isolation plate that contained cyclohexamide.

 

[passedpawn]

I love this thread so much I want to marry it. And have buds with it.

 

[phattysbox]

Here's a couple pictures of what I suspect to be brett that I grew on a WLD bacteria isolation plate that contained cyclohexamide.

Looks like Brett to me. Maybe Brett L.

Only one way to find out - brew a test batch!

 

[smokinghole]

I picked a colony off with a sterile pipette tip so I didn't have to dick with a loop. There is liquid culture going right now that I will plate out and check colonies afterwards.

 

[kerosin]

That looks like Brett to me as well. And I agree on the test batch approach as well. I did two starters a few weeks ago with two strains I isolated from two commercial Gueuzes and the appearance and smell was pretty convincing.

And I did some further research about the strains in my pictures and the yeasts there are Bretts as well. Further on, I had a look at B. lambicus and B. bruxellensis from Wyeast and took a lot of pictures. I am still writing the posts but will publish them as soon as possible on my wordpress-site.