Starting your own lab at home can be rewarding and fun. Not only does it provide a more in-depth understanding of how yeast and other microorganisms function, but it can be fun at the same time. Now if being extremely sanitary and always on the alert for risk of contamination isn’t your thing, then this may not be for you. This is where you really need to step up your sanitation game.
After brewing for a few years, I became more curious about the science behind brewing and fermentation. During research, I came to the realization that yeast is the most important brewing ingredient. I knew this before, but I didn’t understand fully how and why. After all, it is a living organism and, just like any other organism, it needs the proper attention and environment to thrive. This research led me to the book Yeast by Chris White and Jamil Zanishaff. After this, I was hooked on all things brewing science and especially microbiology. I was also interested in sour beers, so this led me to Milk the Funk (milkthefunk.com) and the Sour Hour (thebrewingnetwork.com), which piqued my interest even more in all things yeast and bacteria.
Now I’m no microbiologist, but thanks to the research and effort of many microbiologists and brewers, it allows people like us to become a self-taught “Macgyver’d” microbiologist by researching their work and putting it into experience. Some of the resources I’d suggest would be right here on Homebrew Talk, Milk the Funk and their Facebook group, White Labs, the book Yeast, Sour beer blog, The Brettanomyces project, and Brewing network, amongst other sources.
After doing this research, I realized that I didn’t have the necessary equipment to create a lab at home. Basic or advanced lab equipment can be chosen, just like brewing equipment. I chose a more extreme approach since most of the equipment purchased would be moved over to my brewery’s lab. The “Yeast” book helped give me a base list of the starting equipment I would need. The idea was to create a lab that I could do quality control (QC) tests, yeast viability/vitality tests, contamination tests, wild yeast and bacteria harvesting/isolating, sterilization, yeast plating/slanting, yeast banking, basic identification, and other necessities. Not only was I doing this for my own interests, but I am starting a brewery in a few months, so I’ll be adopting the role of head brewer, “yeast wrangler”, and QC. I wanted to be prepared for the QC tests I’ll have to perform in my brewery and for isolating and testing wild yeast and bacteria. On top of this, we will also be using our equipment to provide these tests to other breweries in the area who can’t afford to have a lab or someone to staff it.
I won’t elaborate on equipment use, since the resources I’ve listed describe it in detail much better than I could.
• Pressure cooker or autoclave – A pressure cooker is more affordable and practical for sanitation, but an autoclave is what is used in real labs.
• Sanitizer lab spray – Consists of 70%-90% isopropyl alcohol, but it can be another lab grade spay.
• Caustic acid
• Sanitizing wipes
• KimTech wipes
• Gloves, face mask, and safety glasses – These aren’t essential, but I’m a sterile freak.
• Flame source – Bunsen burner or an alcohol lamp with denatured alcohol.
• A work space away from the brewing location. I prefer a stainless steel table where I know it can
• Hemocytometer and cover slip – Cell counting, viability tests
• Trypan Blue – Viability tests, stains dead yeast cells blue
• Safranin – Gram Stain – Used to detect contamination under the microscope.
• Crystal Violet – Gram Stain
• Grams Iodine – Grain Stain
• 95% ethyl alcohol – Gram Stain
• Glass or disposable pipettes
• Gram slides – Used in gram staining, but not needed.
• B Immersion Oil – Makes for a better image under the microscope at high magnification.
• Microscope capable of at least 400x magnification, but if you plan to work with bacteria, you’ll want one that can go 900x+.
• Microscope slides and cover slips
• Microscope green filter – Makes it easier to view microorganisms.
• Flask and stopper – Used with stir plate. You can also use a mason jar with sterile tin foil over it as well.
• Membrane filters – Used to filter out microorganisms in liquid solutions.
• Inoculation loop – For inoculating plate and slants.
• A good pH meter or strips
• Agar plates/slants – You can either make these yourself or buy them as sterile premades. I use White labs, if I’m getting premade, but mostly make my own.
• Graduated cylinder or just a mason jar
• Stir plate with stir bars
• Glass lab vials with stands/holders
• Disposable funnels or autoclavable ones
• Sterile needles or autoclavable ones
• 30 ml sterile ampules – These are the kind you need a needle to inject into. I use these for my isotonic sodium chloride storing.
• 1.5 ml PCR tubes – Use for both storage in the freezer and in PCR tests.
• In-line oxygenator – Used for both the brewery and the lab.
• Scale – Weighing dry chemicals.
• Sterile petri dishes or autoclavable ones
• Parafilm – Used to seal caps and petri dishes.
• Butane torch – Good for sterilizing on the go.
• Chemicals –Used for isolation and making of medias.
• Glycerol – Used in freezing medias.
• Isotonic sodium chloride – A storage solution basically made of salt and de-ionized water.
• Cycloheximide – Kills some fungi, such as normal brewer’s yeast. This is used to help isolate Brett/bacteria (Saccharomyces)
• Chloramphenicol – An antibiotic used to isolate Brett/Saccaromyces.
• pH buffers
• Ascorbic acid
• Peptone
• Yeast extract
• Dextrose
• Tryptone
• Yeast nitrogenous base (YNB)
• Ferric chloride
• Thiamine
• Bromocresol green
• Monopotassium phosphate
• Manganese sulfate
• Coumaric acid
• CuSO4
• Glycerin
• Sterile Mineral Oil
• Liquid hop extract – Used
Other dyes such as Methyl Orange, Universal Red, etc
I’m sure I’m forgetting a number of chemicals, as I haven’t assessed what I have, but this will be a lot of what you’ll need. Each of these items can be found from the provided resources. Additional brewing items you probably already have is a refractometer and a thermometer. Not including the work area and table, the cost will be about $1,000, assuming you don’t have any of these items already. Shop around; you may be able to find these items cheaper.
With this equipment, you can perform contamination tests; cultivate wild yeasts,;streak a plate allowing growth from a single cell; plate yeast to allow for selective colony choosing or storage; slanting yeast; sterilize equipment; isolation of:
• Small microwave – Can be randomly useful in the lab.
• Laminar flow hood – Working in sterile clean air environment under the hood.
• Incubator – Growth of plates/cultures.
• Centrifuge – Settling out yeast quickly and mixing chemicals well.
• Handheld counter – Can use anything for this, but when dealing with large counts, it’s easier to have a counter to keep track of quantities.
• Bunsen burners
• Orbital shakers – Better suited to large scale propagations of many strains at a time.
• Dissolved oxygen meter – Essential in both the brewery and lab.
• Total titratable acidity meter – Used on our sour beer mostly. It tests the actually acidity we would taste instead of just the pH.
• UV/VIS spectrophotometer – Provides analytics like SRM, IBU, alcohol content, etc.
• Zahm carbonation tester – Used to test full carbonated beer.
• Liquid chromatography machine – We don’t have this yet, but is a great piece of equipment for breaking down the actual chemical content of your beers along with other lab uses. It may be overkill, but it’s a helpful machine.
• 60 PSI, 3 BBL propagation conical fermenter
• -80F Lab Cryofreezer – At this low temperature, yeast/bacteria will freeze completely allowing you to bank for an unlimited amount of time.
• qPCR machine with primers – Use for advanced contamination testing and identifying strains, given you have the correct primers.
• Carbodoseur – Used to check carbonation levels of uncarbonated beer. Mostly used in our sour program.
Using these tools and following the work of other brewers and microbiologist, you’ll have your own lab and can carry this knowledge over to a brewery with quality control. With all the craft breweries opening up, this will become even more crucial as we expect a higher quality product from the industry. Having the ability to do this on your homebrew will increase quality, which is what we all strive for. It will also give you insight on what you’ll need to start a brewery and have a QC program.
Brew on!
After brewing for a few years, I became more curious about the science behind brewing and fermentation. During research, I came to the realization that yeast is the most important brewing ingredient. I knew this before, but I didn’t understand fully how and why. After all, it is a living organism and, just like any other organism, it needs the proper attention and environment to thrive. This research led me to the book Yeast by Chris White and Jamil Zanishaff. After this, I was hooked on all things brewing science and especially microbiology. I was also interested in sour beers, so this led me to Milk the Funk (milkthefunk.com) and the Sour Hour (thebrewingnetwork.com), which piqued my interest even more in all things yeast and bacteria.
Now I’m no microbiologist, but thanks to the research and effort of many microbiologists and brewers, it allows people like us to become a self-taught “Macgyver’d” microbiologist by researching their work and putting it into experience. Some of the resources I’d suggest would be right here on Homebrew Talk, Milk the Funk and their Facebook group, White Labs, the book Yeast, Sour beer blog, The Brettanomyces project, and Brewing network, amongst other sources.
After doing this research, I realized that I didn’t have the necessary equipment to create a lab at home. Basic or advanced lab equipment can be chosen, just like brewing equipment. I chose a more extreme approach since most of the equipment purchased would be moved over to my brewery’s lab. The “Yeast” book helped give me a base list of the starting equipment I would need. The idea was to create a lab that I could do quality control (QC) tests, yeast viability/vitality tests, contamination tests, wild yeast and bacteria harvesting/isolating, sterilization, yeast plating/slanting, yeast banking, basic identification, and other necessities. Not only was I doing this for my own interests, but I am starting a brewery in a few months, so I’ll be adopting the role of head brewer, “yeast wrangler”, and QC. I wanted to be prepared for the QC tests I’ll have to perform in my brewery and for isolating and testing wild yeast and bacteria. On top of this, we will also be using our equipment to provide these tests to other breweries in the area who can’t afford to have a lab or someone to staff it.
I won’t elaborate on equipment use, since the resources I’ve listed describe it in detail much better than I could.
Eessential Equipment and Chemicals Needed for a Home Lab:
Sanitization
• Pressure cooker or autoclave – A pressure cooker is more affordable and practical for sanitation, but an autoclave is what is used in real labs.
• Sanitizer lab spray – Consists of 70%-90% isopropyl alcohol, but it can be another lab grade spay.
• Caustic acid
• Sanitizing wipes
• KimTech wipes
• Gloves, face mask, and safety glasses – These aren’t essential, but I’m a sterile freak.
• Flame source – Bunsen burner or an alcohol lamp with denatured alcohol.
• A work space away from the brewing location. I prefer a stainless steel table where I know it can
Microscopy
• Hemocytometer and cover slip – Cell counting, viability tests
• Trypan Blue – Viability tests, stains dead yeast cells blue
• Safranin – Gram Stain – Used to detect contamination under the microscope.
• Crystal Violet – Gram Stain
• Grams Iodine – Grain Stain
• 95% ethyl alcohol – Gram Stain
• Glass or disposable pipettes
• Gram slides – Used in gram staining, but not needed.
• B Immersion Oil – Makes for a better image under the microscope at high magnification.
• Microscope capable of at least 400x magnification, but if you plan to work with bacteria, you’ll want one that can go 900x+.
• Microscope slides and cover slips
• Microscope green filter – Makes it easier to view microorganisms.
Isolation/Contamination/Banking/Other
• Flask and stopper – Used with stir plate. You can also use a mason jar with sterile tin foil over it as well.
• Membrane filters – Used to filter out microorganisms in liquid solutions.
• Inoculation loop – For inoculating plate and slants.
• A good pH meter or strips
• Agar plates/slants – You can either make these yourself or buy them as sterile premades. I use White labs, if I’m getting premade, but mostly make my own.
• Graduated cylinder or just a mason jar
• Stir plate with stir bars
• Glass lab vials with stands/holders
• Disposable funnels or autoclavable ones
• Sterile needles or autoclavable ones
• 30 ml sterile ampules – These are the kind you need a needle to inject into. I use these for my isotonic sodium chloride storing.
• 1.5 ml PCR tubes – Use for both storage in the freezer and in PCR tests.
• In-line oxygenator – Used for both the brewery and the lab.
• Scale – Weighing dry chemicals.
• Sterile petri dishes or autoclavable ones
• Parafilm – Used to seal caps and petri dishes.
• Butane torch – Good for sterilizing on the go.
• Chemicals –Used for isolation and making of medias.
• Glycerol – Used in freezing medias.
• Isotonic sodium chloride – A storage solution basically made of salt and de-ionized water.
• Cycloheximide – Kills some fungi, such as normal brewer’s yeast. This is used to help isolate Brett/bacteria (Saccharomyces)
• Chloramphenicol – An antibiotic used to isolate Brett/Saccaromyces.
• pH buffers
• Ascorbic acid
• Peptone
• Yeast extract
• Dextrose
• Tryptone
• Yeast nitrogenous base (YNB)
• Ferric chloride
• Thiamine
• Bromocresol green
• Monopotassium phosphate
• Manganese sulfate
• Coumaric acid
• CuSO4
• Glycerin
• Sterile Mineral Oil
• Liquid hop extract – Used
Other dyes such as Methyl Orange, Universal Red, etc
I’m sure I’m forgetting a number of chemicals, as I haven’t assessed what I have, but this will be a lot of what you’ll need. Each of these items can be found from the provided resources. Additional brewing items you probably already have is a refractometer and a thermometer. Not including the work area and table, the cost will be about $1,000, assuming you don’t have any of these items already. Shop around; you may be able to find these items cheaper.
With this equipment, you can perform contamination tests; cultivate wild yeasts,;streak a plate allowing growth from a single cell; plate yeast to allow for selective colony choosing or storage; slanting yeast; sterilize equipment; isolation of:
- Sacc
- Non-Sacc yeast
- Brett
- Pedio
- Lacto
If You Want to go to a Brewery Scale, Here's Some of the Equipment Used in our Brewery Lab:
• Small microwave – Can be randomly useful in the lab.
• Laminar flow hood – Working in sterile clean air environment under the hood.
• Incubator – Growth of plates/cultures.
• Centrifuge – Settling out yeast quickly and mixing chemicals well.
• Handheld counter – Can use anything for this, but when dealing with large counts, it’s easier to have a counter to keep track of quantities.
• Bunsen burners
• Orbital shakers – Better suited to large scale propagations of many strains at a time.
• Dissolved oxygen meter – Essential in both the brewery and lab.
• Total titratable acidity meter – Used on our sour beer mostly. It tests the actually acidity we would taste instead of just the pH.
• UV/VIS spectrophotometer – Provides analytics like SRM, IBU, alcohol content, etc.
• Zahm carbonation tester – Used to test full carbonated beer.
• Liquid chromatography machine – We don’t have this yet, but is a great piece of equipment for breaking down the actual chemical content of your beers along with other lab uses. It may be overkill, but it’s a helpful machine.
• 60 PSI, 3 BBL propagation conical fermenter
• -80F Lab Cryofreezer – At this low temperature, yeast/bacteria will freeze completely allowing you to bank for an unlimited amount of time.
• qPCR machine with primers – Use for advanced contamination testing and identifying strains, given you have the correct primers.
• Carbodoseur – Used to check carbonation levels of uncarbonated beer. Mostly used in our sour program.
Using these tools and following the work of other brewers and microbiologist, you’ll have your own lab and can carry this knowledge over to a brewery with quality control. With all the craft breweries opening up, this will become even more crucial as we expect a higher quality product from the industry. Having the ability to do this on your homebrew will increase quality, which is what we all strive for. It will also give you insight on what you’ll need to start a brewery and have a QC program.
Brew on!
