xico
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Hey all, I just started my education in brewing science in central Washington and eager to get started. I am undergoing two experiments with guidance from the department's biologist. The first one is on wild yeasts. I have the basic framework laid out but I'd like to get feedback from the community.
The experiment will give me the chance to work with equipment and develop skill-sets for repeatable and scalable experiments.
I intend to expose 6 fermentation vessels with 1.5 L of unhopped wort. The grain bill will probably going to be 65% pilsen, 35% white wheat, but I'm open to suggestions. OG ~1.045 with a long b-amylase rest at 146F to maximize fermentability. This has worked in the past with mixed culture pitches to speed the brett finishing process.
I expose 3 vessels to one location, and three at another. Should I be putting these out over night, just a few hours, what are your thoughts? One will be on a horse farm and the other is undecided between under my fruit trees and in a hop field just outside of town (provided I get the okay from the farmer).
Next I ferment the vessels in my fermentation chest freezer at 68F, pulling 3 1mL samples from each vessel at different times over the course of fermentation. One at 12 hours from capping, one at 24 hours, and then once every 72 hours until high krausen finishes and then once per week until the bretts finish up.
Of these 3 1mL samples I freeze two of them using the fantastic method described by the good people here! The one I don't freeze I will use to streak plates. This is another point in question; how many plates should I make per sample? I need to keep school resources in mind and was thinking about using only one or two plates per sample. Can these be autoclaved and stored ahead of time or should I plan to have sterilization done over time?
From these plates I intend to step up colonies to pitching volumes, attempt to identify (crudely) Sacch. or Brett. cultures and brew these samples in 1.0L of wort for sensory analysis.
Next quarter a chemistry professor has offered to show me how to analyze these samples in a gas chromatograph with mass spec, but one thing at a time..
The hope would be to find one or maybe two yeasts I would be interested in working with.
What are some ideas for how to make this more efficient, interesting, repeatable, so on?
-- --
The second experiment will involve presenting 30 single-hopped brews to a panel of sensory analysts. My partner and I are looking to explore the contributions of individual hops for our own work. A single grain bill is being designed now for every brew. Likely white wheat will be a component for its ability to pronounce hops.
We are going to separate varieties into three tiers with respective target IBUs. This will be fairly straight-forward until I get to data accumulation from analysis. I see these wonderful spider plots used on a flavor wheel but how is that information scored and quantified before it's thrown into a diagram?
A hop analysis lab near our school offered to identify the presence and potency of essential oils found in each of the samples for us which I'd like to make use of for follow-up research.
I look forward to your input. As you can probably tell, I am not a trained scientist so advice that may seem obvious to you is likely not something I'm considering. My faculty support facilitates the necessities but I'm very much left to my own devices.
Thanks in advance!
The experiment will give me the chance to work with equipment and develop skill-sets for repeatable and scalable experiments.
I intend to expose 6 fermentation vessels with 1.5 L of unhopped wort. The grain bill will probably going to be 65% pilsen, 35% white wheat, but I'm open to suggestions. OG ~1.045 with a long b-amylase rest at 146F to maximize fermentability. This has worked in the past with mixed culture pitches to speed the brett finishing process.
I expose 3 vessels to one location, and three at another. Should I be putting these out over night, just a few hours, what are your thoughts? One will be on a horse farm and the other is undecided between under my fruit trees and in a hop field just outside of town (provided I get the okay from the farmer).
Next I ferment the vessels in my fermentation chest freezer at 68F, pulling 3 1mL samples from each vessel at different times over the course of fermentation. One at 12 hours from capping, one at 24 hours, and then once every 72 hours until high krausen finishes and then once per week until the bretts finish up.
Of these 3 1mL samples I freeze two of them using the fantastic method described by the good people here! The one I don't freeze I will use to streak plates. This is another point in question; how many plates should I make per sample? I need to keep school resources in mind and was thinking about using only one or two plates per sample. Can these be autoclaved and stored ahead of time or should I plan to have sterilization done over time?
From these plates I intend to step up colonies to pitching volumes, attempt to identify (crudely) Sacch. or Brett. cultures and brew these samples in 1.0L of wort for sensory analysis.
Next quarter a chemistry professor has offered to show me how to analyze these samples in a gas chromatograph with mass spec, but one thing at a time..
The hope would be to find one or maybe two yeasts I would be interested in working with.
What are some ideas for how to make this more efficient, interesting, repeatable, so on?
-- --
The second experiment will involve presenting 30 single-hopped brews to a panel of sensory analysts. My partner and I are looking to explore the contributions of individual hops for our own work. A single grain bill is being designed now for every brew. Likely white wheat will be a component for its ability to pronounce hops.
We are going to separate varieties into three tiers with respective target IBUs. This will be fairly straight-forward until I get to data accumulation from analysis. I see these wonderful spider plots used on a flavor wheel but how is that information scored and quantified before it's thrown into a diagram?
A hop analysis lab near our school offered to identify the presence and potency of essential oils found in each of the samples for us which I'd like to make use of for follow-up research.
I look forward to your input. As you can probably tell, I am not a trained scientist so advice that may seem obvious to you is likely not something I'm considering. My faculty support facilitates the necessities but I'm very much left to my own devices.
Thanks in advance!
