Kai,
Hopefully that’s not beginners luck, because that is a decent shot for the firt one.
…and most importantly there’re no “things”. ;D
Really good stuff. Keep up the great work! 8)
I’m think that I’ll keep this thread going for all the interesting stuff I’m finding. Here are some pics from yesterday and tonight:
That looks like mold hyphae to me. But it is dead and I don’t think it came from my beer. It mos likely came from the picnic tap I used to sample
Here I used the 100x oil immersion lens to get to 1000x magnification and used the zoom of the camera to get even closer. Even w/o the blurriness of the camera the 1000x of the microscope is rather blurry. But I don’t use that magnification much.
The dregs from a Schneider Weisse bottle. I wanted to see how much live yeast is in there. There seems to be a lot and I’m also culturing it. The yeast is obvious but there is a lot of other very small stuff. I wonder if that is chill haze.
close-up of the same dregs. There were a lot of crystals which might be calcium oxalate. A quick Google search supports that. This bears the question if Schneider brews with calcium deficient water which is known for causing calcium oxalate precipitation in the bottle.
Kai
I’m loving this thread! The pics look great with your point an shoot. Your top pic looks like mold. Like you said, probably from the tap. Why do you say it is dead?
Keep em comin!
Yes you are correct. I did some more Google searching and it has more in common with hyphae than with Brett. Makes sense since mold is my primary brewery contaminant.
Kai
Do you know how many people are probably searching for microscopes now since you started this thread and added pics? 
Cool pics and without the expense of an adaptor or scope with camera! ;D
I agree with you. If you think about it the ~$220 i spent for the scope and haemacytometer isn’t that much when compared to other brewery upgrades that brewers usually consider. Looking at stuff and counting cells may wear off quickly though. It does add some time
to the brewing process but being able to look at yeast also raises awareness about these critters. And they are the most important part in brewing.
Kai
Kai, I think the blurring you see at the edges of the photo are due to chromatic aberration. You might be able to find an ACHROMAT or PLAN ACHROMAT objective to fit your microscope which will give you photos with a much flatter field of view, but this would likely be costly. One place that sells surplus optical materials of this sort is www.surplusshack.com
They also regularly have older surplus microscopes at reasonable prices.
Actually, I take back the mold comment. Your first pic looks more like yeast with pseudohyphae, which can form in saccharomyces.
Now how OCD I need to become to be about picnic taps?
Shall I clean it in Star San every time after serving beer from it?
Great info.
Thank you
I sure as hell am not going to sanitize every time I pour! Keep in mind that this isn’t going back in your keg. Maybe i’ll swab my picnic taps to see what grows. I’m not worried about what’s on them really. Clean them every few weeks, or when you empty a keg…
Great now I have this need to see whats crawling in my beer.
Looks like Euglena to me. They are common protists found in water. They are photosynthetic (why they appear green in most pictures and diagrams) but ethanol will draw the chlorophyll from the choloplasts.
Don’t be surprised to find all sorts of protists (including Amoeba sp.) in your water and beer. They are far more common than people realize.
Cheers,
Aaron
That solves the mystey. Thanks. The things did indeed look like this image from the web:
Not sure yet where exactly it was hiding since I doubt that they can live in beer.
Kai
Nope, they can’t live in beer at all - only freshwater. Unless you used DI or RO water, I promise you that’s where it came from. Most likely it was entered via mash or sparge water. It was long dead by the time you hit your sac. rest.
Cheers,
Aaron
I swabbed my picnic tap and cultured on blood agar. Here are the results.
Lots of yeast (surprising, right?) and a few gram positive cocci. The larger colonies are the GPC’s.
I stained several colonies and one mix of GPC and yeast.
gram stained and ready to go…
Yeast, gram stained
Yeast and GPC
Here is some other random stuff from a day’s work…
Penicillium-Lactophenol aniline blue tape mount
Penicillium on potato flake agar
Aspergillus-LP tape mount
Actinomycetes gram stain
I’ll have to try using tape myself. Never thought of it. Did you have to stain the mold?
Here is something I’m seeing quite often in my beers:
My first thought was that this is bacteria but it seems a bit long and for that and the beer tastes clean. Maybe crystals of sorts.
Kai
The structures are stained on the slide. We use it to identify mold. It can be tricky because the identifying structures take a while to form. The media of choice is potato flake agar, but as an alternative, sabouraud dextrose agar can be used, but the structures don’t develop as well. If you’re dealing with mold, it should be done in a biosafety cabinet, as some species like penicillium, aspergillus, cladosporium, etc can be VERY powdery and get all over, which you obviously don’t want in your brewery.
Here is the process anyways:
First make a line of lactophenol aniline blue on a slide
Take fungal tape between index finger and thumb, and touch it to the mold. Start in the center of the slide and place the tape on the slide. avoid trapping air. Scotch tape will work as well.
LP tape mount
Diatom?
Those things seem to grow though. I don’t remember them being that large before.
Kai