Holy cow!
I leave this forum for a few months and come back to a “gram staining your beer” thread! lol great topic guys! really nice photos.
I didn’t expect people to play with microscopes, stains, hemocytometer and blood agar (that must have been the most surprising part of it) in the name of homebrewing. Great job! Keep it up 
Kai, I googled rod bacillus and believe that is what you are looking at…
we do live in a biological soup of sorts.
This thread makes me want to buy a microscope. Then it makes me not want to buy a microscope.
Very informative, though.
+1
Very interesting stuff guys. I love the pics.
It does look very similar, except for the size. From what I know bacteria are much smaller than yeast but these things can get as large as yeast cells. I once saw what bacteria looks like when I looked at a wort stability test after it started fermenting. It was a sea of very small rods and dots. Much smaller than these rods that I commonly see in wort and beer. Besides that, none of the beers tasted infected. That should have been the case if they were bacteria and given their density.
Kai
I agree with you Kai bacillus are much smaller than what you are seeing. It could be some mutant yeast cells. Given the size its way too big for bacteria. Is this a yeast that you have been culturing for a time, or do you pitch a fresh culture with every new batch of beer?
It seems that this discussion has died, but I’ll send my thoughts on this object. Not bacteria.
Is it possible that this is something on the coverslip? Its hard to tell what plane you are focused on, but I see out of focus objects in the background, indicating that this is on a different focus plane. I may be way off, but if its something you see consistently i was thinking it was your cover slip, or whatever you’re using. Can you move it in the liquid?
Those rods remind me of looking at micro-crystals under microscope.
Also, you don’t need to say rod bacillus, because bacilli are defined by having a rod shape.
I post this to illustrate my thinking, not to pose an argument, but this is why I said “rod bacteria”
I am far far from any type of microbiologist.
Uh …spirochetes(sp) are bacteria…not rod shaped
No, I didn’t mean to put anyone down or anything.
Bacteria are divided into 3 major groups by shape:
Round are called coccus or cocci.
Rods are called bacillus or bacilli.
And spiral shaped bacteria, that, in turn, divide into three separate categories.
Kai,
what water are you using to dilute your sample? You will need sterile filtered water if you don’t want to see contamination such as this.
I haven’t seen those again after I noticed them first. I generally use distilled water from the drugstore to dilute my samples.
Kai