Bryan Heit is a homebrewer with a scientific background that has created a set of videos and a blog that makes building your home yeast lab very easy to understand and setup. His set of videos can make any homebrewer into a newfound yeast wrangler!
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Show Transcript (A.I. Created It will not be perfect but will get the job done!)
Colter Wilson: On today’s show, we have a really cool guest. His name is Brian height. He has a YouTube channel and blog called Sue Janice brewing. This blog and YouTube channel gives you very detailed instructions on what it takes to create your own home brewing yeast lab at home and all of the materials you would need to do so today on homebrewing.
DIY.
And welcome back to homebrewing DIY, the podcast that takes on the Dewey yourself aspect of homebrewing gadgets, contraptions and parts. This podcast covers it all on today’s show. We’re talking to Brian height of Sue Jenice brewing. We’re going to talk about all of the steps that you need to take to create your own home yeast lab.
But first, I’d like to thank all of our patrons over a Patrion is because of your support that this show can come to you week after week for free. Head over to patrion.com forward slash homebrewing DIY today. And give it any amount, any support is truly appreciated. We currently have a special going on right now that if you give it the $1 level, you’ll get not only a logo sticker mailed to you, but we’ll also give you access to our RSS feed that is ad-free in early release.
Cool thing is this week, I am actually getting this episode out early. You’ll probably be hearing this on Tuesday versus on Thursday, so. Pretty exciting stuff and definitely worth giving over a patron. Also, if you give it the $5 level, we’re going to give you a really great gift from scrubber duckies. I only have one left, so whoever is the next $5 patron is going to be.
The last one that I have. And speaking of new patrons, I’d like to thank Mike McCourt for signing up at the $5 level. I sent his scrubber duckies off on Monday, and I’m super excited to see what he thinks and if he likes them. So Mike, thank you for giving at patron. So if you’d like to support the show, head over to patrion.com forward slash homebrewing DIY.
Another way you can support the show is by heading over to Apple podcasts or pod chaser.com and writing us a review your reviews, help others find this show, and it gives me great feedback on improving the show. So please head over there and write us a review. Also, if you have any feedback, we’d love to hear from you.
You can always shoot us an email at podcast at homebrewing, DIY DUP here. Once again, that’s podcast@homebrewingdiy.beer, and I’d love to maybe read your feedback on the air. Just send us an email. I’d love to hear from you. The last week and support the show is to head to homebrewing diy.beer, our website, and use our sponsor links.
You can buy a new brewing software such as brew father, or do your shopping at adventures in homebrewing. And in doing so, you’re going to let them know that we sent you, and they’re going to give us a little bit of a kickback. So please support the show by using our sponsor links. First thing I’d like to talk about is the fact that I’m sure it’s not a surprise to everyone that most people in the United States right now are staying home just because of the coven 19 outbreak that’s happening here in the United States, and we are officially in the middle of a global pandemic of coven 19.
But, uh, I’d like to talk a bit about, a couple of things. I, I ran a bit of a Twitter poll and I actually talk about a bit with Brian in our, in our conversation today. But during that Twitter poll, I asked some people, and anecdotally I’m also asking my friends, are you hope brewing more now that you’re kind of stuck at home?
And I found that. The answer is emphatically yes. A lot of people are homebrewing more and randomly here in Colorado, we have a couple of local Homebrew shops that if you place an order with them or call it in online, they’ll actually bring you your ingredients and leave it contact free on your porch so that it’s easy for you to get what you need.
So pretty exciting stuff and I’m really excited that there’s enough homebrewers out there that are supporting the shops and helping keep them open. Another cool thing that’s happening here in Denver around it is that there’s another local podcast here that is specific to do with the craft beer industry, mainly focused on actual craft breweries on the pro side, not so much on the homebrewing side, but there’s a local PO podcast here called unfiltered, and they’re actually doing a really cool.
It’s called the sip beer festival, or the shelter in place, built beer festival where they’re on April 11th going to do an online beer festival and all of the ticket sells and all of the merge and even donations to the festival are going to support the staff of local craft breweries. Uh, if you have a local craft brewery.
And you’re not being distributed in grocery stores. Chances are right now it’s really tough to sell beer because you’re only doing so to go and, and, and even if you’re selling food, it can only be to go. So the unfiltered podcast is doing this shelter in place, beer festival. If you head over to their website, sip beer fest.com you can get more information on tickets or ways to donate to the festival or how to even participate in it.
So head on over to sip beer fest.com once again, that’s sip beer fest.com in unrelated beer news in my personal brewery, I had a really cool experience on Saturday where a small group of us from the old town mash paddlers beer club. We actually got together and did our own. Kind of impromptu beer meeting where we did a no contact beer exchange within the club so that we could all have each other’s home brews.
We only tasted a couple home brews in this format, and then we did a Google meet video call and tasted, and actually. Almost kind of had like a happy hour just as a group of us and it was a really, really good time. If you have friends that are home brewers and you trade or swap beers or members of a club, doing an online beer club meeting was a really fun experience.
So highly recommend you being able to do that if you can. But in my own brewery. I had a couple of beers that I had given out as bottles and I had them on tap and was going to drink them as part of the meeting. Went to go and pour myself a beer, and as soon as I did. I was at a CO2. I’ve had a 20 pound CO2 tank and I haven’t had to fill it since 2017 because it is kind of a lot of CO2 for a Homebrew rescale, but eventually it does run out, run out, and apparently that happened in the middle of a pandemic.
So now I’m trying to figure out what I need to do to get my CO2 tank refilled. I feel like every week I’ve been talking about my little homebrewing mistakes. It’s kind of embarrassing. Well, let’s, uh, jump into today’s conversation where we’re talking to Brian height. About doing your own home East lab.
I’d like to welcome Brian height to the show. He’s the author of the sewage Dennis brewing blog, and he also has a great YouTube channel. Gold Sue Janice. Brewing. Welcome to the show,
Bryan Heit: Brian. Thank you for having me.
Colter Wilson: Well, I have to personally say that for me. I found you through your YouTube channel and. Uh, probably about three or four years ago.
And at that time it really inspired me to create my own home yeast lab. Because of your series, your own homeys lab made easy. I’d like to go into a bit of maybe of your history and how you set up your yeast lab. Maybe your first time and, and let’s talk a bit about that.
Bryan Heit: Sure. So I started, uh, way back in the mid 1990s, uh, back in those days, at least here in Canada, uh, homebrewing wasn’t like it is now where you could just go online and get what you wanted.
You know, you’d go to your local Homebrew shop. And you know, you’d go in with, with the recipe list to make a Pilsner, and you’d come up with ingredients for a Porter. And this just because you know what they had on hand in terms of yeast and hops and stuff, is what was there. And that’s what, what she brewed with.
And so I was a young university student, I was taking courses on microbiology. And in one course we were taught how to sort of . Culture and store bacteria. And so I went and I talked to the prof, told him what I was doing. And, uh, she got really excited and, and I left her office about an hour later with a whole bunch of test tubes and, uh, some agar and some recipes for some media I could try.
And I started at that point to bank some yeasts. And so, uh, in those days, I used a method called slanting and I, I do have a video on that. And, um. For probably four or five years. I kept about a dozen or so yeast in my fridge on slants. Third of the common ones that I used. And, uh, it was at about that point.
I actually started working on my PhD, uh, and I had got access to. Obviously better lab equipment and better techniques. And that’s when I really started to begin collecting East, not just maintaining a, a handful of, of strains. And so I started using freezing as a way to store my yeast. Uh, and you know, today my collections grow and too, something in the neighborhood of 400, uh, different yeast and mixture of yeast and other brewing organisms like lactobacillus.
Colter Wilson: That’s a very large East bank to maintain in your house. And are you, are you doing that with your home equipment or are you using lab equipment from work or something like
Bryan Heit: that? Oh, mostly at home. Uh, however, I do have a backup stalks that my work, uh, stored in a, in a minus 80 degrees Celsius, which I think is about a minus 120 Fahrenheit freezer.
So that’s, uh, the best way to store yeast if you have access to it, obviously, uh, cause frozen like that. They’re good in theory for hundreds of years. But all of my working stocks I keep at home. Uh, and that’s what I work from 99% of the time.
Colter Wilson: Yeah. One of your videos, Aries on your YouTube channel specifically talks about capturing wild yeast and some techniques to do so.
Why don’t you talk a bit about, if I were never thought about being, doing any type of collection of yeast, how. Relatively easy. It is to to capture your own wildebeest from your own backyard.
Bryan Heit: So capturing wild yeast. I mean, it can be as easy or as hard as you want it to be. Um, you know, the, the simplest way to capture wild yeast is just to cool ship of beer.
So if, uh, you know, in my case, I brew on a, a propane burner out in the yard. So I do this a couple of times a year, literally at the end of the boil, shut off the propane, leave the lid off your pot and just walk away and leave it till the next morning, uh, and over the night. You know, bugs will drown in it, stuff will get blown into it, and that’s going to carry in the wild yeast that will then start a ferment.
Um, if you live in a rural area like I do, or if you’re in a city where you have raccoons running around, you might want to put a, a barbecue grading on top, but you do want to make sure it’s open enough that bugs and stuff can get in. And then the next morning just transferred into a carboy, put a narrow lock on top.
And if in two weeks or so, you start to see signs of fermentation, you’re probably good to go. Uh, but expect to wait at least a year before you drink that because it does take a while for those types of beers to mature to a point where, um, there’s something you would want to consume. And even then, you probably gonna want to look at adding fruit or blending it with another beer to get something that’s really enjoyable.
And
Colter Wilson: those types of mics for new mutations are going to have flavors that are going to be more. Kind of , lactobacillus, Brett kind of funky type of flavors right.
Bryan Heit: Exactly. Um, I mean, this is how traditional lambics are made. Don’t expect to get something like that because lambics get a lot of their character from being blended a co across multiple sort of barrels, multiple different cultures.
When you do one of these on your own, they tend to be fairly one dimensional. So I’ve had. Had some that just go incredibly sour. I’ve had some that get, you know, really that sort of strong, funky note, uh, which is why usually you need to blend them or add fruit or something when, when they’re done. Because by blending them, you know, you could take a really sour one and mix in a funky one and come up with something a little more interesting.
But, uh, they do tend to be definitely either towards the sour end or towards sort of the phenolic, uh, earth notes and leather and stuff like that. Character.
Colter Wilson: Now, let’s say I wanted to have maybe a collected yeast, wild yeast strain that I, I had and wanted to save for later. What would that process look like?
Bryan Heit: I mean like a single strain or a mixture?
Colter Wilson: I would say you’re going to get a mixture if you collect something out of your backyard,
right?
Bryan Heit: Yup.
Colter Wilson: Yeah. And then I know that part of your, your series is talking about maybe isolating a single colony and trying to isolate it down to getting a strain. What does that process look like?
Bryan Heit: Yeah. So that process is actually a process that I think people, uh, thinker is really complicated and it’s actually not. And, um, actually the whole Genesis of that, your home lab made easy series was because I was trying to explain these things on forums and people didn’t believe me, so I’m like, fine, I’ll just make a stupid video and you can see how it’s done.
And it’s actually. Pretty easy. Uh, and so the first thing you want to start with is something that tastes good, um, because you’re not gonna have a very good chance of success if you just sort of grab any random wild ferment. Uh, but if it already tastes good to start with, then there’s probably something in there worth isolating.
Uh, and usually the first step in then getting that. Something good out is you do what’s called a streak plate. And so this is where you would take a Petri dish with a, an egg Gar in it. That yeast will grow on. And uh, I don’t know, explaining this over over audio might be a little difficult, but basically what you do is you, you take a little loop and you, you take a little bit of that yeast solution and you spread it on one corner of the plate, and then you take.
Um, that loop and you sterilize it in a flame, and then you sort of cross it back over where you put those East down and then streak that out onto another sort of quarter of the plate. Um, and then you just repeat that process a couple more times. And so every time you sort of flame your loop, you sterilize it, and then every time you pass the loop.
Over your previous streak. You pick up a little bit of the East from there, but not a lot. And what that ends up doing is diluting out the East. So when you grow that up, that first streak you did will just be a dense layer of yeast. And the second streak will probably be a slightly less. Dance layer of use, but still pretty dense.
And then somewhere between that third and fourth streak, you’ll start to get single individual colonies of yeast. And when you have a single colony of yeast, that actually grows up from a single cell. So you know, if you got a single colony growing off by itself, that that’s a pure strain of yeast. And it came, you know, in that entire colony is essentially a clone of that initial yeast.
And so once you’ve done that street plate, you’re going to have. You know, probably 20, 30 different colonies of East on there. And then you can start doing little miniature ferments. Uh, I usually do them in wine bottles cause it’s a convenient size and you can get, uh, bongs that fit them quite nice with an airlock.
And I’ll just, you know, five or six at a time, do little test ferments and see if I can’t find one that I like. And if I do, you can just scale it up like any other yeast using a starter and brew beer.
Colter Wilson: Yeah. One of the techniques that I used was I would start with my little like 10 mil test tube and start growing up from there until it got to a larger volume to where I could actually really start to test it.
Uh, and that, that tended to get me where I wanted to, whether it was making a starter for a batch of beer or whether it was testing out different strains of yeast to see if I wanted to try one. . My next question is know cleanliness is a, is kind of a big deal. I know that if you’re in a lab, you have things like autoclaves for total sterilization, and I think that the big thing that I got out of your videos was the fact that you could do a lot of these things at home and you don’t need a lot of equipment.
What would you say is the basis okay equipment that you would need for a home yeast lab if you were going to try to start out today.
Bryan Heit: So if you’re not looking to spend much money, you really don’t need to buy anything special. Um, for 99% of yeast ranching, just boiling stuff, we’ll sterilize it enough, uh, for you to use.
So really what you’re going to want, uh, is to have either a Bunsen burner or an alcohol lamp and alcohol lamp can be made literally out of a spare jar or in a piece of cotton cloth. Mmm. And again, I have a video on that. If, if someone’s wanting to make that, or if you have a proper Bunsen burner that’s a, that’s a little better.
Uh, you’ll need some Petri dishes, which you can get single use sterile ones off of Amazon or eBay pretty cheap. Uh, or if you’re going to do a fair amount of it, you can get reusable glass ones for a little bit more. Um, some sort of a, a flask for preparing media in. Uh, and then I’m a bit of a Gar, which you can actually get at a lot of, uh, Chinese marketplaces.
It’s used sort of as a gelatin equivalent in, in some Asian styles of cooking. Uh, and everything else is a brewery you’re going to have around the house. Uh, most of the media, at least that I use, is either made from dry malt extract or from potatoes and sugar, uh, which most of us should have lying around.
And if you have all of that. Um, you’re pretty much good to go and that’ll let you do anything from, uh, just banking, commercial strains of yeast to capturing and purifying DS. You don’t really need anything more than that. Uh, if you really do want it to kind of take it to the next step, get an Instapot and then you can properly sterilize your media.
Uh, outside of that, there isn’t really any need for anything special for. Home, uh, home East lab. But you did mention a cleanliness early on, and that part actually is really important. Uh, and again, I have a whole video on this. It’s, it’s probably best if you’re trying to get started to watch that. But really the first step is to find a workplace, um, where you can kind of control the air flow because drafts are really sort of the enemy.
When you’re working with plates, you want a room where the air is as still as possible. And obviously you want the room to be relatively clean and it doesn’t have to be a dedicated space. I usually just do it in my kitchen. Um, but you do want to avoid anywhere where there’s a lot of drafts where maybe there’s gonna be a lot of people walking by while you’re working, cause that’ll create drafts and drafts are what will carry contaminants into your Petri dishes or your tubes as you’re working.
Colter Wilson: Yeah. So example would be, don’t stand under an air vent while you’re doing it. That’s going to definitely blow contaminants right into it. Right, exactly.
Bryan Heit: Or don’t work by an open window or things like that.
Colter Wilson: Another quick question. do with things like, like you said, the Bunsen burner, right? Uh, I think one of the cool parts.
For me was what, when I first watched your work, understanding that like the Bunsen burner or the alcohol web creates an updraft that allows you to have a sterile working space as long as you’re within a certain area, the of the flame. Why don’t you explain to me a bit, uh, how that works.
Bryan Heit: So that’s really the magic of a Bunsen burner and alcohol lamps.
So basically while they’re burning fuel, um, they’re doing two things. The first thing is, is they’re creating hot air, and of course, hot air rises. So that creates over top of the burner, whether it’s a Bunsen burner and alcohol lamps, or of a rising column of hot air. And the other thing they’re doing is they’re consuming oxygen.
And if you have a column of hot air. Rising above you. That means that the auction has to be coming in sort of from the sides. So you get this movement of air that kind of comes inward across your, your work surface, and then rises vertically, um, at your lamp or at your Bunsen burner. And so when you’re working, if you keep your materials close to that and you don’t move too quickly, so you’re not creating drafts yourself, that flow of error actually protects your samples from being coming contaminated because anything that’s in that air, it’s not falling down and into your Petri dish or your tubes.
It’s being drawn up. Uh. Pass that flame and then up into the higher up in the room. And so you, you get almost like a cyclical flow of air where the hot air rises and carrying carries all the contaminants out and then they kind of fall back down to the floor. But they’re doing that away from where you’re working.
And then that area gets drawn back in to the flame and carried back up and kind of just cycles around like that.
Colter Wilson: And would working with test tubes, we’ll kind of test tubes, do you think are the best ones.
Bryan Heit: It really depends on how much you’re planning on doing it. Uh, you can get pre sterilized, single use plastic tubes, um, that actually a lot of people will just restart Ally’s with star San and you get multiple uses out of them.
That’s probably the easiest. Place to start. Um, what I would recommend people look for are 15 milliliter centrifuge tubes. Is, is what they’re sold as, or 14 milliliter Snapchap tubes. And either of those will work fairly well as a, a test tube. Alternatively, you can buy proper glass test tubes with either a screw on lid or a slip on metal cap.
The advantage of those is they’re reusable, um, so you can just put them in your pressure cooker. Uh, and um. Use them that way. Uh, and they do make, uh, if you’re going to use slants, it is a lot easier to make slants with those glass tubes cause you can pressure cook the media right in the tube and then you just kind of put the tubes on an angle and let it solidifies so you end up with a slanted surface.
But. I generally recommend people stay away from slants. They’re a very old school technology, and if you have a home deep freeze, it’s a better option for you for storing yeast. Uh, so if all you’re going to do is maybe freeze some yeast and make some starters, those are plastic, you know, centrifuge or snap cap tubes are probably your best
Colter Wilson: bet.
Yeah. You did say that flats are kind of an older way of doing it. What is the more modern way to. To bank those yeasts versus a slant.
Bryan Heit: So the more modern way would be to freeze East. Um, freezing has a number of advantages, the main one being how often you have to deal with your culture. Uh, so if you have a, so maybe I should explain quickly what a slant is.
So a slant is you, you take a, a test tube and you put a bit of, um. Media. So that’s usually a lower gravity war with some agar in it, so it’ll solidify. But when you let us solidify, you don’t have the tube standing up, right? You have the tube lying at a fairly steep angle so that you get a very large flat surface or a very large surface, uh, inside of the tube.
And so when he’s down the tube up, it’s got a slanted. Solid surface in it. And so when you do slants, you, you streak East onto that slanted surface, you let it grow, and then you can cap that and store it in the fridge. And there’s a few tricks you can do to extend that lifespan. But realistically speaking, you’re talking three months to maybe a year, a year and a half, that you can really trust that slant as a, as a way to store your yeast in a home freezer.
That same East sample. Will last you at least three years, if not longer. Uh, and if you have access, of course, to scientific rated freezers, they would last centuries. And the only real trick to freezing is when the yeast go into the freezer, you want there to be about 20% glycerol by volume, uh, in. In that tube along with the yeast.
And that’ll prevent ice crystals from breaking the yeast open. And so you can get glycerol from a lot of pharmacies. Uh, it’s used in soap making and in homemade cosmetics. So you can often find it in, in craft stores. And basically what I do is I will take a Mason jar, a smaller one, one that holds maybe a half cup or so, and I’ll mix up a solution of 40% glycerol.
And, uh, the remainder, um, just dry malt extract and water shooting for final gravity just around 10, 20. You don’t want too much sugar in there. And then I’ll pressure cook that to sterilize it. And then when I want to freeze East, I’ll pour those East into tubes. I’ll fill the tubes about halfway with yeast slurry, and then I’ll top them up with that.
Pressure, cooked 40% glass for all mix, mix it thoroughly, and now I have a tube that’s about 20% glycerol, and you just literally toss it into your home, deep freeze and let it freeze. And you know, depending on how you want to manage your yeast, you have a couple options there. Uh, so yeast strains that I use a lot, I can literally Thall one of those tubes.
I’ll use a about a 50 mil tube. And so when in one of those tubes, there’s enough yeast that it’s essentially the same as a white labs tube or a why East East packet. So you throw it into a starter a day or two later, it’s ready to roll in. You’re, you’re ready to start brewing, uh, for lesser use East. You can actually, uh.
I have the song on YouTube, so it’s probably easier to look at the video, but you can take a metal loop and scoop a small amount of yeast out of the frozen tube and put that into a small tube of work, grow it up, and then move that into a larger. A flask and grow that up. And in a couple of steps, you can go from that little loop of yeast to a big flask of yeast ready for pitching.
And the advantage of that second method is that one tube now can be the basis of dozens, if not hundreds of batches of beer, because you’re literally just taking a tiny little scoop out every single time. And so long as you’re not letting it. And then rephrasing it. You know, you’re, you’re taking the frozen material out and getting it right back into the freezer that will last you three or more years.
And you can get, you know, like I said, dozens or even hundreds of batches on a one to East. Yeah.
Colter Wilson: And those dozens or hundreds of badges don’t have to deal with multi-generations cause you’re essentially just growing up that same first-generation. Right.
Bryan Heit: Actually. And so a lot of times if I’ve bought a yeast that I know I really want to keep, I’ll just make an oversize starter and the tube that I end up freezing in the freezer is that extra a yeast from that starter rather than, Mmm.
Uh, rather than waiting till Ivy slurry after a ferment and all that, and that way, you know, that you frozen down yeast that are at a very early point, uh, in there, their growth cycle. And so they won’t have had a chance to drift away from what that original stock was.
Colter Wilson: Yeah. And another aspect of your video, and this is something that is completely new to me, is.
Counting yeast through a microscope and the process for doing that. What if I were to want to get a microscope scope and maybe check the yeast fight a vitality? What would be the process for me to get into that.
Bryan Heit: That’s a big question. Um, so actually one of the most common questions I get through my blog or our questions about microscopes, and so that’s spurred a whole series of videos I just finished releasing that it’s meant to take.
Someone who’s never touched a microscope before and walk them through how to use the microscope, how not to wreck it, how to store it, and then how to do basic things, including East counts and viability standing. So the first thing you would want to do, obviously, is get a microscope. Uh, and that’s always the challenging part because.
There’s a lot of different microscopes out there. They’re built for different purposes, and obviously budget’s always going to be a consideration for someone working out of their home. Um, so, you know, finding a good microscope can take a bit of time, but once you have one, uh, what you’ll want to do is. Of course, familiar, familiarize yourself with how to work with it and how to use it.
And for the viability staining, it’s actually a pretty simple procedure once you’re comfortable using the microscope. Uh, and the only thing you need in addition to a microscope to do viability staining is, uh, an eyedropper or a pasture pipette. So something where you can sort of. Make a controlled number of drops of a liquid, uh, and a ceramic dish of some sort.
And then you need to get your hands on a dye called try pan blue, which, uh, again, you can just get off of Amazon as a premade solution, which is nice. And basically what you do is you take. Your yeast sample from a starter or whatever you sampled is you want to look at, and you put one or two drops of that onto a slide, and then you put one or two drops of the tribe ham blue on, uh, in, into that as well.
So it makes us together and you want to shoot for roughly the same amount of, of yeast as trypan blue, and then you put it under your microscope. And you look for cells that stain blue and anything that stains blue is a dead cell. And anything that’s able to keep that die out is a living cell. And so you can sort of get a rough feel by looking at that app, whether your cells are alive or dead, or what portion of them were alive versus dead.
So it’s a good way if you’re trying to assess the health of, you know, maybe it used to, you’ve had stored for a long time, or maybe you made a starter and it’s been sitting in the fridge for a month and you want to know if it’s still viable. It’s a good way to look at at those kinds of things.
Colter Wilson: Or even if you just bought an older smack pack from the bargain bin and you really wanted to see if it was worth pitching, that would be another good example.
Right.
Bryan Heit: Exactly.
Colter Wilson: I, I’m always tempted and never bite the bullet on the old East cause I’m like, man, am I, is it really worth risking a bad beer over this? Uh, it’s only $3. Although
Bryan Heit: usually a starter will resolve any of those issues. Right? If you, you run that smack pack through a starter, as long as there’s some viable yeast in there, you’ll probably be okay in the end.
Colter Wilson: Yeah, totally. It’s just, it’s just kind of by, uh, by my own. Head playing tricks on me is kind of how that works. Uh, I know that there’s also the, the , the, the technique of kind of counting you sales. It’s through a microscope. And what would be like the use of doing that.
Bryan Heit: Well, that is, um, a good way to make sure you’re pitching the right amount of yeast.
And I mean, I’ll be honest, I almost never do that myself. Uh, you know, the, the starter calculators that are out there that lets you sort of estimate how many E’s you’re gonna get are, I think, good enough for most circumstances. But obviously, you know, some people want maybe a little more control than that in commercial breweries, they’re obviously quite concerned with making sure they’re getting the right pitch rates.
And so that’s where counting. It really becomes a useful thing to do. And again, if you have a microscope and an eyedropper, uh, you only really need one more thing to do. Yeast cell counting. And that’s something called a hemo cytometer, which is basically a glass side that has a very fine grid carved into the glass.
And it also has a . On either side of that grid has a little glass Ridge. So if you put a thin piece of glass called a cover slip onto that Ridge, the Ridge will hold it a very specific height above that grid. And so when you put liquid in between that cover slip in the grid. There’s a, a very, uh, specific volume now above each square in the grid.
So you know how many yeasts are in each sort of region of the grid. And from there, you can calculate out the number of a yeast in your solution. And I know that sounds horrifically complicated the way I just explained it, but it’s actually very easy to do. The only real challenge is getting a hemo cytometer, uh, until.
Not that long ago, your only real option was to go to a scientific supply company and shell out between three and $500 for one of these things. Uh, but there, there’s, um, a number of Chinese manufacturers now that they make those clinical grade ones, but what they do is they sell. The ones that don’t meet those clinical standards for three to $5 a piece.
So if you’re willing to wait a couple of months for, to come in the mail from China, you can get one for, you know, less than $10. And I’ve compared them to the clinical grade one that I have at work. And the difference is not that big a, you’re, you’re counting error as a human will probably exceed the actual error.
Uh, in terms of what that. Cheap hemo cytometer does relative to a proper one.
Colter Wilson: Yeah, and to be honest, we’re talking about brewing beer and not saving lives. And so, well depends if, if, how much we really like beer. Uh, but the idea is that in all reality for this particular application, if you’re off a little bit, it’s not going to be the biggest deal.
You’re generally going to know that, Hey, this is how many sales I have right.
Bryan Heit: Exactly. I mean, you know, if you’re trying to pitch an ale, you know, you want somewhere around, what is it, a million per mil. Yeah. And if you count a million per million, you actually have, you know, 1.0 5 million per mil. I mean, that’s not going to matter.
Colter Wilson: No, it’s not. And you’re going to end up with the right, right. Pitch rate anyway. And I think your number one worry is under pitching versus over pitching a little bit. Right.
Bryan Heit: Generally speaking? Yeah. I mean, uh, I think in theory you can over pitch a yeast, but I’ve pitched beers on to entire yeast cake and you know, in theory been 10 times over where it was supposed to be in the beer was just fine.
So I think over pitching is a challenge.
Colter Wilson: Yeah. I think it’s more of a challenge versus under pitching can definitely. I think you’re totally cool. I think it’s, I think under pitching’s more of a challenge considering that if you underpin, it could affect flavor even at a Homebrew level.
Bryan Heit: Without a doubt.
Colter Wilson: Yeah. Uh, it’s, it’s, if you make the yeast work harder, it’s just isn’t going to be as good. Uh huh. Well, let’s talk a bit about, if I were choosing a microscope, you know, and, and I’ll, I’ll use an example. I have a six year old son. He’s geeky. Uh, like dad and very into science. I’ve totally bought him a microscope already.
Is that going to be a good enough quality microscope for some sort of brewing applications or am I going to need something a little more
Bryan Heit: useful. But without knowing exactly what you bought, it’s hard to say
Colter Wilson: like a $60 microscope off Amazon. So this is not anything super fancy,
Bryan Heit: you know, it depends on what you want to do.
Uh, so if all you really want to do is count yeast, which is what a lot of people are trying to do, that’s probably enough. Um, you know, for counting yeast, you do that at relatively low magnification. Uh, typically. So maybe I should take a step back. So when you’re calculating magnification on a microscope, what it is is there’s the lens that actually is down by your sample, and it’ll have a magnification on it.
And then there’s the magnification that’s on the IPC look through. So you have to multiply those two together. So most microscopes will have a 10 times IPS. And you will have usually about a 10 times, um, what would be called the objective lens, which is the one down by your, your sample. And for yeast counting.
That’s all you need is the 10 times objective and the 10 times IP. So about a hundred times magnification, which I think pretty much any sort of, you know, home science type microscope will have, even if it is, you know. Just some cheap thing off eBay, um, where you tend to run into needing fancier things than that as if you’re maybe trying to do viability standing where you need to really be able to see cells quite distinctly and also have good color.
Um. Uh, fidelity in, in the images, or if you’re doing, you know, wild brewing or mixed culture fermentations, and you absolutely have to be able to see the presence of bacteria. And that’s when you need to start moving into not necessarily professional grade microscope. There’s actually a lot of sort of prosumer type microscopes now that are just fine for those uses, but they probably won’t.
Uh, the home system you have probably wouldn’t be enough for those kinds of applications.
Colter Wilson: Yeah. And so those pro-sumer ones or the little bit higher quality, they’re going to have magnifications that are going to get a small enough to see things like bacteria and . Is there a certain kind of light you need for the fidelity when you’re looking for that blue staining?
Bryan Heit: So, not necessarily a particular kind of light, um, without having, microscopes can get very complicated if you start really getting into the nuts and bolts. But what it really comes down to is the quality of those objective lenses. So the lenses that are close to the sample, when you’re imaging and you know the difference between the microscope you bought your son versus say one that costs about 500 bucks.
Is going to almost entirely be in those lenses. It’s, I mean, obviously a more expensive one. We’ll probably have a little bit better construction, but it’s really those lenses that make the difference. And so when you’re talking about a higher grade lens, it’s going to gather more light from the sample.
So for a given amount of input light, the sample will be brighter. Um, it’ll be free of what are called chromatic aberrations, which. Basically means if a lens isn’t built quite right, the red can get focused at a slightly different point than the blue, than the green. And that’s where you start to now lose color because your colors aren’t all being put into the same focus.
And so you might get us something that’s the wrong color because you know, it should look blue, but the blue is not focused where you focused on the sample. And so now you don’t see the blue anymore. Uh, and there’s other. Factors as well that go into kind of the quality of, of the color fidelity in how the, the illumination lady’s being projected onto the sample.
And so, again, a higher end microscope will have better optics for actually getting the light onto the sample and making sure it’s being illuminated in a way that’s going to give you good color recover or fidelity. And good contrast is another thing as well. So, uh, you’ll notice on cheaper microscopes, especially at the higher magnification lenses, that the contrast isn’t very good.
And that again is kind of comes down to lens design and, and the design of that, the light path that illuminates the sample.
Colter Wilson: Yeah. And when we look at the video theories you’ve done on microscopes most recently, what are some of the things that you’re trying to tackle in that video series?
Bryan Heit: So it’s kind of split into two parts.
So it’s a, it’s a 10 video series and the first five, um, take you through sort of. The most basic parts of a microscope oil. So what are the different parts of it called? What do they do? How does it make an image? How do you, you know, safely change lenses and focus and all of those kinds of things? Uh, and so if you’ve never used a microscope before, even before buying a microscope, I’d make a point of watching those five videos.
And then I also have a blog post that goes along with that, that kind of dives into what to look for. Uh, in terms of some of the optical qualities of the lenses and stuff, um, for whatever type of particular procedure it is that you think you’re going to want to do. And then once you have a microscope and you’ve played with a little bit and you’re kind of comfortable with it, then the latter half of my video series is on.
Now how do you start using it in the brewery for looking at East, doing East counseling, viability stains. So you can kind of pick and choose from those later videos, uh, which ones to watch based on what it is. You would want to do, but really before you buy a microscope or do anything, you really, I think, need to understand and have a good idea of what exactly it is you want to be able to do with the microscope.
And then to make sure you’re picking a microscope that meets those requirements. Uh, cause you know, it’s really easy to. Underspend by just 20 or $30 and end up with something that’s not sufficient for what you need, and it’s also really easy to spend far more money, then you need to do what it is you’re trying to do.
So I think understanding what you want to do first and what you need to do it is the most important step of the process. Yeah,
Colter Wilson: I think a a microscope’s range is anywhere from about $50 to many thousands of dollars, and there’s probably a little bit of everything in between right.
Bryan Heit: They go well over a few thousand dollars so we have some at my work that are over $1 million.
So yeah, I mean, but I have to prosumer level. Yeah, they got up to about three or 4,000 at the higher end. Yeah. I am
Colter Wilson: personally, like personally, I actually own an iPhone repair shop and for doing micro soldering, we have. A amazing microscope that I would never use for anything to do with brewing. But yeah, that, that thing was probably $5,000 it was a huge piece of equipment.
Bryan Heit: And I teach a microbiology class at work, and the standard scopes that we use in those are both five, 6,000 as well. And if you can get one of those for home, you know, secondhand for a decent price that are fantastic, but it’s a lot of money to spend for a new one if you’re just doing it for hobbies.
Colter Wilson: Exactly. And when you talk to like a brewery for example, and they’re just starting out getting a lab, what are some of the things that, like the brewery level is trying to tackle with their lab in general?
Bryan Heit: Well, I think the main thing that they at least should be worried about, I don’t know that all of them necessarily worry about it, is quality control, uh, and making sure that they’re sanitizing things properly.
So I’ve actually, with a few breweries, um, help them get some of that up and running, and that’s a little different. I haven’t covered any of that really in my videos, but a lot of that is how do you do. Um, environmental sampling in a way that you know, what you’ve sampled is actually what you’re growing on the plate.
So it’s, it sounds kind of funny cause you’re looking to see if you have contamination in the brewery and your single biggest concern is actually contaminating your swab or whatever you’re sampling with. Um, not. From the brewery equipment, but from something else and then thinking you have contamination when you don’t.
Uh, so that’s a little different of a concern than what you might have in a home brewery. But that’s what I, a lot of brewers are leaning towards. And that’s what a lot of breweries, you know, probably should be doing if they’re not doing it already. Okay.
Colter Wilson: Yeah. Cause if you have a contaminant that you can’t figure out where it’s from, we’re talking about many thousands of dollars.
You could be throwing down the drain. Right? If you had a bad batch from that. Exactly.
Bryan Heit: Yeah. Like the, the consequences of getting it wrong at their scale is very different than the consequences at my scale, at the Homebrew scale.
Colter Wilson: I mean, I’m sure you have dumped a batch right.
Bryan Heit: More than one.
Colter Wilson: You know, it doesn’t happen often, but I’ve totally dumped a batch.
I, I had a, I actually in the last three years had this one batch that I could not figure out what was wrong with the flavor. It had to have been a contaminant of some sort or something wrong with fermentation. And I tr and as you know, there’s always the tricks of try this, try that, to try to salvage it.
And you know, there’s just, sometimes it’s just a dumper.
Bryan Heit: At some points, some points you just have to cut it loose and try again. I mean, I do a lot of wild ferments, and if you’re going to go down that road, expect a dump, a fair amount of beer, because you know, probably one in 10 you know, can’t even be blended into something.
You know, you just have to. This is horrible. Go away.
Colter Wilson: It tastes like it just has that baby puke flavor, right?
Bryan Heit: Yeah. You get some really horrible tasting and smelling things once in a while, and you know, I think sometimes that sets people off of why would ever want to try that, but nine times out of 10, it’s wonderful, right?
It’s that one time out of 10 where you end up with something that you now have to, uh. Dump and then clean really well before you reuse that equipment again.
Colter Wilson: Yeah, I have to admit that, uh, that has totally happened to be I, when I first started trying to capture some wild yeast, I, I did a project where I just did, you know, boiled some ward in with some, with some DME and did it in Mason jars and left them throughout my, my yard.
And I had this one sample and it still sticks in my head today that I left under an Aspen tree. And it had a and I put a air lock on top of it, saw that it was fermenting for awhile and uh, took a whiff of that and it was a smell that I can never on smell.
Bryan Heit: You get some pretty rank stuff in some of those and those ones that’s straight down the sink.
Colter Wilson: Yeah, it was gone. You’re just like, yeah, what should black things be growing on this?
Bryan Heit: That’s actually a good point. So if you are trying to go down some of these roads at this point, you probably know what yeast looks like. It tends to, you know, sort of dark Brown to cream in color. If you start to see things that are colors, other than that, you probably want to dump it because even if it doesn’t smell that it’s probably not good for you.
Yeah, and certainly anything that looks like mold in particular, you definitely want to be careful about.
Colter Wilson: Yeah, definitely. If it’s furry, it’s not good. So, uh, Brian, uh, what kind of things do you have in the works when it comes to brewing in general for you.
Bryan Heit: Uh, well. So right now I’m working from home because of this little virus that’s going around.
Uh, so I’m, I’m actually using this as an opportunity to get my keys are full for the summer, cause I always seem to run out of beer in the summer. Um, but nothing too exciting with those. Uh, just some, uh, some dark lagers and some, uh, like Scottish, we have these or not. We have these Scottish seven 70 shillings and things like that.
Uh, I have at any one time, always a couple of wild ferments going. So I got, uh, a couple of sort of gold nail inspired things that have been, one’s been going on for about a year and a half now. And the other one’s probably about six months old. Um, and yeah, that’s kind of it on the brewing front, I’ve got a few videos that I’m working on in my video production schedule is very slow, so I don’t know when those will be coming out, but I’m working on, uh, working on a couple of videos and yeah, that’s really it right now.
Colter Wilson: That’s awesome. Uh, yeah. Speaking of the Kobe 19 and the kind of state of the world, I, I did a, a Twitter survey last week and randomly I asked, Hey, are you brewing more? Are you bring less. Yeah. And kind of asked that question. And surprisingly, people are, are telling me they’re brewing more. And anecdotally for my friends, they’re saying, Hey, I’m at home.
I’ve got nothing better to do. Mmm. I’m working, obviously, but you know, I, I definitely have more home time than I’ve had, and I can tell you that at least all my brewing friends and me included are brewing more that I brewed in years. Uh, would you say that kind of feels the same way to you.
Bryan Heit: Oh, definitely.
I mean, I, my, my son’s relatively young, but certainly since he came along, you know, I’ve went from brewing probably 25 batches a year to, in a good year, maybe 13 or 14. Uh, so I’m definitely making up for lost time right now. I’ve, I’ve already got a few done this year and I’ve got a few more coming up in the next couple of weeks.
So, you know, that should, should help get a few more into the Keizer this year than in the past couple of years.
Colter Wilson: Yeah. I kind of. I always joke that, uh, I’m the one guy that, because I had kids, I started brewing. Uh, I, I’ve always been a very social, outgoing person. And once you have a baby, right, you, you stay home a lot more just because you, you, you have to, and you’ve got to help out around the house and you have to, you know, I want to be a good father, those kinds of things.
And in doing so, I was like, well, I don’t go out as much as I used to. I guess I’ll just. Figuring out something to do in my garage and started really brewing, right. And, and I brewed a bit before, but that’s when I really started home brewing and getting into it. So it’s, I’ve kind of the opposite. Whereas most of my friends that have kids, they’re like, yeah, I don’t get the brood as much as I used to.
And I’m the opposite of like, man, I started brewing a lot because I had kids. So kind of funny.
Bryan Heit: Kind of depends on how time works out, right?
Colter Wilson: Yeah, totally. And I did a lot of. Very, very early in the morning batches, like 4:00 AM and be done and wrapped up by eight. So I could hop in and do what I needed to do, or, uh, a lot of late night batches that were, you know, Hey, kids in bed at eight o’clock, let’s knock out a quick batch before I go to bed.
So
Bryan Heit: burning is, it’s either early Saturday morning or late Saturday night.
Colter Wilson: Exactly. Well, I want to thank you for coming on the show. I’ll definitely make sure that we put. Links to Brian’s website. We’ll also put links to his YouTube channel in the show notes. So if you, if you want to take the deep dive, I highly recommend at least watching some of his YouTube videos.
It’s super informative and I have to say, Brian, you, you do an amazing job of explaining the process it and really an easy way that people could digest very easily and make it. Very approachable. So if you’re listening to the show and you really want to do a deeper dive into some of the things that Brian’s doing, please look at our show notes.
We’ll link to that. And, uh, I just want to thank you for being on the show and really informing us about some of the scientific things you could do at home.
Bryan Heit: Thank you for having me and letting me ramble on for an hour here or whatever it’s been
Colter Wilson: I’d like to thank Brian for taking the time to be on today’s show. I had a great conversation and. As always, whenever I have a guest, I just learned so much it. It’s really a great time. If you want to follow Brian or find out more about his website and some of the cool things that he’s doing on his YouTube channel, head over to our show notes.
I’ll have all of the information listed there. You can also get more detailed information from our website, homebrewing diy.beer. You can also follow us on social media. We’re on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just look for the handle at homebrewing. DIY. Well, that’s it for this week, and we’ll talk to you next week on homebrewing DIY .
