Agar Plating, a thing of the past?

[YanezInc]

Hey all!

This is my first post in the message board and basically just wanted to know what you people are doing nowadays in your breweries/breweries you work for regarding micro contamination identification.

I am working at newly started production site in Denmark and I am responsible for setting up the quality control practices. I´ve read a bit on the solutions and methods available and it seems to me that plate counts and agar plate screening is still a quite spread practice in the industry. Of course there is PCR in its different variants, but for the time being we are looking into other alternatives...

Having said that, I have also come across new solutions where prefilled sterile test tubes are sold with selective media where one only needs to fill up with a certain volume of beer/wort or yeast slurry. If there is a considerable change in color / turbidity, then that can be interpreted as a positive. Yes, you do not get a quantitative result but at this stage we could easily do with a reliable qualitative test.

What do you guys do out there, plate, PCR, liquid media, both? Highly interested in hearing input.

Cheers,

Manuel

[nohandslance]

Reach out to Carlsberg Research Group, or White Labs in Copenhagen they should have their "Brewery Contaminants Detection Sample Kit", That's what I use.

Lance

[YanezInc]

Thanks. I've found the kit... We already use a media supplier and they have also something similar that I had already looked into but still interesting to hear about what you are using. The CRC are not product suppliers and White Labs just runs a small part of the products that are run generally in the US, but as mentioned before I had found something similar through other channels.

Cheers.