I have recently had some more free time and decided to play with various media preparations in hopes of isolating Brett and Lactobacillus species. As I was leafing though the Handbook of Biological Media, I came across this one. Looks like the authors are not without a sense of humor 🙂
Chicken Soup Broth
Composition per 5.0L:
Chicken …………………………………………………………………………… 2.5kg
Peppercorns……………………………………………………………………………. 6
Cloves …………………………………………………………………………………… 3
Bay leaf …………………………………………………………………………………. 2
Celery, stalks including leaves……………………………………………………… 2
Onion, large……………………………………………………………………………. 1
Carrot ……………………………………………………………………………………. 1
Dill, fresh ……………………………………………………………………….. 1/4 cup
NaCl …………………………………………………………………………………. 0.1g
Preparation of Medium: Add a nice, whole chicken to a large pot. Add enough tap water to cover the chicken by about 1 in. Stud the whole, peeled onion with the three cloves. Add the onion and remain- ing ingredients to the pot. Rapidly heat and bring to boiling. Lower heat to a simmer and cook for 1 to 1.5 hr. Remove the chicken and vegeta- bles from the broth. Remove skin and bones from the chicken. Cut up the meat into 1-inch pieces. Return the meat to the broth. If desired, slice the carrot and celery and return them to the broth.
Use: For the growth and nutrition of microbiologists.
So don’t forget to eat while you’re up to your neck in the fascinating world of microorganisms 🙂
On a more serious note, I’ve been playing with isolating bugs from raw wort and managed to isolate something that I thought was wild Lactobacillus, but it wasn’t. Whatever it was I threw it out, thought I probably should have played more with it. In any case I still have a sample in my fridge and could just restreak it all. While doing that I was using WYeast’s Lactobacillus that I got from Brooklyn Homebrew as a control and made an observation that it doesn’t grow on agar that contains bromocresol green. I don’t know if it’s something I did, but it consistently refuses to grow on anything with that dye while it overruns the entire plate within two days on the same medium without it.
I have also been playing with lactose agar hoping to fine-tune it for Lactobacillus isolation. As far as I know Brettanomyces annomalus can also metabolize lactose so it could be helpful in differentiating between some strains.
New Glarus dregs are not proving to be too useful yet, but I have hopes for at least something. Anyway, I’ll keep you guys posted.
Cheers!