Mad Science experiment #1 Beerique

[deluxestogie]

I have not been able to find a morphological description of P. anamala online

The first image smells like E coli.

I've had the impression that yeast just looks like yeast. Pichia anomala requires relatively anaerobic conditions to dominate the competition.

Isolation and Characterization of a Pichia anomala.

Bob

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

Yeah. The E.coli smell might be a warning sign.

 

[deluxestogie]

Most batches of Perique that I've made (under pressure and a water seal, of course) smell stinky, but only early on. After a few weeks, the (likely) E. coli are suppressed, and that barnyard aroma mostly, though never entirely, goes away. Pichia anomala produces that deep, grape and prune aroma.

Bob

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

Next experiment : culture a Toscano

 

[deluxestogie]

Even a fingernail brush! I'm afraid I would lapse into an addicted state, if I had that nice binoc microscope on my counter. [I spent an entire year of college turning heads from the inviting and intoxicating fragrance of my xylene-impregnated clothing and hair. Histology did that, at least it did way back in the 1960s.] In the exact same way that a microwave oven causes burritos, a good microscope causes slides.

Bob

 

[GreenDragon]

Bob, I’m still not sure you haven't hacked my security system; my wife is a histologist and I have a masters in Biology (plant genetics). LOL!

E.coli is everywhere and I’m sure it’s in the culture in some amount (rod bacteria) and would very likely be the dominate strain in the culture at the early stages (and contributing to the less desirable odors) until pH changes and other species out competes it. I do see the development of a biofilm forming which is indicative of P.a. My next step is to try to isolate the biofilm and use that to inoculate a new culture to use to jumpstart a Perique culture. Fun times!

(I also love the fragrance of xylene, phenol, acetone, and other volatile hydrocarbons)

The journey continues!

 

[deluxestogie]

My son, who is a professional chef, has never figured out how I learned to sharpen a common chef's knife to be sharper than his Japanese steel slicer.

Bob

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

My son, who is a professional chef, has never figured out how I learned to sharpen a common chef's knife to be sharper than his Japanese steel slicer.

Bob

In materials engineering I learned how to polish metals into mirrors. I definitely use some of that technique when sharpening.

 

[Magpie]

Bob, I’m still not sure you haven't hacked my security system; my wife is a histologist and I have a masters in Biology (plant genetics). LOL!

E.coli is everywhere and I’m sure it’s in the culture in some amount (rod bacteria) and would very likely be the dominate strain in the culture at the early stages (and contributing to the less desirable odors) until pH changes and other species out competes it. I do see the development of a biofilm forming which is indicative of P.a. My next step is to try to isolate the biofilm and use that to inoculate a new culture to use to jumpstart a Perique culture. Fun times!

(I also love the fragrance of xylene, phenol, acetone, and other volatile hydrocarbons)

The journey continues!

My mother is a histotechnologist, and I have visited her in the lab many times. While I am fond of the memories these fragrances may spark, I can't say I love them! Lol!

 

[GreenDragon]

What is the stain you used in these photos?
The budding yeast in #2 is very nice but, to my mind, the wrong color because I'm used to gram stains.

~Darin

Methylene Blue first, then Carbol Fuchsin as counter.

 

[GreenDragon]

Thanks for the link to the paper Bob. Using that information, I've started a new culture this afternoon that may stack the odds more in our favor of making a "purer" culture. I made a new brown sugar solution and adjusted the pH to 4.4 using citric acid, and added vodka to bring it to 10% v/v ethanol. I then sprinkled in a few ribbons of Perique. That's a pretty hostile environment for a microbe, so i expect growth to be fairly slow, if at all. I'll give it two weeks, and then if no growth I'll try again with an 8% ethanol solution, etc.

On a different note, we've gotten 4" of rain in 24 hours now. Welcome to spring in Texas!

Next I'm off to catch up on my labeling. I've got cigars to collar and pipe blends to label with Bob's awesome artwork.

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

I'm very excited about this experiment. Great job.

 

[GreenDragon]

Even a fingernail brush! I'm afraid I would lapse into an addicted state, if I had that nice binoc microscope on my counter.

Bob

LOL that nail brush is the wife's for when she makes cheese. While I played with tobacco Saturday, she made cheese on Sunday. Even kicked my tobacco out of HER cheese press. I believe she is making a swiss this time around. Here is a pic of her asserting her dominance over the garage yesterday. (I've learned not to comment on her unique stacking technique when using the press - as long as she uses her books and not mine!)

 

[waikikigun]

Good idea. I've started a culture with a piece of WLT perique. We'll see what happens.

I think that this will produce very different results. One of the reasons I used Saccharomyces cerevisiae in the first experiment was that I was shooting for an acidic end product to naturally tame the Burley, and by using a beer yeast variety I hoped to avoid the "barnyard" odor phase of the real Perique process as my "lab" is my man-cave aka garage. The Perique process is supposed to result in an alkaline end product, or at least the smoke of the Perique is alkaline, which is opposite of most yeast fermentations. The metabolic end products along with the released CO2 gas create carbolic acid, which significantly lowers the pH of the solution. This is an evolutionary advantage to yeasts as they use this to out compete bacteria which (in general) favor an alkaline to neutral solutions.

I suspect that in the true Perique process several alternating phases of bacterial and yeast dominance occur. Also, the observation that my "beerique" did not darken suggests several steps were skipped, or the acidic environment prevented the oxidation that normally produces the dark Perique leaf. I tested the leftover "beer" (which I saved to make toppings with) and got a reading of 4.0 pH. I tested the solution of the Perique culture I just stared with RO water and got a pH of 6.1. More variables to play with!

Could you explain to me in simpleton layman's terms how carbolic acid results from the Perique process, if that's what you're saying here? I don't mean the science of it, but the actual things you would see someone doing that resulted in a batch of carbolic acid. The reason I ask is, I've just begun writing a novel about a doctor's wife in New Orleans in the 1850s, i.e. pre-modern medicine. I think they started using carbolic as a disinfectant in the early 60s. She gets up to all kinds of "nonsense" that ends up working, and if she tried medically applying this black juice that resulted from a friend of her's making perique, that would be interesting. Thanks! (And sorry if I misunderstood what you were saying). (P.S. I've seen demos of other standard ways of making the stuff, involving distilling coal tar).

 

[GreenDragon]

Could you explain to me in simpleton layman's terms how carbolic acid results from the Perique process, if that's what you're saying here? I don't mean the science of it, but the actual things you would see someone doing that resulted in a batch of carbolic acid. The reason I ask is, I've just begun writing a novel about a doctor's wife in New Orleans in the 1850s, i.e. pre-modern medicine. I think they started using carbolic as a disinfectant in the early 60s. She gets up to all kinds of "nonsense" that ends up working, and if she tried medically applying this black juice that resulted from a friend of her's making perique, that would be interesting. Thanks! (And sorry if I misunderstood what you were saying). (P.S. I've seen demos of other standard ways of making the stuff, involving distilling coal tar).

It seems I did not proofread my thread well and thus sent you down a rabbit hole! My apologies - the correct spelling is carbonic acid aka soda. Basically, how you make soda water is by dissolving CO2 gas in water. This is the same process that happens when you ferment foods with yeast such as beer or champagne. Instead of letting he CO2 boil all the way off, you trap some resulting in carbonated beer, etc.

Carbolic acid is another name for phenol, which can be extracted from coal tar. It's really nasty stuff.

 

[GreenDragon]

For more information on the medical uses of phenol / carbolic acid, this Wikipedia article on Joseph Lister (as in Listerine mouthwash) is a nice overview. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Lister

 

[waikikigun]

It seems I did not proofread my thread well and thus sent you down a rabbit hole! My apologies - the correct spelling is carbonic acid aka soda. Basically, how you make soda water is by dissolving CO2 gas in water. This is the same process that happens when you ferment foods with yeast such as beer or champagne. Instead of letting he CO2 boil all the way off, you trap some resulting in carbonated beer, etc.

Carbolic acid is another name for phenol, which can be extracted from coal tar. It's really nasty stuff.

Thank you! Oh well, it was worth checking. I brew beer so I know (a little) about fermenting and CO2 Thanks again.

 

[deluxestogie]

@waikikigun , Go onto ebay, and search for "american dispensatory". If you can find one in the date range of your fiction, and can afford it, they run about 1500 pages of antiquated (then contemporary) medicinals. I have one that is 1848, and is a treasure trove of medical thought from that period.

Bob

 

[waikikigun]

@waikikigun , Go onto ebay, and search for "american dispensatory". If you can find one in the date range of your fiction, and can afford it, they run about 1500 pages of antiquated (then contemporary) medicinals. I have one that is 1848, and is a treasure trove of medical thought from that period.

Bob

Thanks for the tip, Bob. I'll also search for that in books.google. And for those interested in this sort of thing, the British four-part series Victorian Pharmacy is available on YouTube.

 

[waikikigun]

@waikikigun , Go onto ebay, and search for "american dispensatory". If you can find one in the date range of your fiction, and can afford it, they run about 1500 pages of antiquated (then contemporary) medicinals. I have one that is 1848, and is a treasure trove of medical thought from that period.

Bob

Yippee, I found a free PDF of the 1854 version!