Tag: brewing

Do Not Want: Celestron LDM

Back in Idaho for the moment. The trip was somewhat exhausting, but I thought a followup to The previous post on the Celestron LDM microscope was in order, as I finally got a reply back after almost two weeks.

(20080329:Quick update. I am surprised to see this post is getting more interest that I’d anticipated. I’ve added a brief summary to the end of the post to help clarify my opinion since it seems people may be interested.)

I had asked them if it was possible to replace the objective lenses (so as to be able to use an oil-immersion lens to get 1000X magnification – pretty much a neccessity for decent bacteriological work – such as examining yogurt cultures) and whether the camera could be swapped for a regular eyepiece. Larger yeast cells used in brewing might be okay in 400X, but even there it’d be nice to be able to zoom in adequately to get better detail – like watching conjugation or budding of yeast cells.

The answer:

“The answer is ‘no’ to both because of the sizes, etc. are specific to this unit.”
Email ID: ZZR-372549
Department: Technical Support
Priority:
Status: Closed

I guess there’s no point in asking about getting a darkfield condenser for it. On the plus side, they did actually give me a reply at least.

I’ve got to say I’m seriously disappointed that Celestron has evidently intentionally engineered this microscope product (and their other offerings as well, perhaps?) to Not Play Well With Others. Why else go to the trouble and additional expense of coming up with your own special specifications for the parts when standard parts are readily available?

This seems especially absurd in a product aimed at science enthusiasts, who strike me as very likely to be strongly aligned with the “Maker” attitude…at least if they’re any good at Science Enthusiasm. I think the “if you can’t open it, you don’t own it” concept meshes very well with the investigative attitude necessary for science. So, we want “internet”, and they give us “AOL” instead. A sad, sad fate for an otherwise great concept, and on this basis I must render a verdict of “Do Not Want”.

Find me a version of this product – from any vendor – which can accept standard oculars and objective lenses and I’ll sell blood plasma and beg on the street to raise money for it. (If nothing else, it’d give me an excuse to finally start up the “science begging” blog-post series I’ve been threatening for a while now…) Of course, it’d be nice to have an ordinary “real” microscope, too…this blog still doesn’t have enough pictures.
(P.S. Dear Celestron: although I doubt anybody at Celestron will ever even see my obscure blog, and in that respect my previous post’s comment about sending me one to review was just a joke. Despite this, I was sincere, so in the unlikely event that someone out there sees this post and has the authority and inclination to do so, feel free to send me one to review anyway. And a pony.)

SUMMARY (in my opinion):
Good:

  • VERY nice, highly desirable concept overall.
  • Self-contained, platform-neutral design, should work with anything that can support SD cards or USB Storage devices.
  • Potentially a nice field microscope? (Probably not hard to hack together a battery pack that could be used in place of the AC adapter)

Bad:

  • Does NOT appear suitable for bacteriological or similarly high-magnification applications
  • Non-standard components prevent upgrades.
  • Non-standard components mean vendor lock-in problems (if Celestron gets tired of making replacement parts and some kid scratches your objective lenses or cracks the viewscreen, you’re out of luck.)
  • Digital camera and viewscreen appear to be integral, so if the camera or viewscreen dies I’d guess the whole device becomes a useless lump.

My recommendations for Celestron or other microscope manufacturers (should any of them care about the opinion of some nerd on some obscure blog like this one):

  • Please, please use standard parts wherever possible – it makes your device a much safer bet for anyone thinking ahead towards possible upgrades or replacement parts.
  • Don’t ignore bacteriological applications.
  • Easily replaceable parts make for graceful failures. For example, if the camera on this model could be swapped for an ordinary ocular, the microscope would at least be usable while the camera portion was being sent in for repair or replacement.

More on the shocking life of yeasts

(Brief Update: Hello Ontario! Did I attract the attention of a Toronto homebrewing club or something? Anyway – welcome!)

I am amazed at how much depravity I uncover as I explore the mystery that is
Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

I’ve previously discussed how the filthy little beasts have drunken orgies and exchange sexually transmitted diseases with each other. Now I find out the inebriated little jerks are peeing in my beer, possibly to try to give me cancer!

No, seriously. Given enough “Free Amino Nitrogen”, for example in the form of the pirate’s favorite amino acid, like tiny little single-celled bladders, the yeast will start excreting extra nitrogen in the form of Urea all over whatever they’re growing in.

Of course, the whole time they’ve also been excreting ethanol. It turns out, under certain conditions urea (more formally known as “carbamide” nowadays) and ethanol will combine like drunken evil “Wonder Twins” to form Ethyl Carbamate.

Front Cover of the bookI ran into this as I was reading through my shiny new Wine Microbiology book, which has two pages on this yeast pee byproduct. An article linked to from fark.com recently reminded me of it and prompted this post.

To be honest, this seems a lot like the acrylamide media circus (compare the two links…) that popped up back in 2002. In both of these cases, we’re talking about a substance that occurs as a natural result of the preparation process rather than some new industrial chemical, and in both cases the processes in question have been around probably since prehistory. And in both cases, the real situation seems to boil down to something like “pay attention to your preparation technique, and if you try to live entirely on a diet of overcooked French fries and dessert wines, you might be at an increased risk for cancer.” QED. Or perhaps DUH.

Other than not trying to live on a French McDonald’sŪ diet, there are some things you can do when you brew to limit ethyl carbamate formation. Put very simply: don’t overfertilize your grapes because that can directly lead to unnecessarily high levels of nitrogen available in your wine, and don’t leave your bottles of brew in hot conditions for long, because ethyl carbamate forms faster in hot conditions.

There, problem solved. A more detailed “ethyl carbamate preventative action manual” may be found here. Meanwhile, I’m pretty sure our favorite drunken little micro-hedonists are too busy partying and making our wines and beers to be plotting our cancerous dooms.

Where Was I?: “I’m going to have a place like this someday…”

Brewery building for the New Belgium Brewing Company in Fort Collins, CO

Quality Assurance lab at New Belgium Brewing Company, as seen through the 'employees only' door.Incidentally, did you know it’s a long way from southeastern Idaho to southeastern Texas? I made the drive last week, and I’ll be making the drive back as soon as I can get some things FINALLY done around here. On the upside, it’s kind of a fun, if long, drive other than Wyoming’s tendency towards having ridiculously high winds and roads paved with what appears to be a mixture of wet ice and motor oil. I made it down here though, but I’ve already been delayed about a week due to some issues getting inspection arranged on the home we’re trying to buy out here. But you didn’t come here to read me whining about that, did you?

On the way down, I did manage to stop at one of the two Colorado breweries mentioned in the “Wildbrews” book. New Belgium Brewing Company just happened to be only a couple of blocks away from my route through Fort Collins, so I took the opportunity to stop by and check them out.

If you’re familiar with them at all, it’s probably for their “Fat Tire” amber ale which I have seen in stores around the country, but I didn’t care about that. What I cared about is that they actually let their microbiologist (and, it turns out, their other employees too) play, and they have experimental “sour” beers in the same general style as Belgian lambics. Pictured at left is their famous one – “La Folie” (“the folly”). Well, the label on the tap for it, anyway. I’m not certain if cultures other than the standard canned strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae are used in the initial ferment, but they then move the brew over to barrels that were previously used to age wine, and which no doubt contain a variety of traces of live lactic acid bacteria, other yeasts, and the like (their website also suggests they directly inoculate the beer with lactic acid bacteria as well). The brew sits in the barrel for up to 3 years. The result is nicely carbonated, and tastes almost sweet to me due to the pleasant tartness of the lactic acid. This particular brew is mentioned in the book. Seeing my obvious enthusiasm for the style, I was also allowed to taste a more recent concoction. “Eric’s Ale” was a lighter sour brew made with peaches which I absolutely loved. I really wish they’d had it in bottles for me to buy, but neither it nor “La Folie” were available in portable form, as far as I could tell. Guess I’ll just have to make my own. Once I finally manage to sit in one place long enough to try, dangit.

It was the Belgian Lambic-style ales that convinced me that I really do like beer after all, so long as it isn’t mass-market commercial swill (“Bladderwash”, as Leon Kania, author of “The Alaskan Bootlegger’s Bible” calls it) nor too strongly hops-flavored.

I did taste their “1554” ale – a “black ale” style that they were able to date back to at least 1554 while doing research on the style in Belgium, and several others whose names I don’t recall at the moment. One brew whose name I don’t remember was spiced with Yerba Mate – a caffeine-containing South American herb also found in Celestial Seasoning’s “Morning Thunder tea. (Ethanol is nice and all, but methylxanthines are my favorite…).

And, no, I didn’t forget their names because of drunkenness. When I say “taste” I mean I had a sip or two of each variety I sampled. They had these nifty little glasses like miniature brandy snifters for tasting. I’ll need to get me a set of those one of these days.

An unrelated bit of spiffiness about the brewery is that they seem to run the place as “green” as possible. They even go so far as to subject their brewing wastes to bacterial fermentation to produce methane, which they use to heat their water. How cool is that?

On a final, still unrelated note: there’s evidently been a fad of people selling things on eBay that have shiny surfaces, such as metal teapots. The trick is to take the picture of the item while naked, and standing such that one’s reflection is just visible in the picture of the item that appears on eBay. You know those classical shiny aluminum “Airstream” camping trailers? They had one out in the parking lot.

Photograph of New Belgium Brewing Company's 'Airstream' trailer.

Wait…I don’t see myself in that at all. Dagnabbit, standing in that freezing cold wind with everyone staring at me was a waste of time, wasn’t it…

The other “wild brew” place in Colorado is the Bristol Brewing Company in Colorado Springs. Unfortunately, the only indication I can find of their “wild” brews is a “sour beers” class they did as part of their recent “beer college” series, and a “Skull ‘n Bones” (evidently what they were calling their sour-beer series) T-shirt. As there is also no mention of brewery tours, I did send an email off to the person who appeared to be the contact for such questions, but I’ve yet to hear back. I’d love to stop by on the trip back, but the route will add a couple of hours to the overall trip. This would be well worth it if they’re doing tours, or still doing “sour” beers, or if I could even spend a few minutes chatting with their microbiologist. If not, though, I’ll just have to get on with working on it all myself.

Oh, yes, and the place in Austin that I previously mentioned was called “The Bitter End”…and it ended. Apparently a fire destroyed part of it, and now its being demolished to make way for a massive chain-hotel building. How sad.

The tasting counter and beer cooler inside the New Belgium brewery.

I has a books.

I also has a bad grammar (curse you, internet!)

The front cover: 'Wine Microbiology - Practical Applications and Procedures'It’s slow going trying to get the mess up here in Idaho organized in preparation for the move to Texas, but I did manage to sacrifice a large number of my old books that I no longer need. Trading them in at the local representative of the “Hastings” bookstore chain got me a decent amount of store credit, and I was able to special-order this wine microbiology book I’ve been lusting after for months. It showed up a couple of days ago.

Very interesting so far, but I’m only a little ways into it. I’m still in the theory sections, so I can’t say if it covers yeast-mating or not (see previous two posts on this blog…)

Front cover: Wildbrews: Beer Beyond the Influence of Brewer's YeastPrior to that, I picked up a book I found at the local brewing-supply place in The Woodlands, Texas. It’s an entire book on the subject of Belgian and “Belgian-style” beers (like Lambic) fermented with “wild” yeasts and bacteria. It’s an excellent mix of history, science, travelogue, and “how-to”. I highly recommend it.

I noted with particularly nerdly glee that there are several breweries here in the U.S. doing non-traditional brewing cultures. At least one was brewing entirely with Brettanomyces yeasts! (Most traditional brewers and vintners shriek in horror at the thought of Brettanomyces in their brew instead of the standard Saccharomyces yeasts, blaming Brettanomyces for – you guessed it – “off-flavors“.)

That is so amazingly spiffy I can hardly stand it. I note that one of them appears to be only a few hours from the area we’re moving to. And two of them are in Colorado, more or less on the road between Idaho and Texas, so on my next trip down which is likely to be as early as next week, I may have to try to arrange to visit at least one of them and see if I can get a tour.