yeeehaw!

my yeast ranch is growing. i've now got 3 slants each of two belgian ale strains, and two slants of a german lager strain. those all appear to be viable and uncontaminated.

last night i went through the process of making plates and slants. i now have 7 malt-agar plates and four uninoculated malt-agar slants. i'm getting better at it. part of the better was procedural, part of it was new equipment (beakers work much better than flasks -- easier to stir in the agar, and much less prone to boilover), and part of it was experimental (how about i remove from heat before adding any powders?).

i didn't get any bubbles in the slants this time. i suspect the problem last time was overfilling. these ones are a little underfilled, which i doubt will be much of a problem.

my inoculating technique clearly needs work. that will come with more experience i reckon.

the plates got all sticky on the outside, as some of the malt-agar spilled out (as with last time) into the water of the pressure cooker. last time, I was autoclaving only sealed culture tubes, but they were covered in agargoo, so that explains that. this time there was no spillage (hooray for my $3 turkey injector!) but there were agar filled plates. i suspect the heat of the autoclave expanded the liquid agar right on out of the plates. or maybe some spilled out as i took the cooker to the sink for cooling. unclear.

also unclear is whether i have enough malt-agar in the plates. how will i know? i'll find out when i try to culture something.