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By Neva Parker The New Year started off with a big bang for us at White Labs. January is always one of our busiest months of the year – I guess everyone starts gearing back up after the lull of the holiday season. Our new Frings yeast propagation equipment has been put to good use! You have probably heard in several other issues of CBQ about our yeast tracking and inventory software, YeastMan. We are currently in the final stages of testing with this program and are working on developing the reporting phase. In the next few months, you will be receiving our new Quality Control Certificates with more detailed information on your yeast culture, all tracked and reported through the YeastMan system. Once a yeast process begins, it is assigned a lot number by YeastMan. Each lot is then used to fill different brewery orders and we are able to provide accurate and comprehensive certification for a single order by tracking each step with this unique bar-coding system. These new certificates will be printed directly from the program itself with data such as initial test results, final test results, gravity, pH, cell count, and viability. We have also developed a process to track and report beer and yeast analysis tests, which we implemented for our Big QC Day. Interest in our Big QC Day was beyond our expectations! Our goal was to encourage beer testing by offering convenience and a low price, which we were able to do by obtaining a large number of samples. The microbiological and analytical tests began in late February, when the sample boxes began returning to White Labs. The micro tests included testing for presence of wild yeast and bacteria (aerobic & anaerobic), while the analytical tests comprised density, real extract, color, IBU, alcohol by volume, and total VDK (diacetyl). The testing took place over the course of several weeks, and of this writing the testing was still taking place. We used the YeastMan bar-coding and tracking system to maintain accurate records of all those samples and beer styles. We will also be able to use the system to report results compared to the average of all samples tested, overall and within a particular style. Thank you to everyone for your participation in this event! We look forward to the results of this and future test days. Neva Parker is lab manager for White Labs. |
