Unique Rapid Test for Detecting Beer Spoiling Bacteria in the Brewing Industry

The appearance of beer-spoilage bacteria often results in a loss of whole batches of beer. Especially bacteria with a hop tolerance can survive and grow in beer. Traditional methods for the detection of beer spoiling bacteria are very time consuming. Thus, a fast reaction to an occurring batch-spoilage is often not possible.

The new foodproof^® Beer Screening LyoKit detects 31 obligate beer-spoiling bacteria plus the 2 most important genes for hop tolerance: horA and horC in a comparably short time. In addition, the identification of the most relevant spoilage organism, Lactobacillus brevis, is possible in the same test at the same time.

The analysis can be done from beer directly, from a single colony or after enrichment. The recommended enrichment time in the common enrichment broths (e.g. NBB, NBB-c or MRS) is 48-72 hours. Without enrichment, in case of a direct DNA extraction of the beer sample due to the reasonable suspicion of beer spoilage, the time-to-result is approx. 2 hours only.

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All kind of brewing matrices from in-process controls, environmental samples and final product testing can be analyzed with the kit, including e.g. Pils, wheat beer, pitching yeast, Alt or Lager.

All kit reagents are lyophilized in a single pellet, like almost all new foodproof kits from BIOTECON Diagnostics. This increase the convenience of the product significantly, because there is much less pipetting necessary and at the same time, the risk of cross-contamination decreases. Other advantages besides the easier handling of the pelletized master mix are a cheaper transport and storage at normal temperatures (no freezing just fridge storage), a higher sensitivity due to an increased sample volume and a shorter hands-on-time and time-to-result.

BIOTECON Diagnostics also offers optimized foodproof DNA-extraction kits, like the foodproof StarPrep Three Kit, specifically for Brewers. In less than 30 minutes, they provide purified DNA of the target organisms’ ready-to-use for the real-time PCR experiment.

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The foodproof Beer Screening LyoKit is part of a whole set of products for the analysis of beer. This includes specific detection systems for spoilage yeasts like Saccharomyces cerevisiae var. diastaticus, for pathogenic bacteria that may occur in the brewing environment like Legionella pneumophila or other spoilage bacteria like Alicyclobacillus acidoterrestris, which are not obligate beer spoilage bacteria but can play a role in production processes of Breweries.

To exclude false negative results, an internal control is part of the PCR master mix. False positive results due to carry over contaminations will be also avoided by the enzyme Uracil N-Glycosylase. To offer the user the highest flexibility the kit includes 5’Nuclease probes, which are compatible with most of the common real-time PCR instruments.

With the new foodproof Beer Screening LyoKit BIOTECON Diagnostics offers a true alternative for breweries looking for a rapid and safe method for the detection of the obligate beer spoiling bacteria.