The German company Oculyze GmbH has just announced a new series of updates to their Oculyze BB 2.0 (Better Brewing) App for yeast monitoring. Besides some design & usage improvements, the most interesting update seems to be the addition of the new Fermentation Tracking Feature.
What’s cool about this new feature is that it provides an overview of all your trackings, each fermentation comprising its own series of analyses, basically how many you and your team consider to be necessary. The graph (in the illustration above showing an almost perfect fermentation, with yeast growing at an optimal rate and the viability staying high) offers an easy way to notice immediately if anything goes wrong. And if it does, you may see an unexpected drop in viability or in yeast growth (or yeast cell concentration). You can also compare the fermentations of different batches of the same beer or compare the fermentations of different types of beer.
What are the advantages of Fermentation Monitoring, you ask?
Well, to name just a few:
Makes repitching easier and more effective
Monitoring your fermentations and comparing the evolution of different batches can offer you valuable insights into the quality of the fraction of slurry that you’ve been collecting. A poorly harvested slurry may be too flocculent and sediment too early, in which case you’ll notice a fast decrease in cell concentration, while in the case of yeast that remains in suspension for longer, you’ll notice a higher concentration of cells.
By trial and error, you should quickly understand what works and what doesn’t and how to optimize the process of harvesting and reusing yeast. Also, you’ll start noticing immediately when a generation of yeast no longer performs, meaning that it is probably time to start using new yeast.
Helps you to obtain consistency
Probably the most important benefit of fermentation monitoring, and yeast monitoring in general, for that matter, and what usually motivates brewers to look into fermentation tracking methods, is that it is by far the best way to ensure consistency between batches. Because you cannot become a decent, well-established brewery until you’ve managed to obtain product consistency.
Additionally, fermentation monitoring complements in some stages, or altogether replaces, in others, sensory evaluation, which, of course, requires more man-hours and leads to additional costs.
Boosts creativity
Last but not least, being in complete control over your fermentations allows you to experiment more, try different strains of yeast, use different quantities of the same ingredients or introduce new ingredients altogether. They do say that knowledge is power!
About Oculyze GmbH
Using cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) technology, Oculyze has created a computer vision software that automates tedious manual image analysis and speeds up lab work. This revolutionary approach was proven to be successful with the launching of the automated Yeast Cell Counters, Oculyze BB 2.0 & Oculyze FW, hardware/software combinations for breweries and wineries.
For More Information:
https://www.oculyze.net/yeast-cell-counter/beer-brewing/how-it-works/