DETECTION AND IDENTIFICATION OF LACTOBACILLUS-LINDNERI FROM BREWERY ENVIRONMENTS

Ten detection media and six cultivation techniques were evaluated for the detection of a harmful brewery contaminant, for which the name Lac tobacillus lindneri was recently revived. These bacteria showed slow a nd weak growth on solid media. However. enrichment of beer with NBB-C or the use of a mixture of MRS and beer (4:1 v/v) reduced the detectio n time by 2 days or more. depending on the strain, compared to cultiva tion on solid brewery media. Eight brewery isolates from different ori gins, the type strain and a test strain were characterized by carbohyd rate fermentation tests (API 50 CHL), by a chemotaxonomical (SDS-PAGE) and by a genomic fingerprinting (ribotyping) method. The results obta ined by all these methods indicated that the isolates studied form a s ingle group and can be assigned to the species L. lindneri. However, u sing the current standard reagents, ribotyping cannot discriminate the strains isolated from different sources.