Brewing beer requires special care to achieve the same distinctive taste every time. To ensure consistency, one of the critical factors is the amount of live and dead yeast cells used in pitching.

The NucleoCounter® YC-100™ provides the user with a fast, objective and highly accurate measurement of yeast count and viability. Its unique NucleoCassette™ holder ensures easy handling and eliminates human subjectivity, resulting in optimum accuracy and precision.

The NucleoCounter® YC-100™ provides:

• Quick and easy control of yeast concentration while determining yeast count and viability.
• Volume of analysis three times larger than that commonly analysed in a manual count
• Unique precision and accuracy

This makes the NucleoCounter® YC-100™ one of the leading instruments in the yeast and brewing market.

The total number of yeast cells is obtained as follows:

• A small sample is smoothed with the Y100 reagent.
• Loads on the NucleoCassette™.
• Propidium iodide immobilized within the cassette dissolves and stains the nuclei of all cells.
• The cassette is then placed in the YC-100™ and the measurement process is OK.
• To provide viability, a number of live cells are needed. To do so:
  • A sample is loaded without the lysis agent and measured.
  • As propidium iodide only stains dead cells, the cells counted will be dead and the number of live cells can easily be calculated as the difference of the two measurements.