Food Science and Human Nutrition Quality Testing

We are happy to offer malt quality testing to serve as a third party lab for the malting, brewing, and distilling community. Having reliable, high quality, and timely assessments of your malt product will ensure consistency within your process and a high quality product for your customer. To start, our lab has focused on building out capabilities for barley malts, and will continue to build out our capabilities for other grain types and additional parameters. For specific services you would like to see our lab offer in the future, please reach out to Jeff Callaway by email at jeffrey.callaway@colostate.edu.  Check back on this page for updates on new methods we bring onboard as we continue to build out our lab capabilities.

Room usage

• Sensory room and kitchen
• Meeting space (20 person capacity)
• Community QA/QC Laboratory space

Breweries (Coming Soon! Call if interested)

• Research Brewing
• Contract Brewing
• Recipe R&D Brewing

Trainings

• On site and off site options
• Community QA/QC Laboratory general training

Workshops

• Ongoing short courses

Methods

• Assistance with set up at facility, including Standard Operating Procedures, validations, and training.
• Method Validations
• Method Optimizations
• Development and Implementation

Analytical Testing

• Anton Paar Alcolyzer- ABV, ABW, density, specific gravity, original gravity, real extract, apparent extract, real degree of fermentation, calories
• Alcohol in Kombucha by HS-GC-FID or Distillation method
• TTB Certified (Beer only)
• pH
• Color
• IBU
• Titratable Acidity
• Iso-alpha-acids by HPLC
• Gluten Testing- R5 competitive
• Vicinal Diketones by spectrophotometric and  GC methods
• Acetaldehyde analysis
• Alpha & Beta Acids in hops
• Organic acid analysis
• Mono/Disaccharide analysis
• Grist Analysis
• Shelf Life Testing

Microbiological Testing

• Yeast counts, viability, and vitality by Nexcelom Cellometer
• Contamination Detection
• Gram Stains/Catalase Testing
• Microscopy pictures
• Yeast Media Profiling
• Total Plate Counts
• PCR detection of wild yeasts (including Saccharomyces cerevisiae var. diastaticus), bacteria, and horA/horC hop resistant genes
• MALDI-TOF detection of bacteria
• MALDI-TOF yeast and bacteria profiling
• Plate and broth media preparation (HLP, UBA, YPD, WLN, WLD, LWYM, LCSM, MRS, LMDA, MacConkey)

The FST Custom Services Center is not your typical university lab. The Center is located in the Anheuser-Busch Foundation Quality Laboratory in the Gifford Building at Colorado State University and is unique in its structure and facilities. It consists of spaces for analytical and microbiological testing, sensory analysis, and educational events, serving as a resource for FST students and the food and beverage fermentation industry.

The fermentation industry is diverse and companies have specific and varied needs. Recognizing this, the lab center has been developed such that the majority of these needs can be met by offering customizable solutions ranging from third party fee-for-testing, educational opportunities, trainings and consultations, open lab time, and instrumentation use at the Service Center facilities, facility rentals, and research. Knowing time is precious to those working in production, we also offer regional facility visits to do on-site trainings and testing, help set up methods, and process validations.

Being a program at a land grant university, we go beyond student education and continue our impact into the industry. We aim to provide financially feasible quality solutions and continuing education opportunities to the fermentation industry.

See below for a list of potential services we can customize for your needs. To request a quote inquiry or if you have further inquiries, please use comment box below. You may also call the lab directly at (970) 491-1945 to speak with our lab manager or leave a message.