Why are Carlsberg flasks so expensive?

[javert]

Hi, I'm venturing into a nanobrewery project. I'm in a conundrum. Even assuming I had a pure yeast culture, propagating it through 3 decimal steps in assay tubes and Erlenmeyer flasks according to the usual procedure takes a lot of time and I dislike all the risk of contamination involved, so I'm looking to alternatives.

The Carlsberg flask looks neat since it can be heat sterilized as a whole but those things are priced at thousands of dollars although they don't look too different from glorified steam cookers with ports for inoculation.

Is there a secret or super useful feature I'm missing that justifies the price? At those levels a lab scale biorreactor comes equipped with all sort of automated controls.

 

[oceanic_brew]

Have you looked in to purchasing 1 BBl pitches?

My project grew from 1 BBl setup to 5 BBl since it wasn’t feasible for what I wanted but my original plan was to buy a 5 gallon pressure cooker and “sterilize” enough starter wort to fill a bunch of 5 liter flasks on stir plates just enough to build up to 1 BBl Pitching rate and then reuse the yeast 6-8 times. If you do this right you have pretty low chances of infection.

I’m now learning how to use plating to check for contamination at different points of my process. Since I’m working with plastic conicals for the first year i wanna be sure of it.

Some breweries make a starter in their fermentor with a smaller amount of yeast, crash it, drain the starter wort, and then Pitching the beer into it.

Right now I’m at a point where buying 1 BBl pitches and stepping it up in the fermentor seems to be the best and most sanitary option.