A microscopic look at "酒饼" - Chinese wine yeast

Remember the stuff I used to make the Chinese rice wine? I've been wondering what the hell this thing actually is. Is it pure yeast in some sort of a powdery binder? Does it have bacteria in it? Or even more sinister stuff?


I powdered a bit of the stuff, suspended it in sterile water and added some methylene blue as a vital stain. Here are some images:

There were similar clumps scattered throughout. I can't quite make out what they are - perhaps some sort of binder?

Most of the cells were these hexogonal shaped ones, which I attribute to be the yeast that's responsible for the bulk of the fermentation. I'm wondering about the angled shapes - does dehydration do this to yeasts?

And finally, yes, wine cake does contain bacteria. Those are the smaller stuff floating around (had to shift the focus slightly to see them better).

Perhaps I should do a simple iodine test to see what the binder is. I'm suspecting it could be starch of some sort, mixed with some simple sugars. That'd be the natural combination to use in order to start off a fermentation. Also, it'd be really interesting to do a differential plating for both the yeasts and the bacteria.