Brain Heart Infusion Broth is a nutritious, isotonic, general-purpose medium suitable for the isolation of most micro-organisms including many fastidious organisms and, with enrichment as appropriate, is suitable as a base for blood culture medium.

Modern BHI typically uses an infusion from porcine brains and hearts rather than calf brain tissue, and uses disodium phosphate as a buffer, rather than the calcium carbonate used by Rosenow and Haden. It is a nutrient-rich medium and can therefore be used to culture a variety of fastidious organisms, including streptococci, pneumococci, and meningococci, which can be challenging to grow.

Brain Heart Infusion Broth is recommended by the FDA BAM for the enrichment for pathogenic Escherichia coli in foods and environmental samples, and as a medium used in the coagulase test for the identification of Staphylococcus aureus from foods, and Gram-positive cocci from cosmetic samples.

NB: Organisms that produce large amounts of acid in the medium may overwhelm the buffering system and as a result ‘auto-sterilise’ the culture.