By Admin (Admin) on Saturday, April 21, 2001 - 11:54 pm: Edit

CYRUS BARNABY MYCELLIUM TEK


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This tek is so easy, and so effective, I thought I'd pass it along to you
first, since you seem somewhat of a rising star in this industry...
The CYRUS BARNABY STERILE MYCELIUM BROTH TEK is as follows:

Nail a hole in the lid of a one pint mason jar. Place a small amount [one-half teaspoon] of brown rice or other organically grown flour in the
jar. Fill with spring water until jar is filled to about where the threads
start near the top. Place the lid on top of the jar and use packing tape to
adhere it to the jar. Now, screw on the band-lid and sterilize at 15 p.s.i.
for forty minutes. Allow the jar to cool in the pressure cooker. Remove
from pressure cooker and tear off another piece of packing tape equal in
length to he one you used to seal the jar. Run one end of the tape up the
side of the jar and onto the band lid, but don't press the rest of its length
down. Leave the rest of the length of tape hanging there, waiting. Now,
using a clean and viable spore syringe, innoculte the sterile brown rice
broth by puncturing through the tape and injecting a few cc's of spore
solution. Withdraw the syringe and quickly seal the hole with the length of
tape you've prepared for this purpose. *Note* To this point you have just
completed what is known as the FOGGY MOUNTAIN FARM QUICK SEAL TEK, except for
the fact that you used brown rice broth instead of brown rice substrate to
fill the jars. Now to the good part. Within two to three weeks you should
see plenty of little clumps of mycelium and even some long, stringy hyphae
growing in the brown rice broth. Next, sterilize as many syringes as you
please and have them standing by. Vigorously shake the solution. This will
help in breaking up the mycelial clumps in the jar. With tape standing by,
plunge your first syringe through the tape seal and into the mycelial broth.
Draw up the syringe and fill it to the top. Because the clumps can sometimes
clog the needle, it may be necessary to frequently plunge it downward a bit
to clear out material clogging the needle. Sometimes, this blockage can
cause air to be drawn into the needle. No worry. Hold the entire syringe
apparatus firmly down into the solution and invert the entire setup, syringe,
jar, and all. Now, the air will rise to the top of the syringe, where it can
be plunged out into the jar. Now, flip the whole thing back over, and
continue this process until the syringe is filled. Now, get your next empty,
sterile syringe ready. In one swift motion, withdraw the full syringe and
instantly replace it with your waiting, empty syringe. Cap the full syringe
with a pre-prepped needle guard, and then return your attention to the jar,
where you will repeat the filling process, and so on, until the desired
number of sterile mycelial broth syringes are created. You can literally
create 40-60 syringes using just this jar, which was originally innoculated
with two measly cc's of spore solution. Use these liberally in innoculating
pint or quart jars, and shake them vigorously. In five to ten days,
depending on size of jar and attention to shaking, the jars will be fully
colonized, at which point they can be cased (preferred method), or fruited PF
or Hippie style. Well there it is....Oh, and one more thing. If you run out
of syringes, just tape off the hole as soon as you fill your last syringe,
and you can use the remaining broth to fill other syringes at a later time.
Good luck and happy farming.

By Admin (Admin) on Saturday, April 21, 2001 - 11:55 pm: Edit

By Yachaj (Yachaj) on Saturday, April 21, 2001 - 03:15 pm: Edit


BEER TEK

The past few days I have been thinking about the different formula's which are used to germinate spores in (for liquid mycelium inoculations) or to dunk cakes in. Hippie likes milk and/or honey, Barnaby likes ricewater. I like to add another one: beer

My reason for using beer is that it contains a lot of malt sugar (up to 15 percent or 150g/l). For some reason (and I have no idea what that reason is), maltose or maltsugar is the very best energy source for mushroom mycelia. In agar cultures, maltose beats glucose (honey-sugar) and lactose (milk sugar), which is evident when you check the growth speed and thickness of the mycelium growing on agar media which are composed with different sugars.

The problem with maltose is that it is expensive, difficult to get and even more difficult to store. It attracts water like crazy, and becomes mud in hours.

But beer is easy to get! Especially the non-alcoholic maltbeer which is so useful for mushroom growing (you can use normal beer too, but remove the alcohol by boiling).

So for spore germination I would recommend sterilized nonalcoholic maltbeer. Normal beer can also be used, but this first needs to be boiled in an open pan for some time (to remove the alcohol, which itself boils away at 70 centigrade).

Before I forget: if you experiment with different malt brands please use the lightest you can get. Dark malt contains a lot of caramelized sugars, which mycelia do not like.

Yachaj