rcanzlovar.com

Articles Recipes Blog Events Information Wordpress Projects Feeds Now

Notes from the Do It! workshop

Yesterday I attended and presented at the “Do It!” event at [Myco Brewhouse]{https://mycobrewhouse.com) in Broomfield. We had more presenters than presentees, but it was an informative event. There will probably be another one later in the year.

Inoculating Jars

We inoculated 10 quart jars with 5 different strains of culture on agar. Two were traditional petri dishes, three were “mini-dishes” using sauce cups of the type you might get some condiments from a restaurant. Myco Brewhouse comes equipped with a clean room with a laminar flow hood to keep the work surface clean of contamninents which can be rented by the hour. Contact the store for more details.

Some notes:

Setup

• Take a couple of paper towels off the roll, separate, and place near the work surface in case of any kind of mishap. Take another paper towel and spray it with 70% isopropyl alcohol (aka rubbing alcohol). The 70% is preferred because 91% can evaporate before it has the desired effect.
• Nitrile gloves are used for this step.
• Minding movements is important! Take care that you keep yout hsmfd near the output of the floow hood. Take care not be above an open petri dish to prevent contaminents from falling on the surface
• Don’t be sparing in spraying things down with the 70% alcohol. Spray the jars, spray the outside of the agar culture containers, spray your gloved hands. Repeat as necessary during the process.
• In this case, we used quart jars which containing prepared rye berries. You can also use popcorm or other grain to receive the culture. grain bags can also be used. When preparing to inoculate, unscrew the jars so that you don’t have to fumble with them while you are doing your inoculation. If using bags, cut off the top of the bag to prepare.
• Move carefully and pay attention to where your hands go. I found that I gended to put my hands up and away from the work area. Don’t do that.
• The scalpel used for doing the culture transfer needs to be kept sterilized. Spray it with alcohol and use either an alcohol burner or an induction sterilizer. The latter is a plug-in device that uses magnetic induction to heat up the blade before touching the agar. It’s ok to cut the agar while it is stil red hot.
• Make a hashmark-type of grid in the agar culture.
• Open the jar and scrape the squares of culture into the grain. Close the jar and move on. You might want to inoculate all the jars befor shaking the grain jars.
• Marking the jars and other culture containers: Normal sharpies can be used but when you start spraying things down with alchol, the writing can be lost. Sharpie sells “Sharpie pro” markers that are resistant to alcohol but can be removed using acetone AKA nail polish remover.
• Once the jar or bag has been inoculated, screw on the lid and shake the contents around trying to get the squares of agar distributed throughout the jar. Label the jar with a sharpie.
• It’s not necessary to keep the aluminun foil used during the sterilzation process, but it can keep the top of the jar free of contaminents.

Transferring spawn to substrate

Once you have a fully colonized grain culture, you’ll want to transfer this to a substrate like CVG (coco coir + vermiculite + gypsum). This can be purchased at the store as well as other sources.

Take a clear plastic bin, spray it down with an alchol sprayer. You can make a liner for the bin using a black trash bag. The bag can be torn down the seam prety easliy or you can cut it down with scissors. Depending on the size of the bag, you can make several liners from one bag.

Gloves are good for this process because the substrate can stick to your hands, and it’s a easy to keep your hands clean by occasionally spraying them with alcohol.

If using a bag, break the block of grain culture down to loose pieces by hand.

Once the liner is in place, put about 3/4 of your culture into the bin, followed by about 70% of the substrate. Using your hands, mix the substrate and grain culture. Tamp it down to a consistent thickness.

Ttake the rest of the culture and make a thin layer on top of the mixed substrate/culture made in the previous step. This is a sort of casing layer as described in many procedures you can read or watch on videos.

Next, put the rest of the substrate in a layer on top of the casing layer. Press the layers down by hand, taking care to get all of the corners filled.

Using a misting sprayer (sold at the store but also sold in many places for hair spray) make a layer of moisture on the top of the culture cake. Don’t soak it, you want to get it so that you can see beads of moisture on top of the CVG substrate.

Spray the underside of the lid with water.

Cover the bin, label the date and what kind of culture is being used. Look at the bin occasionally, adding more water as needed. You don’t want ventilation during this step. Over the next couple weeks you’ll see the culture grow out to the outside of the cake.

Making CVG substrate

You can purchase the premade substrate at the store, but if you are willing to do a little work, you can make it yourself. This can save you a few dollars.

• Vermiculate can be purchased at a garden or nursery store.
• Gypsum comes from any of many sources. I’ve used the kind of gypsum that comes in pellets from the garden store as well as more pharmaceutical grade. Gypsum can also be prepared from pieces of drywall. Crush it, of course removing the paper.
• Coco coir can be purchased from a pet store, generally used for reptile habitats. You can also get it from a garden store, but be careful to read the label carefully because coir used for gardening can have trichomate meant as an anti-fungal.
• Oven roasting bags from the grocery store used to cook a turkey is good for prepping the resulting substrate.

There are differing opinions whether further processing is needed, but I like to cook it in the oven on a cookie sheet * When handling dry powdery things like vermiculite, cvg and gypsum, a dust mask might be used to keep the powders from getting into your lungs.

Some coir comes in small bricks, some comes in a large block. You can break it up dry, but it breaks up a lot more easily when it’s wet. Soaking the coir in water for a bit makes this easier. I use a 5 gallon bucket with a lid to mix things up.

Get the coir broken up so that there aren’t any chunks, you want a consistent dirt-like consistency. We used a 575g brick oc coir and half gallon of water to make this easier.

Add the vermiculite, replace the lid and shake it around to get it consistently mixed. Once the vermiculte and coir are mixed, put about half of te gypsum in, shake it some more, then add the rest of the gypsum.

Add water a bit at a time, checking the amount by squeezing the substrate in your hand. You want it to get to the point where there drops coming out, but not so much that it’s a stream of water. If you accidentally add too much water, you can set it out to let some of the extra water evaporate and try again later.

Once the substrate is completed, divide it into the bags. Twist the bag a few times, put the twisted part on the bottom onto a cookie sheet. 200 degrees in an oven for two and a half hours will kill off anything that might be in the substrate. I have found that putting the oven at 350-400 degrees followed by two hours at 200 degrees gets the whole substrate to the needed temperature.

Other things..

• If you have an Oster blender, the chopper/bin is compatible with a standard small mouth canning jar. If you need to chop /powder mushrooms, like to make tea, put the mushrooms into the jar, screw it onto the blender base, and using pulse you can turn your dried fruits into a powder. These blenders can often be found in second-hand stores like ARC for not very much money. You can buy an extra chopper blades online so you don’t have to break down the mixer bin every time.
• Some like to consume dried mushrooms directly, but a tea can be made using fruits, lemon juice and 100 proof vodka. There was some discussion on whether the alcohol is meeded since the active ingredients are water soluble. Some folks should avoid alcohol in any event, so YMMV.
• Because individual mushrooms will have different strengths, making a tea give you a consistent dosage per batch - the first shot will have the same amount as the last one.