Major Myc's Methods of Madness

This tek is a documentation of the process i've used successfully for about three years now. I call it methods of madness because the way i do things would be considered mad by all conventional mycology wisdom.

Process One: Grain Prep



For me, grain prep is simple and easy. I just add WBS and water to the jars and PC.






Quart jars:

400 ml WBS
200 ml tap water

Pint jars:

200 ml WBS
100 ml tap water

Step One:

Add the measured grain and water to the jars.



Step Two:

Seal the jars with the filtered lid of your choice, i use Poly Fil, and then i cover them with tin foil. it took me about twenty five mins. to make all these jars, and that is including the time it took to make each poly fil lid.





Step Three:

Pressure cook the jars for 90-120 mins. at 15 p.s.i., or 2.5 hours at 10 p.s.i.



Step Four:

As soon as the pressure drops in the PC remove each jar and shake it until the clump breaks up and the grain is nice an fluffy looking. Let the jars cool.



Step Five:

When you are ready to inoculate give the jars another shake and noc up as you would any other. Clean inoculant is the most important thing, a dirty syringe or LC will give you contaminated grain. Because of this i strongly recommend using agar to get clean inoculant first.

Step Six:

Wait.

Process Two: Bulk Substrate Prep

For bulk substrate I use horse or cow manure and/or hay. This is where it gets really weird, i'll be sterilizing the bulk sub instead of pasteurizing. I know, I know, sterile poo is useless right? Wrong, sterile poo works just fine for cubensis, and oysters as well. Some species it's said won't grow without the microbes, but cubes aren't one of em i assure you.

Process Two Important Notes:

Sterile poo will contaminate if you expose it to open air, which makes this method not so great for doing monotubs, unless you can fit your entire tub in your pc. I have never used open air to spawn in, maybe it works maybe it doesn't but i've always erred on the side of caution on this point and do all spawning in a still air box. I also use bags almost exclusively now for bulk as they are easy to pc with the poo inside, so that the bag and all is sterile, at least on the inside where it counts. For the hobby size grower this method is nice and easy and gives results equal to pasteurizing.

Step One:

Mix your poo or hay or whatever you use with water and bring it to field capacity, i do this by filling the poo bag with water and letting it soak a little bit, then i squish all the extra water out by squeezing the bag until not much water is running out. Give a handful a final squeeze to ensure it's at field capacity. Now roll the bags up and tie them with something, twine works well or zip ties. I like to then wrap each bag in tin foil if i have it, this time i didn't so i used newspapers. You can also use an old t-shirt, just whatever you have to keep the bags from touching the sides or bottom of the pc. I don't know if the bags will melt on the sides of the pc again i err on the side of caution here.



Step Two:

Place your bags in the PC and cook for 2 hours or more at 15 p.s.i. or 3 or more hours at 10 p.s.i. When the bags are done cooking i wrap them in a towel and put them in the freezer until they are cool enough to spawn. Alternately you can let them cool anywhere really, even just leaving them in the pc. I have a sixteen quart pc and i can fit four to five bags with four quarts of sub in each.



Step Three:

In your still air box or in front of a flow hood add about a pint of grain spawn to each bag, you can spawn a heavier ratio if you want but i have found one pint of grain will inoculate four quarts of poo rather nicely. After spawning tie your bags closed and wait for colonization.















Step Four:

Wait.

Results:

These are some old pics i had taken on my phone and some on a camera, all the substrates in the pics are sterilized, the ones from this thread were just inoculated the other day so they aren't ready yet.





























Thanks for viewing my tek, please feel free to ask any q's or make suggestions in this thread.

Thanks goes to Dr. Jugglz for bringing this grain method to light years back.

And a much bigger, huger thanks to the Myco-Tek community for giving me a place to post this.

If i forgot anything i'll update the OP if needed.

 

Very nice! I think I'll try this grain-prep method sometime, I've worked real hard to prep grain in the past. Tell me more about how you "roll your bags" and "tie it" IE you roll it down from the top to a tight roll on top of the sub, or you wrap it around the sub? I'm contemplating using some of these bags

 

i wrap it around the sub, then i'll tie it with twine, like you would tie up a stuffed pork loin or something. long zip ties work well for this but they are only one use. rubberbands are tits but i lost my bag of them somewhere

 

thanks for clearing that up! Some people do an accordian thing, but I didn't like the sound of it. Do you seal the opening, or tape it, or......

 

Yeah I've got to go back and link bigger ones the wife was in a hurry to use the computer.

Once spawned I'll bunch the opening together and tie that with a twist tie or zip tie or even some string or rubber band

 

very nice...... I'm digging this.... gona try sterilizing and make some Pancakes...

 

Sir!
Atomos loves this write up
SIR!!!

 

lolz

 

Tried it with one 1l jar inoculated with some sclerotia type strain
Grains look very good. Will report when myc will appear...

 

Great write up, Major Myc!
Glad to see I'm not the only one breaking some 'rules'...

I prep my grain very similar to your 'Process One' (but with wheat, so different grain/water ratio:
56%/44% by weight) with success so far. Using this ratio I measured a water content of around
51.6% in my wheat berries after sterilization.

I believe 'Step Four' is very important to get good results. I shake at least once, rather twice
when hot, once when cool and once again before inoculation.

I love this method 'cause it saves a lot of energy and time, compared to soak/simmer/strain, but
of course there is more than one way to skin a cat. (poor cats...)

Take care everybody

 

What would be the ratio for rye? I did it in the same 2:1 = Water:Rye but I think Rye came out a little bit dry

 

i used that same ratio for rye and it worked out fine, did look a little dry. stamets just adds water to cover the rye to a depth of about an eighth inch, meaning add water til the water is about an eighth inch over the grain. i wouldn't worry about it though i'm sure it will work ive just never had access to rye except for online so i've pretty much only used birdseed

 

some pe using my process-old pics

here's a couple old pics of some dick bags, i'm having to use older pics with the cubes as i quit running those a while back, only edibles now.

 

i've never had a problem with wetter grain, i think the whole moisture content thing is way more flexible than we think, of course too wet or too dry is no good but i just think the sweet spot is a lot bigger than what we believe it to be

 

Those are some awesome shrooms