Grains Causing Contamination? And Why a Casing Layer Works Better than a Simple Top Layer 

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Those popcorn boys gonna start a turf war with the rye guys down the block.

Dude just casually opening up a shoebox with trich surrounded by active grows xD

8:50 Bro has provided me one of the biggest "AHA!" moments in my mycology studies ever. Sage your insight into how the grain spawn expends its energy in cycles and how grain is never REALLY clean, only dormant, is going to change how I do things from here on out, your wisdom is always so perspicacious and sort of omniscient. Its starting to become so clear how important it is to have clean spawn which includes plenty of rinsing pre-pc cycles. Love your content man, keep up the good work!

Completely agree, i have always used brown rice. Never had issues with it. 1 2lb bag of brown rice goes for 2 dollars a bag gets me 3 quart size jars. I usually make 6 jars at a time which only cost me 4 dollars and like i said no contamination yet.

Appreciate the knowledge and experience sharing as always. Best of vibes to you and your endeavors ✌️👍

Fire content. Keep up the tutelage Sage!!

Thanks Sage for all the info. I learn so much from your videos. 🍄🙏🦋💚💙😊

Thanks for the insight into casing layers, I will start using them from now on.

If you are finding that the older feed grain that appears to have growth in the bag is not giving good results with spawn (contamination and slow growth), I have a couple thoughts to relate. Hospitals and research labs all over the world use autoclaves with the same steam heat mechanisms as our pressure cookers. Certainly, there is the possibility that it is not reaching pressure, but if it is working properly, 30 minutes at 15psi should be long enough to completely sterilize those grain jars. If sterilized, everything will be non-viable and you will not see growth. To check this, just cook an extra jar using that grain with your other jars next time, and don’t inoculate it with anything. Just leave it closed. If your sterilization tek is not working, then you will see contaminate growth in that that jar over time, just as in the inoculated jars. However, if no growth develops, that suggests that contaminants are being introduced after the PC. You also mentioned poorer/slower growth from your myco strains on that grain. This could be because the organisms growing in the bag are using the starches and other nutrients in the grain before you sterilize it. This effect, in combination with introduction of even low-level contamination, can lead to slower growth and less competitive mycelia, and the appearance of greater contamination. As saprobes, the fungi can eventually breakdown other macromolecules in the grain, but the high-energy starches are more digestible and provide quicker growth. If contaminants in the feed have already been consuming those nutrients before use, then there is less for the desired mycelium.

Awsome info!

this helps alot, i have grain beetles and just asssumed that pressure cooking would solve it but it makes sense that the grain keeps getting contaminated because of that

Oh Man, I've been procrastinating on getting my Instant Pot. You lit a fire under me and I'm going to go pick one up!!!

Thank you for another good explainer Sage You're awesome man!

This is my new favourite channel

love your voice bro, thanks for this nice content.

I had a similar problem, I bought a 50 lb bag of wheat berries and I go through quite a bit of it because I grow gourmet as well. Thankfully I was only down to the last 10 lb or so when I started noticing that some bugs would be in there.

I did two runs of rye, 17qts total, that were contam'ing just as you described. I ended up dumping everything, including several unused jars. Someone had recommended a "flash prep" for rye and it really cut the prep time dramatically, but I think it caused the problem. I've switched back to organic rye only and pc for 2 hours. That seems to have calmed things down. Funny you mentioned brown rice, because I made 3 test jars last week. In my area, brown rice is very cheap. If it works as good as everyone says, I'll probably change things up.

I think me and you may have had the same exact problem, I brought 50# of OG Rye Berries in january and most of the jars would contam with clean agar cultures, I was never having this problem with popcorn or brown rice, it delayed so much progress, but anyhow I think if you use exotic grains its best to inoculate with a couple days (

Great video. When are you adding your casing layer? Is it during spawn to bulk as a last step or after your coir substrate has colonized?

well im glad I bought my instapot when I did. Phenomenal device for a at home mycologist.

I just check on my very first round of stuff:(TMU&SW) 27 UB bags , and 24 jars of Brown Rice, and 2 Grow bags from TMU. 11 days in and one bag is contam, and 10 of the jars are not really movin, the other bag has some activity but still slow, but the rest is taking off like wild fire. All the fail came from SW and the good ones came from TMU.

Until now, I have bought ready-made growing kits from online fats. I have always had success (I see that in these compliments there is perlite on the bottom, a middle layer of rye grain, and vermiculite on top! I want to grow in the same box, I have a filter bag. I recently took a print .Please advise .I want to make jars and add in a box with coir and vermiculite

i'm also having problems with jars, 2+ weeks after inoculating. i'm gonna do an experiment to find out how to inhibit endospores: 1) soak first, simmer second: cold soak 800g popcorn, half for 1 night, half for 2 nights; then simmer 30 minutes, cool, dry, jar, and pc for 100 minutes. 2) simmer first, soak second: simmer 30 minutes 1.2kg popcorn, cool down, then a third goes directly to be dried and jarred and pc'ed, one third soaks 1 more night and is then jarred and pc'ed, one third soaks 1 more night and 1 more night already jarred and is then pc'ed. i'm gonna try and organize that so that they're all pc'ed at the same time for consistency, then inoculate with the same culture all 5 jars and see if there are any differences

Thanks for another good vid man ! I been using popcorn and brown rice , but don't use uncle Ben's brown rice lol it's different, going back to dollar tree brown rice from Thailand, peace ✌️ from Welland Ontario Canada 🇨🇦

Brown rice is great. Definitely my preferred grain

Hey legend! Thank you! Did you bother to put any of those jars to spawn? My first is slightly ‘oily looking’ but I’m wishing the spawn would be strong enough to pull through

Hey man, I just had a question. I cased my mono tub with Pete moss. And I think it's colonizing the pete moss what do I do about overlay

Ugh, problem solved. Thanks for this video.

Hey Sage, how would you feel about doing an explainer video on how you prep your brown rice? I have a meth that I use but yours looks a lot less sticky than mine.

Good stuff 👌

Cheers!

Hey, yo, Sage! Could you make a video of your method of PCing brown rice? I know PGT (Philly Golden Teacher) does twice as much water as rice, boils it for 10 minutes, then strains it, runs cold water over it, then lets it fully strain, and then puts it all in jars and steams them instead of PCing them (I've just been doing everything he does, but then PC for 90 minutes instead of steaming them). But, if you have a no soak, no simmer, all-in-one PC cook and sterilize method (where you add a specific amount of water to a specific amount of rice, and immediately just PC it, and it all cooks and reaches field capacity while PCing -- if that's even possible with brown rice) that would be amazing, but even if you quickly cook the rice for 10 minutes then PC it like I described above, that will help a lot of people that are intimidated by the whole PC concept after you show everyone your PC method and how easy and safe it is when done right. I know how to pressure cook/can, but there's a lot of people that get hung up on it, so doing a video from start to finish, cooking, jarring, PCing, and any little tips/"hacks" you've learned along the way for PCing, that would be a good video.

Hey micophilia, I am wondering if you stack your shoeboxes? I’m wondering if there will not be enough fae on the bottom one?

is jiffy mix already at the ph level you want? if not how are you getting it there?

So I've struggled a bunch with my grains- been using whole oats. Inoculated 19 of my 64oz jars in mid/late April, and here we are in June, and my jars are about half colonized. The jar that is the most colonized has a ton of metabolites (most of the jars have them). I believe my cultures are clean- I started with spore syringes and made into cultures, however I'm starting to feel like I'm stuck and can't get past the colonization stage

Most common molds including trike should be eliminated after15 minutes at 160 . Bacillus subtilus or we spot is the only exception that I know of . What may be happening is a weakness from the wet spot bacteria lowing the guard of the mycelium.

The cubanzas you don't really need a case anywhere where you can use a pseudo casing layer but with the more exotic ones you definitely need a true case in there.

I switched brands of brown rice from riceland to kroger brand and ended up losing a few jars of turkey tail and lions mane. No problems with riceland so ill be going back to it. Riceland has done me very well.

you ever try a UV-C light on contaminated areas?

Can I go in an add a casing layer on my shoeboxes that are about a week old or should I leave it and do better next time?

You have mentioned this jiffy casing layer, but I haven't been able to find anything on it. I'm getting peatmoss mix but I'm not understanding what you mean and how much jiffy. Are you using jiffy muffin mix or will you explain jiffy recipe or link please

Tammy been crashing my party too sage. Same prep as always, I think it may be from Tammy's jars I didn't wash good enough. I use bleach and run 3hrs on my grain prep, it's either the jars or bad grain?

Do you use cooked brown rice or is that greens with just a little bit of moisture?

What did you end up changing between when all your grain was clean vs when it starated to contam?

Yo myco p can you make a vid on how to make liquid culture without a presto?

Bro what about the saved coco? will it be the same?

So basically, im not going to buy my grains in bulk i'll buy as i need for the moment. No point in letting 6 kilos of grain sit around slowly deteriorating in quality to the point of un-viability for my scale.(none existent yet) xD

Do you have a lq to agar vid? Or a vid for multiplying lq?

Ugh it's hard to see how can I contact you for help out

Grains and partners.. 😗

I'm going to make a prediction. Everyone of those tubs is going to have trich. Those are super wet. Not throwing shade neither brotha.i hope you don't. Maybe it's just the 📷 making it seem more wet. I've had success with the jiffy mix casing but it's been about 50/50. Depending how you prepare it. I would not blame ur grains unless you know from some other indicators. I'd say it's the jiffy mix casing. Just my thoughts and predictions. I just lost 2 tubs of Subtropicalis and it was do to the casing.

Do u add Calcium sulfate to your substrate?

🍄🍄🍄

I haven't seen enough mycelium to tell what looks alright and what doesn't. Those jars you show look normal to me

What about trying Slightly Feral’s 3 day grain prep?? This allows the endospores to begin opening and then when you hit them with the P/C on day 3 you can kill them 👏🏼🎉👏🏼

brown rice is better then rye berries?!

Quick question you do know mold spores and bacteria are all over in the air right?

How can you tell it’s Trich when it’s white ?

UBtek for the win

Can you drop a video for us beginners? I try to keep up but I don’t understand a lot of the words

Feed grain rye is always dirtier than rye for human consumption. Also how you store it affects it's cleanliness.

Actually been waiting since I heard insta pot is going bankrupt gonna buy multiple ones for grains and agar when the price drops everywhere 🤣 🤣 😂

I think millet sterilizes pretty easy. Have not had a noticable contamed jar yet. Made about 40 using agar so far. I do see one jar that may be, shook it and was cloudy. Might be the gypsum idk, but it didnt bounce back yet after 2 days, while other jars white white. I might huck it after more observations

ever used bleach to treat coir and grains seems like it would work well

I wonder if someone is mad enough to use an X ray tube in a lead box to stetilizer really dirty grains

I used jiffy once. Trich city. I don’t trust it ever since

The moths are nasty. Next time your in the bulk grain section your health food market you’ll see them. They hatch from Within those plastic dispensers.

can uncolonized grain cause contamination?

You should try popcorn

Water at boiling will kill bug eggs

Bro how much are you growing that you can't afford brown rice lol, im not pickin but I can't imagine having to spend more than $100 on rice and that would last me months

Someone should tell Istantpot to rebrand and target the mycology demographic haha

I’m gonna say it’s your cultures, NOT the grains. If you are PC ‘ing your grains for 2.5 to 3 hours they should be clean no matter what sort of garbage has ended up growing/ living in them. I had this problem for a little while thinking the same thing. Then i started to learn about embedded bacteria. You cannot see this on agar as it’s literally growing with(in) the mycelium . I started to make my agar with Rit dye based on some very experienced growers recommendations . This inhibits bacterial growth, and then I take transfers to my normal agar that then are placed in grain. Kept using my exact same bag of grains that i thought were too dirty and now I no longer have had that problem.

"I keep getting contam" opens Trich box in his room my brother please tell me it isn't your grow room and you had a respirator on😂 with love respectively