Instant Pot Sterilization of Rye Grain for Spawn - Home Mushroom Growing - How To Procedure 

The point of soaking the grain over night is to allow certain organisms to germinate, these organisms while in spore form can tolerate 15psi, at 90 min but once germinated they cannot.

I am grateful for this video. Thank you!

The link to the step by step didn't work for me. Here are my notes 1. Pour 1/3 Cup of Rye Grain into Mason Jar 1. OR (90 Grams of Rye grain for each pint jar) 2. Once you have the right measurement of rye for as many jars as you are going to sterilize. Remove grain from jars and place into Instantpot. 3. Add water to cover rye grain 4. Use “saute” option on instantpot to heat up grains until boil. Boil 1 minute 5. After boil, drain grains in colander, and let sit for 10-15 minutes 6. Pour grains onto sheet to and spread them evenly to allow them to dry. 1. Grain should not “look wet” should not be shiny. Looks dull, but is soft. (Took video about an hour and a half to dry) 7. Fill jars about half way full 8. Put your custom lids back onto the mason jars 9. Put tin foil ontop of mason jars to avoid extra moisture getting into the lids. 10. Put something on bottom of instantpot to avoid letting the glass jars touch the bottom of the instantpot, put few cups of water in instantpot 11. Place jars in instantpot, and select high pressure, for 1.5 hours. *disable keep warm button* 1. Guy in video did this right before bed so by the time he took the lid off everything was nice and cool. 2. Jars can be used within 1-2 days after sterilization for max results.

So i have an instant pot but it doesn't have the pressure cooker button or a yogurt either any suggestions? I have an instant pot IP-LUX the pre-setting options that it has is rice, multigrain, porridge, stem, slow cook, sauté, egg, cake, Meat/Stew, and Soup/Broth.

Can you standardize the moisture of the grain by weighing it after cooking it to get to a specific hydration rate? If too heavy, let it dry more? Curious what the hydration rate % should be if using this method.

Hi,u said that i can wait 3days before inoculation,why i can not wait longer?thanks for explanation,take care

I can verify that this method works perfectly! Thanks!

I use an instant pot also, I do three hours just in case. Never had any contam

Awesome to see an instant pot in use!

Totally not a precise method thats not easily repeatable. Everytime you do this itll come out different. You need to figure out the exaxt amounts of grain,water, other additives so you can repeat this 100% the same everytime. Not put about 2inches of water in there. What if my pot is deeper?

As many people have said this definitely works. My spawn jars were in 30+ degrees Celsius where contam is even more likely for over 2 weeks. Works great

Smart putting the lids on the base of the pot, I never thought!

Thank you. I've been avoiding grain and just biting the bullet of pre-made grain bags, but it's been 50/50 on if they colonize at all... this is simple enough to do, and should make the failures a lot less costly at least

A couple additional notes on using an Instant Pot for sterilization...which I love. It is important to understand that altitude impacts the max pressure these devices can attain. Some manufactures compensate for this, but the info is rarely published. This can help account for the varied experiences people have with these pots. Instead of guessing, a $6 roll of autoclave tape will tell you if you are getting the temperatures you expect. While the tape is generally used to measure the outside of a container and cannot guarantee sterilization of media, it can be used to determine a) if you get to sterilization temp, and b) how quickly you get to that temp (using some test runs) This can inform how long you need to let grain bags or agar cook with your pot at your altitude. I'm at 6500 feet and began wondering if my 6 qt. Instant Pot Duo (that I use for everything mycology) was hitting the temps I expected. The tape confirmed that I could trust the pot. I've not tried to insert tape strips into the center of test bags yet, but a quick Copilot chat tells me this is a valid protocol.

Hey this is a great video people should realize that instant pot really is just a small pressure cooker and I really don't think you need to soak the grain overnight because that kind of defeats the whole purpose of the instant pot. of it if you're gonna cook Pinto beans and other things on the stove you soak them overnight but having an instant pot means that you can throw dry beans and water right in the pot and you're good to go this applies the same thing for the grains you're prepping for the jars.

Many people recommend venting the PC for at least ten minutes before putting the rocker on... Would it be necessary to leave the instant pot on vent for a similar time period and then seal it, to remove all the air inside and replace it with steam like in the PC?

is the lid with injection port on the cover necessary for sterilisation in the pot? or can i just use normal, completely sealing, covers? (because i have grown the mycel in agar petri dishes and plan to just open the lid and add the agar and mix.)

What size is the instant pot?

Can you store fully colonized grain jar spawn in fridge, with the intention to be taken out later to inoculate substrate?

On your website the link to the written procedures for this are not to an Instant Pot version, they both link to the system old school pressure cooker write up.

I bet that water you drained off would be good to moisten cvg.

I was literally planning to do this today!

How can you tell if there is too much moisture in the sterilized grain? I tried this today, and feel like there may be too much moisture in there…thank you!

When you are done with the 90 minute sterilization in the instant pot, if you are trying to speed up the cool down time, is it ok to do the pressure release at 90 minutes, or just wait until it naturally releases as it cools down?

After pressure cooking and having the same jar setup as you, I always get a ton of moisture in the jar even if I completely wrap them 5 times in foil. Is that ok? After a couple of days, the grain seems to absorb some of that visible moisture in my jars.

Would the measurements be the same for whole oats?

A newbie here.. Maybe a Silly question, but is it possible to just cook and sterilize in the jars at the same time instead of pie cooking etc? Thanks

If you figured the dry weight to wet weight ratio, you could use the exact amount of water needed in the sterilization process. Basically, eleminating the1st half of your video.

I found I had a problem with my Instant Pot, after cooking one batch of grain jars and letting them cool awhile, when I added 4 more jars it would appear to boil but not get up to pressure~~~I found that I had to dump the leftover hot water from the first batch and re-fill it with coldwater to get it to get back up to pressure! Then everything worked fine. There must be some kind of sensor that needs to be reset with cool water before it will allow the water to heat up to pressure temps. Has anybody else had this problem?

I can’t fit my jars with the trivet, quart sized, so I don’t use it. No problem with breaking yet and I do 3hrs typically for my rye jars.

Holy cow brother. If I can make rice in my Instant Pot, I can sure wing this. Gourmet mushies coming our way. Thanks brother.

Is this the 8qt pot?

With those type of lids with just the vent patch, would you inoculate them through that vent? Thanks so much, i love the videos!

How long can you store these cooked grain spawn jars before inocoluation?

Thank you so much!!! I dread hauling out the huge 23 qt PC for just and then feeling the need to fill it completely or Im wasting a whole PC!!! So this is so Awesome! I thought all I could do in my insta pot was agar and liquid culture! So now I can finally go at a more day to day pace with my grain spawn!! Thank you again so much!!!

How much water do you add in with the jars before sterilizing?

Hello, is there an alternative version of polyfill (to replace it with another material) I want to use for a filter on jars for sterilization? thanks in advance

A pressure caner is also about $70. And also borrowing one from a friend if you have any cool 😎 old ladies to your friends with they probably got a pressure canner.

So I did it all last night put my pressure cooker wasn’t on will they still be hydrated enough… so stupid i am

Would you recommend rinsing the rye berries before soaking in water + gypsum?

Tried this, put foil over the top and there is quite a bit of water in the jars. Should i re do it or will it be ok?

dosnt the insta pot only get to 11 psi shouldnt you go longer then 90 minuites

Could you use whole oats instead, following the same procedure?

If you could squeeze the grains to show us how much moisture is in it might be easier for us to replicate before you put it in the jars

I will try this even thought I do have a pressure cooker

Hey so i know this is off topic for this video but i thought i saw a video you made making agar using peptone. I was wondering how much to use in the recipe.

Make vids for no pressure cooker grow shrooms

My micropore tape keeps melting, it's still covering the hole but you can tell some of it melted off, is that still okay?

Thanks! Simple and effective!

I didn’t properly disable the keep warm function and my insta pot stayed on all night. Will the grain jars still be okay to use? Thanks for any help

What litre is this instant pot?

Awesome thank you!!

The sound is not loud enough

So that extra 3 psi you get from standard pressure cookers isn’t necessary for mycology sterilization? Do you know if this method is enough for making agar?

What size instant pot do I need to take bailey jars does it have to be a 8 litre or can it be smaller?

How this is going to be a silly question is there a difference between an insta pot or Crock-Pot do the kind of work the same

Can you sterilize bags in an instant pot?

Ever tried unicorn bags in these anyone?

Do you put the kids on tight ? Or leave them a little loose ?

Can you put bags in an instant pot?

Thanks...great to see. Was wondering my comment referencing a relevant (and supportive) Instant Pot laboratory study was nuked from this video. Your channel your rules, I get it, just trying to understand them. Cheers

Link for rye grain?

Link for the tape?

Question for the educational and theoretical purposes only Lets say you have an "All-in-one" grow bag and several 1/2 pint jars that are almost 80-90% fully colonized, but you have just been invited to go to, let us say Mexico, for 10-14 days(starting in 5 days..so around >>14 days past being fully colonized

That's amazing. I'm scared to used a pressure cooking this one seems safer and practical

Hey, great video! Thanks for high quality education on mushroom cultivation. Question - why do you use 4 jars? Isn't it more convenient to inoculate just one big jar? Is this because 1 won't fit into the instant pot? If you're growing the same mushroom, do you use multiple jars to have enough spawn for the 1:4 spawn -- to -- substrate ratio, if using a monotub? Thank you!

I came across an even simpler method on Shroomery. It comes down to using the exact amount of water for the rye. Put 2/3 cup of rye berries and 3/4 cup of water directly in the jar, seal it and sterilize it in Instant Pot (I use the IP's Sterilize program for 35 minutes). Done! I've been using this process successfully for a few months now.

my pressure cooker is 6 litre one and cant fit the jars (unless very small). Can I use an oven to sterilize the 1 litre jars instead ?

Would this method work for brown rice as well?

Hey, I know where this is coming from. It would be kind of you if you put the references of this previously done work by other authors. Thank you.

Ah man did you throw that foil away? ♻️

Is this the 6 or 8 quart model?

“This video is ad free” Continues to advertise his Patreon. Haha not mad or anything and I really appreciate the video! Just teasing you.