@@vogelvogeltje oh, you don’t have to thank me, I think that You* might be misunderstanding that academia has become an ego driven and hateful political high school. I support Mr Brill’s comment.
LFG PGT…. Been following you for years. Happy you came back on. You certainly enhanced my harvesting journey years back and grateful to see you coming out with this type content. Can’t wait! Mush Love All!
Thanks so much, fascinating video. I’ve mostly worked with brown rice but I’ve tried many others. My method for brown rice is: put the brown rice in a saucepan with water 0.6 times the weight of rice. So if you have 500g of BR, add 300g of cold water plus gypsum. Give it low flame for about 20mins, open to stir and give it about 10 more minutes, maybe reducing the flame a little. When the water is all absorbed, load into jars. Pressure cook. Do a hot shake. This method works great! No rinsing. There will probably be some small clumps after the shake and mix but it will all colonize just fine. No boiling and this nothing lost to leaching. I have jars finish in ~16 days.
Brown rice has always been very good for me. WBS was also pretty good when I used it. And I found popcorn was actually pretty hard to fully colonize. But that was probably due to bad moisture on my part. I think it's best to find one that you like and master the technique. I will always use Brown rice...Thanks PGT, a great video as always!
Gotta say I'm stoked see your test included red milo and that it performed as well as it did! From my grain co-op sells basically all the grains in your test (minus popcorn and brown rice) in your choice of whole, cracked, or rolled form. Rye, and Barley being on the upper end of the price scale at $55/$34/per 50# sac but they sell Red Milo for $14/per 50#.. and if you buy in bulk, like purchasing a cubic yard grain sac (which is essentially 2000lbs, generally a little less depending on the grain) the pricing drops to $500-700
Party on Wayne! Been watching your old videos for over a year straight and wanted to say, THANK YOU. It's crazy because you posted this while I'm literally in the middle of testing three grains.
Greetings Sensei. I wanted to give my very sincere gratitude for sharing your knowledge and experience. I have learned, more than I thought possible at the start of my journey into mycology and much of that has to do with what you share as well as how well you communicate and present the information. You and your work are greatly appreciated.
Thank you so much for the kind words. I'm glad I was able to help share knowledge and support your journey. I wish you the best on your journey. I would not be able to do this without you and everyone else in this amazing community! Thank you for being a part of this together! 🙏🍄
Brown rice for me sticks together no matter what and even if I can break it up I can't break up the mycelium into smaller bits so break and shake is impossible, which leads to painfully long colonising times. I'm sticking with rye grain
Nice clean work, and a great experiment - subscribed! One suggestion, however, which I'd love to see you test for in future: "15 psi" doesn't, in itself, sterilize grain. It allows the interior of our pressure chambers to reach higher temperatures. We've found that, with precise monitoring and control of actual temperatures, we can dial in the nutritional profile of each grain, tailored to the preferences of each specific strain. This results in faster, more robust spawning (which drives out opportunistic bacteria and mold), better fruiting yields, less wasted grain, and more efficient use of energy and labor - this, of course, streamlines and grows businesses, for those working to meet the demands of the booming mushroom consumer market. For the home grower, and the mushroom farmer who is bootstrapping their way into the mushroom goldrush, "The Big Fun Guy" company has created a control box (called "The Control Box") which fits all standard pressure cookers, allowing precise, pre-set temperature control. They also produce a sophisticated autoclave called "The Big Unit," with two, moveable, temperature probes, that processes either 50 or 80 gallons of grain at a time. The Big Unit is insulated, which, in conjunction with off-cycles in the heating program, harnesses passive thermodynamics to ensure that every grain in the mass is heated evenly to the same, precise temperature. The Big Unit is also horizontal in orientation, avoiding the problems of "tower" style autoclaves designed for the brewing industry - specifically scorching of grain down near the heating element, and at the top, where heat gathers. The Big Unit is human-scale, offering much greater labor efficiency, and allowing growers the agility to prepare different grains, with differently optimized nutritional profiles, for the simultaneous cultivation of different strains. Mycelium really does have a preference, and it makes a huge difference. If you want to know more, feel free to email me at: dan (at) thebigfunguy (dot) com.
I don't have a pressure cooker and have been sterilizing pop corn jars and pillowcase pasteurization my sub mix using a large canning pot, works very well for me
Good video! Thank you a lot! But, instead of just grading by the speed of colonization, could we measure yield in grams, over however many flushes the resulting cake was able to achieve in plain Coir? Divide the achieved weight by days. 6 grams per day start to last flush would be a very useful number :)
The pleasure is all mine, but you're certainly welcome@@PhillyGoldenTeacher I owe you a debt of gratitude for the confidence that you inspire. ✌🏻 Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher. Japanese Proverb Education breeds confidence. Confidence breeds hope. Hope breeds peace. Confucius If you have to put someone on a pedestal, put teachers. They are society’s heroes. Guy Kawasaki
I have done my own experiments with grains to see what works best. I can say the Rye I'm gettin in my area is garbage. Very slow to colonize and hard to steralize. Went back to Popcorn and never looked back. 3 to 5 weeks to fully colonize a quart jar with coffee and gypsum. When you gave weights at the end, was that wet weight?
Wild bird seeds seems to be a good choice. I'm using it to grow lion's mane, 50% colonization in 10 days, then break and shake, full colonization in 2 weeks after inoculation. Without breaking and shaking, 70%colonization in 2 weeks after inoculation. I also keep sunflower seeds in it. Mushroom industries in China use sunflower seed shell as one of the ingredients for making mushroom substrate. Sunflowers seed shell is not as nutritious as whole grain seeds, but it contains lignin.
Hello Sensei. Thanks to your vids I'm nailing down most parts of the process. I have a quick question. Can you add peptone in any other moment besides when making liquid culture? Like add to bulk substrate for example.. Thanks for your time and knowledge. Greetings from Argentina
Im just starting out, . But reading on the difrent tecks online. They all advise to step away from brown rice . And use grains .. (im on my first run 4 days in on brown rice . All looks good
I did inject extraction honey liquid for lions spores and injected yesterday liquid with no apparent spores in an hotwaters hygiened salt gingers glass. Today I just have a lots of gelatin on water.Smells ginger.
Great video!!! You always have the goods but I have been trying different grains recently and landed on birdseed with mostly millet, might have to give the popcorn a shot after watching this!! Thanks for doing the extra work so we dont have to 🤪😻🍄🔥🔥
Not bad, but here's an improvement... You should repeat with N=6 jars each. Then do another experiment and weigh how much water each grain absorbs, then do for example rye at various levels of hydration. It all could be dependant on the amount of water, maybe some grains need a different prep to absorb more or less water. Then repeat at various pH levels, maybe some grains are more or less acidic and need the pH adjusted. Could also be dependant on the amount if dissolved solids in the water. This is a good start though!
Glad to have found your channel. I am interested in growing my own mushrooms and happen to have a bag of red wheat berries that I bought for baking bread. What is your thoughts on using this since I have it on hand?
This may or may not seem like a stupid question but could you colonize a grain jar with mycelium from another jar rather than starting from spore syringe?
While I’m trying to colonize my grains. Do I need to have air exchange during this stage too? Over all my research (I’m incredibly new to growing, but I’m a stickler for proper knowledge/research) this is a gray area I’ve found in my own thought process that I can’t find fully explained.
Hey PGT thx for Videos like this!! Im now interested in starting growing Mushrooms myself but Im wondering why you realy need Grainspawn for?? After preparing a new Bag, cann´t you just inoculate it with the rest of your prior fruting Block after harvesting?? So is it realy necessary to do all the Work for Grainspawn?? plz let me know! Thx in advance!! :)
Grains are your primary source of nutrition. You will want to start with clean grain spawn before a new grow. The prior fruiting block will be weak mycelium and covered in bacteria as well as potential mold spores that will eventually germinate over time. Hope that helps answer 🙏
Help me please lol I have a quick question. I bought a all in one grow bag. Inoculated with spores fast forward 45 days already did the break and shake. I checked my bags today and there are like yellow and orange spots on the substrate on bottom of the bags. What is this? What do I need to do to fix this? Please help philli!
Excellent experiment, thank you very much. I noticed you didn’t use a tub liner. I am about to do my first tub tek and was debating using one. Supposed to reduce side pinning, correct?
Using a liner can help to some extent for preventing side pins. The liner sticks to the sides of the substrate, preventing some of the air and microclimates from forming on the sides of the substrate. But the main thing is learning proper surface moisture for when and if your surface needs misting! Though a liner will help some! 🙏🍄
The feed store down the road has 55lb bags of rye for next to nothing. But the prep for brown rice is so much easier and my yields are 100% identical to my rye tubs - as well the brown rice always colonizes faster, sometimes shockingly so with certain strains at a higher incubation temp. It's like the hardcore mycologist in me doesn't want to admit the easy "beginner's" grain is the best - and wants to jump through a bunch of hoops to feel more advanced..... but the real-world yields and potency from brown rice simply can't be denied!
ive been watching grain spawn videos for about a week now, there are a few folks who've done similar experiments to this video. it seems like the best advice is to do an experiment for each mushroom type. if you go through and watch all these videos, there appears to be a consensus generally about rye berry, millet, etc being the best choices, and then depending on the mushroom type there is a superior choice, usually in terms of fruiting time and yield .
This, like the rest of your content, is super helpful, informative, and engaging. Love the amount of effort you put in sharing knowledge that cost you time and money for free to strangers to make the world better
Thank you so much for the kind words, truly. I'm glad you appreciate the content. I am happy to share what I have learned! I'm grateful for everyone here and wouldn't be able to do this without everyone here in this wonderful community! I'm glad to be a part of this journey with all of you! 🙏
You've been so helpful PGT I've always thought mushrooms are a gift to this planet and can help people in ways that is so necessary in our current times, I thank you personally for you have helped me when I contacted you through discord you always got back to me ❤️🙏🙋
What strikes me is not the difference in colonization time, but the end yield. Brown rice was not only the fastest to pin but had the highest fruiting yield. Thank you PGT.
Nice! I've always used Oats just because of their sheer ability to take horrendous abuse. I can over cook them by a long shot and they still don't explode on me.
