Here's my tips:

1) go assembly line. i) Fill all your jars with substrate, ii) mold all your foil, iii) insert your foils and add verm layer iv) put on the lids

2) Find a measuring cups that fits just inside the jars. Use this to mold your tinfoil quickly. Use the same measuring cup to fill the molds quickly.

3) Get some of those plastic lids from PF. They won't bend, so you won't have to try putting on bent lids that will tear your tinfoil.

Also, everyone is using Ball 1/2 pint jars. my friend started using Ball 3/4 pint jelly jars (12 oz). He can fit 50% more stuff in his canner, and have 1/3 less jars to mess with per batch of substrate. They may take longer to colonize, but he uses liquid mycellium so its fast anyhow. If you don't case, you can probably cut each in half and have two cakes per jar.

jonah you can buy replacement lids at walmart/kmart for cheap. Or you can make a new hole in the middle and cover them all with the tape that is mentiond in the Foggy Mountain Farm method and when you inoculate you can just use the middle hole and leave the other two sealed.

Mabey you had no mycelum because your needle never broke through the aluminum foil?

[This message has been edited by Humidity (edited April 12, 2000).]

My 2 cents.

With the FMF Quick Seal, exactly how sterile would one have to be. I use a pressure cooker, and I'll just be in and out. Here's what I'd do:

Pressure cook at 15 psi for 45 minutes.

Take jars out when Im ready to innoculate at least a day later.

Wash hands, spray lysol.

Uncap spore syringe and inoculate one hole in each jar, then the next jar, then the next, putting tape down as I inoculate.

The jars would now be totally sealed right?
So the only point contamination could occur would be germs depositing on the needle in between shots, assuming the substrate is clean from pressure cooking.

In the last batch, I was low on substrate, so the rice/verm was maybe an inch or so below the bottom of the ramsey. I couldn't reach the needle far enough, so I ended up just squirting the water around. It dripped down the sides pretty well. On some of the jars, I even covered them with tape because I thought that the tinfoil had broken (it hadn't actually) and contaminants would get in. I don't know if the tape allows for good oxygen exchange though. Maybe if this works, I'll write a tek on it.
In the last batch, I've had 0% contamination so far, using this method.
It's wierd how I viewed these as problems, when really they could have bee helping me.

By the way, I take it back. I went down to check and I now have white mycelium growing in every jar. I just didn't have the temp high enough. So it goes...