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hamloaf said:
Was sharing grain prep techniques with a few other members the other day when user MudaFuka told me that he preps his whole oats with a 30 minute boil, no soak.  Can't remember what thread the conversation was in, unfortunately, because I would like to link the conversation into the original post.  In fact, 5 shrooms to whoever can find the link to the thread, let alone anyone who has any memory of said conversation, and the link will be installed into the original post.  Thank you.

This peaked my interests highly, because a lot of grains are prepped at once during grain runs, and all require a soaking-cycle, so any method that can be utilized to save time, but not sacrifice quality is always on the look out for.  The grains researched with in the past are high quality Red Milo, Wild Birdseed, and Winter Rye Berries.  After careful consideration, and the reading of a few Whole Oat preparation method threads the decision was made to get some high quality whole oats from the grain supplier for field research studies. 



Upon further inspection of the oats with the hands and sight, the look of the grain is liked already, as well as, the size of the grain. 



Grain size is an important factor in quality, and mass of fruit production.

The point of this thread is to keep track of the researching process on whole oat preparation through the eyes of this individual cultivator.  Any tips, links, advice, or insights into whole oat preparation that anybody would care to share with the community would be greatly encouraged for your experiences will be challenged, and tested in the research department of this laboratory, and their findings will be reported here.  Thanks in advance for any help, tips, or advice given on how to efficiently prep this grain for sterilization in your pressure sterilizers intended for grain spawn running.  Happy Shrooming!

-February 14, 2015

Oat research has begun.  33 cups of high quality, dry oats were loaded into a 16 quart sauce pan, and rinsed with with hot water until the water came back clear.

   

Well, during the soak, the oats expanded to a size too large to be boiled comfortably inside of the 16 quart sauce pan, so the oats were moved into the insert from the 75x Steroclave.  The oats in their new boiling vessel were immediately placed onto the stove with the heat set to high.



At 171F the plumping of the whole oats with moisture was detected be beginning to really set into the oats.

 

At 184F the detection of the oats becoming easily separated from the hulls/husks was noted.  Also, the full saturation/hydration of the whole oats was detected.  Due to the detection of both of those facts, the decision was made to begin the timer set to 30 minutes logged by hand using a pen, a pad of paper, and the clock of the computer.

 

Start time; 11:20.  End time; 11:50. Start temp; 184F.  End temp; 201F.  This is what the oats looked like just before the heat was turned off.  End of the boil-cycle oat water was collected, and the whole oats were placed in one gallon plastic food colanders to dry. 

       

Going to let the oats remain in the colanders until the oats return to room temperature.  Allowing the oats to return to room temperature before loading the oats into their respected media vessels for sterilization in your pressure cookers, or electric steroclaves ensures this cultivator that no steam is released, creating condensation inside of the media vessels, ruining the surface moisture content of the grain, and in worse case scenarios, the prevention of water-pooling.  Once cool it's projected that the oats will be plump with moisture while the surface of the oats becomes dry, and will then be ready for loading into their respected media vessels in preparation of the pressure sterilization cycle.

Oats are ready to be loaded into media vessels.  Hydrated whole oats were loaded into 21 regular mouthed quart jars, and two 3 quart spawn bags (nothing fancy) at seven scoops per jar, then capped with media closures, covered in foil, then loaded into the PC.

     

Quart jars filled with freshly hydrated whole oats will sit in the pressure sterilizer over night, then ran through the sterilization cycle in the morning.  Hydrated whole oats in their quart jar media vessels will be pressure sterilized for and hour and a half at 17-20psi. 

Can tell you right now that the decision to inoculate these oats with Pan Cyans will be flopped upon.  The oat mediums generated during this trial will be inoculated with freshly colonized Psilocybe Galindoi - atl#7 mycelial culture on sterilized, nutrified agar in a petri dish.



-Update:  Feb. 17th, 2015.

I inoculated spawn bags with agar wedges.  Oh noez.  I am destined and doomed for failure for I have strayed away from standard and conventionally followed techniques and procedures. 

Had seven plates of freshly, fully colonized atl#7, so the decision was made to do something a little unconventional and inoculate 2, 3 quart spawn bags of freshly sterilized whole oats each with three full plates of mycelium.





The procedure was to place a wiped with alcohol, freshly sterilized, and uninoculated spawn bag onto the left side of the direct flow of the flowhood on top of a steel rack.  On the right side of said sterile rack is where the petri dishes were placed.  The dishes were stacked directly into the flow of the flowhood immediately prior to just being wiped down with alcohol.  Latex gloved hands were then soaked with alocohol, rubbed together for about 5-10 seconds before proceeding to remove the parafilm from the petridish media vessels, stacking each dish directly next to the stack that still had parafilm on them, directly into the sterile air flow of the flowhood. 

Once the stack of petris without parafilm was generated, and placed into the direct, sterile air flow of the flowhood, hands were soaked in alcohol, the propane torch was light, the hands were soaked in alcohol, the scalpel was brought out, and wiped with alcohol,, the hands were soaked in alcohol, then scalpel blade was flame sterilized. 

Once the scalpel blade was red hot, the blade of the scalpel was moved directly into the sterile air of the flowhood with my right hand.  My left hand was then soaked in alcohol before picking up the culture from the top of the stack keeping the culture directly in front of the flowhood.  With my right hand full of freshly sterilized scalpel blade, I simultaneously, carefully, and mindfully removed the lid of the petri culture, placing it right next to the stack of cultures directly in front of the flowhood, and proceeded to cut the wedge into eight slices, pizza-pie style.  Scalpel was placed down.  Right hand was soaked in alcohol, then the lid was replaced onto the culture with the freshly cut wedges, and stacked right next to the first stack of uncut petri cultures directly in front of the flowhood.  Process/procedure was repeated 3 times until a stack of sliced into wedges petri dishes was generated.

Once the stack of sliced petri cultures was generated, hands were soaked in alcohol, and the seal to the freshly sterilized, receiving grain mediums was broken and opened up directly in front of the flowhood.  After the seal was broken and an opening was created inside of the sterile air stream of the flowhood, hands were soaked in alcohol, the scalpel was grabbed, then wiped down with a pre-prepared soaked in alcohol paper towel, then the blade was placed into the flame of the propane burner and flame sterilized until red hot.  Once scalpel blade was red hot, hands were soaked in alcohol, red hot scalpel blade was positioned directly in front of the flowhood with right hand.  Left hand removed the lid from the petri culture on the top of the stack of pre-sliced petri cultures, lid was discarded, petri dish half containing media and pre-sliced culture was picked up, scalpel blade was dipped into an uncolonized section of agar to cool the scalpel the rest of the way down to room temperature.  The sizzle was heard as soon as the hot blade touched the agar media, then the petri dish containing the culture was positioned upside down inside the sterile air flow from the flowhood, and the scalpel was used to "shovel" the culture and media out of it's vessel.



This process/procedure was repeated 3 times while the bag of freshly sterilized oats remained opened with the opening NEVER straying out of the direct air stream of the flowhood.  Once the agar wedges were into the bag and the bag was securely sealed, a light, and gentle kneading of the bags was adminsited to create more inoculation points of of culture tissue that gets separated from the agar media, as well as, to distribute the agar wedges through out the media more evenly.  Finally media vessels were label according to specie and dated. 



All in all, each spawn bag medium received 21 wedges of fully, freshly colonized, clean mycelial culture on agar. 

Took the remaining culture on agar in a petri dish, sliced it into 8 wedges, and inoculated 4 of the 21 freshly sterilized whole oat grain mediums in quart jars with 2 wedges of Atl#7 myclial culture a piece.





On a side, yet, relating note.  3 more of the 21 freshly sterilized whole oat mediums in quart jar were inoculated with 3.3cc's a piece of live blue oyster liquid mycelial culture broth generated by this cultivator. 





More on the blue oyster mushroom happenings in this thread provided below;
http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/21230488#21230488

That's 4+3=7-21=14.  14 more jars of freshly sterilized whole oats to play with, and the culture stock to back it up.  More research to be conducted.  Results will be posted as developments are made.  Thank you for tuning in, and checking out my take on whole oat preparation.

- Update 3-24-2015.

The bags that were inocualted with 3 petri dishes a piece of ATL7 are finished colonizing.  The jars with the oats of the same cultures are also finished colonizing.





On both the jars and the bags of the Atl7 culture, a shake was employed at 30% colonization.

The blue Oyster spawn generated on these oats have already fully colonized their bulk substrates and shit.  More on the blue oyster oats grain spawn featured in this thread at the link provided below.
https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/21230488#21230488

Going to prepare some extra manure and get it pasteurized during the regularly scheduled pasteurization run of today, and spawn some of this ATL7 grain spawn into some manure/verm/gypsum substrates and go for prints.

So far as I can tell, oats kick ass.  For me, whole oats are 4 dollars cheaper than equal sized bags of rye.  Oats are also bigger, grain-size-wise, than rye which is a personal perk of oats over rye.  I believe this warrants the switch from rye over to whole oats as the staple grain used for grain spawn running in the regularly scheduled cultivation regimen.  This is fuckin' cool!

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