I've had loads of success with cased rye. This is my complete method, which is entirely standard stuff:
Complete rye grain technique
Making filter-lid jars
Forget buying filter disks. Buy a bag of polyester pillow or quilting stuffing from a sewing or harberdashery shop (Polyfil is one brand). It costs pence for a big bag of what looks like cotton wool. It will last YEARS and it works great.
1. Using a phillips screw-driver, punch a 1/4" hole through the centre of each jar lid.
2. Grab a handful of stuffing and roll it up to the thickness of your thumb. Poke one end through the hole in the lid, coming from the underside of the lid. Tug it through until it is hard to pull any more.
3. Trim the plug of stuffing with scissors back to about 1/4" from the surface of the lid on both sides.
4. This will allow air to travel through but not bacteria etc.
Preparing the rye grain
1. Using large (quart or litre) jars, measure out enough dry rye to fill them all to a 1/3 full and then a bit more.
2. Place in the largest pot you have with the most water you can get it. Tap water is perfectly fine. You don't want to leave any surface starch which makes the grains sticky so the more water the better.
3. Gently simmer for 45mins-1hour on a low heat. Watch it more closely after 45 mins and stop boiling when you see more than a few grains split open. Taste the grains, they should taste "cooked" and be moist.
4. Using a sieve, rinse the cooked rye with a kettle of boiled water and drain thoroughly.
5. Fill your jars 2/3 full with the rye and put the lids on - screw on tight if using filter-lids described. Cover with foil to prevent water splashing into the jars.
6. Pressure cook for 1 hour (for quart jars, longer if using bigger jars) at 15 PSI
7. After 1 hour, turn off the heat and allow PC to cool and reach atmospheric pressure. The open up and shake the jars to keep the grain loose. Allow to cool to room temp before innoculating with spores or mycelium. Leave foil on.
Innoculating the rye.
If using a spore syringe, just squirt c.1cc into each jar by inserting the needle between the polyester filter and the edge of the hole. Don't shake at this stage.
If using an agar wedge then just open the lid a crack and drop the wedge in. You can make this procedure much less prone to contamination by injecting 5ml of 3% hydrogen peroxide to the jar before hand and shaking well. It helps to use mycelium grown on peroxidated agar as it is used to the chemical.
Incubating the grain
1. Leave the foil on the lids to prevent evaporation - if the jars look too wet then remove it
2. Place in a warm (75-86F), dark place until you see substantial spots of mycelium forming
3. Shake to distribute mycelium evenly. This speeds growth. Only do this once or twice. When "shaking" you may have to hit the jar pretty hard with the palm of your hand or against your hip in order to break it up. This is normal.
4. When the jar is fully colonised it should look mostly white there may be slight flecks of brown peppering it. Every grain must be covered. How long this takes is down to your strain and the temperature.
5. Shake it well again. You will notice it all looks a lot less white and more like the original grain but paler. To be on the safe side, you can let it colonise fully again but you probably don't really need to.
Casing the rye
1. Buy some Gro-Brick brand coco-fibre.
2. Crumble it into dust into a bowl.
3. Add mineral or distilled water until very moist. If it goes into a mud then it is too wet and you should add more coco-fibre. It holds a lot of water.
4. Cover until ready
5. Clean the inside surface of a foil food container or similar with alcohol and allow to dry.
6. Shake you rye grain jar well for the last time. Don't worry that it doesn't look all snowy white anymore!
7. Pour grain into tray, leaving at least 1 inch space from the top.
8. Using a flame-sterilized fork, gently spoon the casing over the rye to a depth of about 1/2". Keep it light and airy. Level the surface but ensure you leave it rough.
9. Cover with cling-film (Saran wrap for Yanks) and incubate in the same way as the rye jars - dark and 75-86F
10. Keep you eye on it and when you see mycelium poking through the casing open it up. Cover the first few bits of myc with casing. The idea is to get the myc to show though the casing in spots all over. Give it spray with mineral or distilled water if needed. Best to add 10% of 3% H202 to all water used from now on to prevent contamination.
11. When myc is showing through evenly you are ready to initiate pinning. You DO NOT want the whole surface to be white. It is hard to describe without pictures but the casing should be predominantly brown with lots of little white bits showing through. If you let the myc get too far then simply flame a fork and scratch the casing up all over a bit to mix it in and immediately start to initiate pinning.
Innitiating pinning
Cubensis starts to pin when the mycelial net is well established a, when it receives daylight and the temperature drops to below 75F. Humidity at this stage must be between 95%-100%. The simplest way to achieve this is to get a plastic storage tub with a translucent lid which will just hold the desired number of trays. Evaporation from the casing will quickly achieve c.96% humidity in most climates. Using a humidifier or perlite is not normally needed. Always use a humidity guage to make sure. Always calibrate the guage before believing it.
1. Stick your uncovered trays in your fruiting container (storage tub) near window where they will received indirect light. If this is not possible, illuminate with a low wattage fluorescent bulb or tube. The air temp should be below 75F. If it isn't then (a) You live in a hot country with no air-conditioning (b) Cover them and stick them in the fridge for 24hours.
2. Keep the casing moist with occasional spraying with water. Coco-fibre casing turns redder as it dries out which is handy for telling how moist it is. After a week or so, you'll see little white spots forming. These are hyphal-knots and will turn into pins. Open the box and fan a couple of times a day - don't worry if you miss a day.
3. You should now see the pins appear. These are very obvious. The are white sticks with reddish-brown heads. Don't spray these if you can help it. If the casing needs spraying then try to spray around them. If you can't avoid wetting them, then leave the lid off the box for a few hours afterwards to ensure they dry out. Wet pins can go rotten.
4. When you have a decent set of pins that are c.1/4" high you are ready to go into fruiting mode. This is exactly the same but with lower humidity. This, according to the text book should be between 85-92%. I would aim for 90% because 85% can really dry out your casing. To achieve this just crack open the lid an inch. Check with your humidity guage.
Cropping
Your shrooms will grow quickly now. Wait until the veil on the underside of the caps breaks before picking.
To pick them, grip the base of the stem and twist them free. Try to disturb the casing as little as possible.
If you find that not all the shrooms mature at the same rate then pick off the mature ones and leave the less developed ones for a day or so longer. But if you have cropped shrooms and there are still very small shrooms or pins left then clean these off with a sterilised knife. In order to get a 2nd flush with no contamination, you want the casing surface to be clean and free of old pins, lumps of mycelium or aborted shrooms - ie anything that might die and rot. You might need to patch the casing up with some fresh stuff. You then just put the trays back into the box and into pinning mode - high humidity, low temp and wait for the new pins to pop up.
One method to get a good 2nd (and subsequent) flush is to "deep scratch" the casing. Using a clean fork, scratch the casing down to the rye grain in a coarse grid pattern and level off again. This is not necessary and can promote contamination but then again it can produce great flushes.
If the casing looks overgrown and generally knackered you can scrape it back to close to the rye (don't cut the surface of the rye or you risk contamination) and cover with fresh casing. If you do this you'll need to put it back into incubation mode (covered, dark, higher temps as before) to get the mycelium to grow back though the casing.
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