cronicr said:

Nobody should be starting any grain at room temp

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mushboy said:

60min hot soak eh?

i bucket tekked wbs once and it worked nicely(worked decent with oats too). but the grains werent as loose as id like. are you just air drying?

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I spread them on a few large self constructed colanders using mesh net, I have zero 0% RH where I live because it's winter dry air in combination with us warming the place with electric heaters to survive, so I guess the dry air at my place speeds this process up! One hour of this and after that only 2-3 min tops with the hair dryer to get that nice outer 'moisture' where it's somewhere in between dry and very lightly moist. I don't know what the perfect moisture is from experience so I went with my intuition

Mateah said:

Mushboy, it seems you are right about mycelium colonizing slow on dry grain, most of the mycelium is at the bottom where there is more moisture.

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stareatclouds said:

Mateah said:

Mushboy, it seems you are right about mycelium colonizing slow on dry grain, most of the mycelium is at the bottom where there is more moisture.

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That's because you inoculated with liquid.

Really cool experiment, Mateah. Thank you for recording the results. I'd be curious to see it done with different inoculation techniques and different grain (specifically one with uniform size, such as oats).

Is it certain that higher water content = easier for myc to colonize? Or could it be the grains are bigger/heavier, providing bigger gaps for myc to travel through?

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stareatclouds said:

Mateah said:

Mushboy, it seems you are right about mycelium colonizing slow on dry grain, most of the mycelium is at the bottom where there is more moisture.

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That's because you inoculated with liquid.

Really cool experiment, Mateah. Thank you for recording the results. I'd be curious to see it done with different inoculation techniques and different grain (specifically one with uniform size, such as oats).

Is it certain that higher water content = easier for myc to colonize? Or could it be the grains are bigger/heavier, providing bigger gaps for myc to travel through?

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Thank you for the kind words Stare! Interesting you should bring up homogeneous spawn, I was just looking for prices on rye locally.
Found organic rye 50lbs for like 65US, it´s pretty cheap I guess considering where I live. Of course I realized pretty soon that these hydration methods could never
be standardized for WBS for several reasons. First of course cause it´s not homogeneous, and second is that my WBS may contain totally different grain and seed than another
ones WBS. So far in my limited experience a 60min hot soak seems to be pretty cose to ideal for my WBS at least. But I will test with longer hot soaks as well soon.

Now for your question, and a very interesting one. I would intuitively assume that myc will colonize faster and digest more efficiently a grain
that is very soft and plump with moisture, easier so than a grain that is less hydrated and thus is harder towards the center. A question that had
always interested me is apporx how much of the spawn does myc consume after two flushes. I will try an experiment where I weigh dry grain spawn
and then somehow extract it after the two flushes and then dry it and re weigh it. I don´t even know if that could give me quantifiable data
idk how much of myc weight would be in the grain, even tho it cant possibly count for much.

Another thing got me thinking, IF mycelium can digest less hydrated grain as well as well hydrated ones, then you would have more nutrients
with less hydrated grain due to less volume of grain. But then again who really know how much of it gets digested anyway hehe.

I´m always open to ideas and suggestions for experiments