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OfflineThemChanges
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First time making agar + sketchy pressure cooker (newbie questions)
    #27051599 - 11/22/20 07:13 AM (3 years, 2 months ago)

I just got into mushroom growing a couple of weeks ago and been having tons of fun so far! Currently growing a couple of grow kits (oysters and lion's mane) and they are doing quite well (I think ^^).

I really want to get into agar things, so I tried brewing a small batch (~500ml) yesterday. I was following this vid pretty closely, here's a TLDR version of what I did:

1. Mixed 12g potato flakes, 8g agar powder, 4g corn syrup in a container.
2. Poured 400ml of distilled water into a small pot. Put it on the stove.
3. Added the mix from 1 into the water and started stirring.
4. After the mix started boiling, poured it into a glass bottle.
5. Added a drop of food coloring.
6. Put the cap on the bottle, wrapped it in aluminum foil, and pressure cooked for ~1h.
7. While the pressure cooker was cooling down - closed all the doors/windows, took a shower, got into clean clothes, sprayed Lysol all around the room, wiped the SAB and the surface on which it sits in 70% Iso, put the gloves on. Everything that went into SAB was wiped in iso as well (including the ketchup cups which were opened inside SAB, immediately wiped down and stacked for pouring).
8. Moved agar bottle from PC into SAB, let it cool down a little bit (I waited until agar inside got to around 70C).
9. Poured agar into the cups. Let it sit in SAB until it cooled down and solidified.
10. Moved cups from SAB into a sealed plastic container (that was wiped with iso) and stored it in a closet.

After about a day I decided to check in on them and noticed that every cup had these black spots on the bottom:



Here's how the top looks:



I presume that they all are contaminated and my process is very flawed in some way. I suspect steps 6 and 7.

6. my pressure cooker is very sketchy. Here's how it looks:





It doesn't have weight nor gauges. On the lid, it says that operating pressure is between 0.55 and 1.1 Bar. So the upper limit is above 15 psi, but I have no idea if I'm actually reaching it or not. Manual to this thing is not really helpful either. Does anyone have any experience using these things in mycology? Is it even possible? I'd like to get my hands on a proper PC, but I'm living in Europe and it's kinda hard to find a decent affordable PC that goes to 15 psi (if you have any suggestions, I would highly appreciate them).

7. Next time I'll try pressure cooking my ketchup cups instead of wiping with iso. I did a quick test run with just one cup today, and it survived 1h in the cooker. Only the cup did though, the lid got messed up:



Does it make sense to only PC cups and keep wiping lids in iso? Or should I just give up on these cups and looks for something that is fully pp5, so I can maybe try doing no-pour agar teks?

That you for reading and any advice would be very much appreciated. This forum has been a really awesome source of information so far, you guys are awesome :heart:


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Invisiblecoversall
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Re: First time making agar + sketchy pressure cooker (newbie questions) [Re: ThemChanges]
    #27051624 - 11/22/20 07:36 AM (3 years, 2 months ago)

What pressure does your PC get to?

IMO it sounds like the cups are the weak point in the process. Ketchup cups are best for no pours, where you PC the agar _in the cup_. This way the cups and agar are _sterilized_ rather than _sanitized_.

If you want to pour you ideally want glass cointainers that you have either PC'd or oven baked. For example I oven bake my glass petris, wrapped in foil, for an hour at 200c. Or you want plastic pertis that come aspectic in a sealed sleeve.

If you want to use sauce pots or similar then you'll probably want to check out a no-pour agar tek. pastyplates is a popular tek here.


--------------------

..:: E V E R Y  ::..

..:: New? Start here. ::..
..:: How I Panaeolus. From Agar to Tea ::..


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OfflineThemChanges
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Re: First time making agar + sketchy pressure cooker (newbie questions) [Re: coversall]
    #27053423 - 11/23/20 06:04 AM (3 years, 2 months ago)

Thank you, I'll definitely check no pour teks if I'll find suitable containers for them. Oven is an interesting alternative as well, didn't think about that.

In the meantime, I think I'll give my current setup another go. This time I'll split 20 cups into two groups of 10. The first group I'll just pour straight out of the packaging, without wiping it with isopropyl. The second group I'll sterilize in PC first. Hopefully, I'll learn something ^^

Quote:

What pressure does your PC get to?




¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Somewhere in between 8psi and 15psi, as I said in my previous post, I'm not sure how to check exactly with my model. I know it's less than ideal, but it's what I could get my hands on quickly for like 20$ around here here. I'll try to find something more reliable for future projects for sure, considering Hawkins Bigboy right now.


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Invisiblecoversall
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Re: First time making agar + sketchy pressure cooker (newbie questions) [Re: ThemChanges]
    #27053439 - 11/23/20 06:33 AM (3 years, 2 months ago)

Just be wary, if you are going to PC the cups make sure they are made out of PP5 plastic, otherwise they will melt in the PC. And I'm not sure how suitable they are for oven baking.

I'd only pour into them if you are certain they are sterile. Otherwise you are just rolling a dice and wasting agar.

If the pots are PP5 then no-pouring is pretty simple. Make the agar as you've done, pour into the containers, then load them into the PC and sertilize.

Not knowing the pressure is tricky, as it impacts the time needed quite a bit. And if you er on the side of caution and go for a longer cycle there is a chance you can over cook the sugars in the agar. I'm not entirely sure what this does, but have seen it mentioned a number of times. My guess is that it reduces the nutrition available.

The sauce pots you have are fine for no-pours (on the basis that they are PP5) I've used little ketchup pots for no pours.



Here they all are being poured out before going into the PC.

You can also use jars for no-pours, I've done that before also:



--------------------

..:: E V E R Y  ::..

..:: New? Start here. ::..
..:: How I Panaeolus. From Agar to Tea ::..


Edited by coversall (11/23/20 06:34 AM)


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OfflineThemChanges
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Re: First time making agar + sketchy pressure cooker (newbie questions) [Re: coversall] * 1
    #27053459 - 11/23/20 07:02 AM (3 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

Just be wary, if you are going to PC the cups make sure they are made out of PP5 plastic, otherwise, they will melt in the PC.




Thanks for the heads up! I tested one cup already, and the results are at the bottom of the first post ^^ Cup survived just fine, but the lid got messed up. I'm currently trying to find some cups that have pp5 lids on them, but it's kinda tricky.

Quote:

I'd only pour into them if you are certain they are sterile. Otherwise you are just rolling a dice and wasting agar.




Yeah, I treat it as a learning experience, and not as something reliable. Thankfully, I have a ton of reagents for agar, so I can run the process as many times as I want (or until I get too bored/frustrated with it) :smile:

Quote:

Not knowing the pressure is tricky, as it impacts the time needed quite a bit. And if you er on the side of caution and go for a longer cycle there is a chance you can over cook the sugars in the agar.




I went for almost an hour, and I don't think I overcooked it. I remember reading that if you overcook agar it won't gel and my agar did gel normally.

Quote:

You can also use jars for no-pours




That's a great idea! I have some spare jars lying around. Will give it a shot later for sure.


Edited by ThemChanges (11/23/20 07:06 AM)


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OfflineThemChanges
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Update on my agar struggles [Re: ThemChanges]
    #27125286 - 01/04/21 05:22 AM (3 years, 24 days ago)

Update for any1 with similar doubts/problems ^^

I tried using the plates from OP post for some agar work (cloning and growing culture from MSS). It worked just fine. Later I figured out that the black spots I thought to be contam were actually tiny black specs that came from the potato flakes bag. I've successfully cooked 3 more batches of agar since then.

I tried both sterilizing my ketchup cups in PC and using them straight out o the package - both worked just fine, I didn't notice any difference in contamination rates between the two (maybe 1 in 15 cups get contam'd, but I suspect that it's due to happy little accidents during cloning/transferring procedures).

So I guess the moral of the story is:
- this type of pressure cookers seems to be working just fine for amateur mycology (I successfully used it to sterilize whole brown rice jars as well);
- if you are cooking agar with potato flakes - you might get some black specs in your plates and that seems to be a-ok;

Here are some plates with shiitake myc:



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