I feel like, as others have said, it can only be 1 of 2 things. If jars are contaminating after PC but before being opened, then either A. The sterilization process was not adequate B. The filters are not adequate.
I would PC a jar with no filter, no poly, no MP. Just a jar of grain and a lid. Then wait. If this jar contam, it is your sterilization. If not, it's the filters. Take sometime, narrow it down to this one variable and you will have your answer and can make corrections as needed. Like others have said, it doesn't matter what grain you are using, if things are growing this its not sterile. You just need to find out if it ever was.
Edited by GypsyBastard (01/02/21 03:38 PM)
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Apologies for the late response, I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who chimed in, it's much appreciated, thank you all.
I've been thinking about it some more and I believe it's most likely a combination of filter failure and bad technique.
I say this because:
- I've had a couple jars contam prior to inoculation, but the majority occurs or is noticeable after inoculation. It also seems unlikely that so many of my filters would all happen to fail within a few weeks of each other.
- While I said in the OP that I haven't changed my process at all, I realized that I had started stirring my LI more frequently while pouring in order to distribute the myc more evenly. I'm not exactly sure this could cause this much contamination, but all that air movement with the LI jar wide open wasn't too bright of me.
- I've been careless about how I shake my jars right after inoculation as well, with 25-30mL of LI I should be much more careful about not getting the SFD too wet. (Not sure if this is a real issue, from reading it seems that synthetic non cellulose filter disc's shouldn't be too susceptible to a little moisture as long as they dry out quickly).
For the time being, for peace of mind, I've re-made a bunch of lids with new SFD's, re-siliconed my LI blender attachment, PC'd 4 test jars that I'll leave sitting for a few weeks, and am planning to tighten up my SAB movement.
I think it was my mistake to have the level of confidence in my SAB procedure from having had a couple months of success. I think the fact that I had some jars contaminate prior to inoculation also skewed my perception of what was going on. While I am still relatively confident about my SAB work, I started doing things without really thinking just because I'd been doing ok previously. Inoculating 30-40 jars a week, I definitely got a bit lax in some ways and that certainly played a part in my recent issues. Vigilance must be maintained lmao.
Anyways, I'll be inoculating a bunch more jars soon so I'll see how those do and hopefully won't be running into too many more issues.
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