This is my first attempt at mushroom cult and I’ve set my sights high! Starting with making grain jars, inoculating with an LC syringe, colonizing then spawning to a bulk substrate a monotub and harvesting 1 or more flushesj, with no contam. I am willing to change my intended Tek, but mostly want to rely on the tried and true—trusted cultivator methods.
Obv. I understand that sometimes things may happen that are outside of our control, but those aside, let’s go for gold!
Materials
Pressure Cooker: I used a 6qt Instantpot Duo Gourmet.
-Specs: This specific model hovers between 10-11psi on HIGH and can accommodate a max of 4 pint-sized mason jars per cycle.
Unmodified Monotub: Sterilite rectangular non-gasket tote (with the purple handles) and clear lid.
Jars: Pint Sized, 16oz Wide Mouth Ball Mason Jars
Modified Lids: My Lid Tek can be found here
Phase 1: Grain Preparation and SterilizationI needed a minimum of 6 colonized pints or an equivalent of 3lbs. By prepping 10 pints, each filled with .5lb/226g of hydrated grain, I figured I could count on at least 6 avoiding contamination.
Working in batches and preparing only the amount of grain needed for 4 pints at a time (since that’s what my PC could hold), I washed my organic rye grain with cold tap water 5-7x until water was clear (treat it like rice and rinse, rinse, rinse).
Drained grain went into a lidded container of cold or room temp RO water (I have an RO water system, but feel could be
any filtered water)to 1-2” above. I soaked 12h and changed water anytime it became a weak tea color (for me this was ~5x).
Most grain tek doesn’t mention water changes, but doing will keep many issues at bay. I read an alarming number of complaints that rye smells bad. Depending on your interpretation of bad, this
off smell is going to come from the grain beginning to ferment or worst case, it’s rotting/spoiling. These issues can easily be avoided by regular water change and keeping the soaking grains out of direct sunlight and/or excessive heat. Can’t believe I have to say this, but in no way should you use a grain that smells like vomit or garbage! From my understanding, to release endospores enough to be killed in the PC cycle, you’ll need to soak a minimum of 4 hours and should really max out around 12-15h to maintain integrity for boiling—some say to soak for 24h but imho that seems excessive.
After soak, for this run, I boiled the grains for 1 of 2 lengths of time. You’ll see below that I had 3 test groups of grain jars with varying boil time, PC time and/or sanitation level to experiment for my future finalized grain Tek.
All of the following groups had a 12 hour soak and in all cases, the water was brought to boil prior to adding the soaked grain to pot.
Group 1 (2 pints):*I deemed this round failed on multiple occasions, so it has additional steps that I didn’t continue to include in Tek.
Hard/rolling boil for 10m, then remained in hot water, off heat, for another 15-20m while I scoured the internet trying to figure out why I had so many popped grains. In an attempt to save them, I shocked in ice water (to stop cook) then drained and towel dried, air dried for ~1.5 hours.
Texture was still slightly tacky, so at this point, sanitation practices were minimized once deemed a snack for my chickens in AM. They sat in an open container for another hour in fridge before I said “fuck it” after they
barely passed a TP test. Omitting as many popped grains as I could, I loaded 2 jars (with 226g ea), set the PC for 2 hours and went to bed. Oh, final moisture retention estimate: ~81%
Group 2 (4 pints):Hard boil for 8m, drained and directly poured onto frozen sheet pans. The rapid temp shock would create a massive steam effect while locking in moisture. Once steam dissipated, covered in tea towel and air dried on counter for around 1.5-2h. Passed TP test easily, minimal to no popped grains, high level sanitation throughout. PC time 2h15m. Final moisture retention estimate: 61%
Note: One jar in this group, labeled 2B, had 25% of its grain from group 1’s refrigerated leftovers. I was sure, if any jar was going to contaminate, it’d be this one.
Group 3 (4 pints):Everything was a mirror or Group 2 procedure with exception of starting grain weight +15% (eliminating need for a 3B jar). PC 2h30m. Final moisture retention estimate: 62%
Surprisingly, all 3 groups managed to avoid contamination…so onto the next step.
Phase 2: Inoculation to ColonizationDay 0: In a SAB, I inoculate all 10 pints with ~1cc ea of (verified clean) LC. Then, I shook them (if you just cringed…hol’up cuz it gets worse)
Day 3: first signs of visible mycelium

Thinking about the possibility that I might exceed my required 6 pints and that all 10 jars could colonize.
The next observation really blew my mind. Group 1 (the sloppy ones) were colonizing the quickest and most aggressively! 2B was a day behind Group 1 with the remainder of Group 2 and all of Group 3 at least 2 days behind. From this, I concluded that for final Rye Tek, I would need to get moisture retention up near Group 1’s 80% while somehow avoiding popping grains. I will outline my finalized rye grain tek in a separate thread or SOP.
With all 10 jars colonizing, I started considering 5lbs of grain to 10lbs of substrate in the monotub! Or maybe a grain to grain transfer and even more tubs!
Day 9: 6 of the 10 jars are at 20-30%, Shake time.

remaining 4 of 10 jars were not ready for shake.
Day 11: Remaining 4 jars get their shake. With 6 jars so far ahead I’m thinking any plans I had to put all 10 pints in the monotub might not work out. That’s ok, I can figure something else out for the 4.
Day 15: I get a wild hair and decide the two jars from Group 1 + maybe a few others are looking too compressed and need to be shaken. So, I shake Group 1 with the intention of slowing them down and give the other 4 intended for the Monotub a chance to catch up. Then the 4 that I’m not sure what I’m going to do with I
also shake so I can have more time to figure out what I’m going to do with them. Why am I like this?
Day 17: All 6 jars intended for the 66qt monotub are looking good. I made a
post asking if they looked ready and got a trusted cultivator to respond with yes! Here’s the photo I posted:

My jars don’t seem to have the “white out” conditions that many growers get, but I figure it could be that I shook them multiple times or bc I had only 1cc, or bc my grain jars were on the heavy side with 1/2lb of hydrated rye per jar? Maybe one or all of the above.
The photo I posted was also the most heavily colonized of the 6, so probably wasn’t the best representation of the jars, as a whole. I wait another day before spawning to bulk.
Grow Day 18 and Day 0 in the 66qt Monotub:Glad I waited as now all 6 look like the jar that I posted the photo of.
Into the 66qt unmodified monotub (with liner) goes 3lbs of grain and 6lbs of substrate. The substrate I am using came recommended to me (not sure if allowed to name drop) and is a combination of the standard CVG with additional goodies like: worm castings, organic coffee and tortoise poop. It comes already pasteurized and at field capacity. Before adding to tub, I checked the FC and it’s slightly over, which is ok bc the variety I am growing is notably thirsty.
My main reason for additional shakes was how often I saw growers struggle to get the grain from the jar and/or uncolonized grain in center. For mine, it was a little bump with my palm on the side and the grain effortlessly poured out. Additionally, each grain was evenly coated.


The smell was absolutely gorgeous—like a fresh forest floor—No unusual odors and not a contaminate in sight. I gently hand mixed the 3lb of colonized grain with ~5lbs of the sub, lightly compressed and then smoothed flat. I made sure not to overcompress, because I thought air flow might be important. Cased with the remaining ~1lb of sub, just enough to cover any exposed grains. Some concern re: depth, it’s only about 2.5-3” but we’ll see how that pans out:

I put the lid on, unlatched but
closed and now…we wait.
Why I’m distinguishing between colonizing and fruiting conditions: I went back and forth on whether or not to put the monotub directly into fruiting conditions per
BOD’s TEK by inverting the lid and providing tub with FAE via the air gaps. I ultimately opted to secure the lid (for this first run anyway) during colonization, if for no other reason than to buy myself some time to figure out a better way to do fruiting phase. I’ve got some flying pests in the house bc I keep houseplants and have a robust outdoor garden, but in general, I find myself consulting Bod’s Tek—the chaotic simplicity, set it and forget it, devil-may-care attitude is enviable.
The more I think about it, the more I just don’t love the idea of precariously balancing an unsecured, slip-n-slide lid with unfiltered/unscreened openings that offer
direct access to my precious future fruits! There might as well be a neon sign:
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