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Smellyhobbit
Actual Retard



Registered: 04/01/22
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Loc: Hole
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Quote:
AspectOfTheCreator said: Properly hydrated grains... How soft are they when squished between the fingers? Should they squish very easily?
Usually, depending on the grain, you should be able to squish the inside out of the hull. Should be translucent and not white inside.
-------------------- A Love Letter to New Growers A Guide for New Growers Need Spores? - Sablabs.org Just because your tub contamed, doesnโt mean your attitude has to contam as well.

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Mr Piggy
bioilliminicentยฉ๏ธ



Registered: 09/29/11
Posts: 9,659
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Re: Ask Quick Questions, Get Quick Answers [Re: Smellyhobbit] 2
#28786277 - 05/24/24 01:18 PM (1 month, 2 days ago) |
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Bite the grain, a hydrated grain will be moist all the way through without a dry or hard center.
-------------------- ๐
๐ด๐ฐ๐ผ ๐ต๐พ๐ธ๐ป New to cultivation or the shroomery? Observe the hitchhiker's guide The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Shroomery
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Professor Chaos
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Re: Ask Quick Questions, Get Quick Answers [Re: Mr Piggy]
#28786295 - 05/24/24 01:43 PM (1 month, 2 days ago) |
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Do these jars look too moist? First time making grain jars. They look wetter than everything I've seen in guides and videos but I'm brand new so idk.
Did 20 mins cooking in an instant pot, dried for 30 minutes then cooked for 3 hours in the instant pot.
Is 3 hours too long? I was told to almost double the time since I only get 12psi.
Jar 1-



Jar 2 -



Haven't inoculated yet so I can just toss em if they're fucked.
Also when making jars, should I wait a week or so before inoculating to see if any nasty shit starts growing first or just send it?
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Phaethon
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Registered: 07/04/22
Posts: 222
Loc: Colorado
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Not sure what grain that is - corn? - but it looks a bit wet to me, too. Maybe give it another shake and see how it looks tomorrow - sometimes it just needs a little redistribution and time to absorb or evaporate.
Overly wet isn't a death sentence, but it does promote an environment that's more favorable to bacteria (which are very motile in water and often require less oxygen than fungi). If your inoculum is clean, and the culture colonizes it quickly enough, it can work fine.
Leaving all jars for a week is certainly something you can do, but IMO it would be better to inoculate them with the mycelium you're trying to cultivate in case the sterilization cycle wasn't quite as good as you hoped. (There is no real 100% sterilization. We aim for something like 10-6 of the original organisms, so the quicker you put what you want in there, the better chance it has to take over before anything that managed to survive can take root.) You can leave a jar untouched as a control if you want to trace a potential failure to grain sterilization vs. culture contamination or sterile technique.
Edited by Phaethon (05/24/24 02:35 PM)
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Professor Chaos
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Re: Ask Quick Questions, Get Quick Answers [Re: Phaethon]
#28786352 - 05/24/24 02:41 PM (1 month, 1 day ago) |
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Yep it's yellow popcorn.
I think I'm just bring paranoid because one of my pre-made bags bit the dust from being too moist.
Thanks for the reply.
Also I gave the corn a shake, it's still wet looking but I think it's maybe not as bad as I thought lol
Edited by Professor Chaos (05/24/24 02:42 PM)
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Gleyck
bathtub fart


Registered: 08/17/22
Posts: 1,466
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Somethings if off about that corn, besides being too wet... Was it looking that dirty before cooking? One of things I like about corn is the immaculate yellow and, cuz of that, being so easy to detect contamination. Your 20min hydration was at 12psi or just boiling? I do 15min at 15psi, dry for 1h and roll them in a tower before going to the jars ends up looking like this:
-------------------- teks|pics|notes --------------------
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Phaethon
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Loc: Colorado
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I think bags are a little touchier with hydration because of their size (typically like 4x what's in a quart jar). So the center of the bag is further from the filter and anaerobic conditions can prevail more easily if things are too wet. In Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms, Stamets recommends progressively lower levels of hydration with larger jar and bag sizes for this reason.
Anyway, just to reiterate, clean inoculum is critical. You can have perfectly (for our purposes) sterile over-wet grains, which will do just fine with axenic culture but will turn nasty with a slightly bacterial LC. And spore syringe to grain is especially asking for trouble. I didn't see what, if anything, you said you inoculated that first bag with, but agar is your friend. Eventually you'll be able to make clean LC, and you may prefer it to agar wedges for speed and convenience. But spore syringes are best for PF cakes or streaking a drop at a time on agar.
(Some great cultivators like fahtster often do spores directly to grain. But he in particular starts with smaller grain jars and has a lot more experience recognizing healthy spawn, so only healthy spawn gets expanded.)
...and sorry to derail the discussion about how the grain itself looks. On that I defer fully to anyone who actually uses corn (thanks Gleyck).
Edited by Phaethon (05/24/24 06:15 PM)
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Professor Chaos
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Re: Ask Quick Questions, Get Quick Answers [Re: Gleyck]
#28786405 - 05/24/24 03:38 PM (1 month, 1 day ago) |
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Quote:
Gleyck said: Somethings if off about that corn, besides being too wet... Was it looking that dirty before cooking? One of things I like about corn is the immaculate yellow and, cuz of that, being so easy to detect contamination. Your 20min hydration was at 12psi or just boiling? I do 15min at 15psi, dry for 1h and roll them in a tower before going to the jars ends up looking like this:

Yeah it was ugly out of the bag. Great value brand lol.
20 mins at 12psi is what I did.
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Professor Chaos
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Re: Ask Quick Questions, Get Quick Answers [Re: Phaethon] 2
#28786414 - 05/24/24 03:40 PM (1 month, 1 day ago) |
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Quote:
Phaethon said: I think bags are a little touchier with hydration because of their size (typically like 4x what's in a quart jar). So the center of the bag is further from the filter and anaerobic conditions can prevail more easily if things are too wet. In Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms, Stamets recommends progressively lower levels of hydration with larger jar and bag sizes for this reason.
Anyway, just to reiterate, clean inoculum is critical. You can have perfectly (for our purposes) sterile over-wet grains, which will do just fine with axenic culture but will turn nasty with a slightly bacterial LC. And spore syringe to grain is especially asking for trouble. I didn't see what, if anything, you said you inoculated that first bag with, but agar is your friend. Eventually you'll be able to make clean LC, and you may prefer it to agar wedges for speed and convenience. But spore syringes are best for PF cakes or streaking a drop at a time on agar.
(Some great cultivators like fahtster often do spores directly to grain. But he in particular starts with smaller grain jars and has a lot more experience recognizing healthy spawn, so only healthy spawn gets expanded.)
...and sorry to detail the discussion about how the grain itself looks. On that I defer fully to anyone who actually uses corn (thanks Gleyck). 
Friend gifted me some ape LC. I know the vendors all say it's clean but chances are it's not. I'm just getting agar this weekend. Gonna try to make my first tomorrow.
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TPython
A Fraction of the Whole


Registered: 12/01/12
Posts: 799
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Quote:
Professor Chaos said:
Quote:
Gleyck said: Somethings if off about that corn, besides being too wet... Was it looking that dirty before cooking? One of things I like about corn is the immaculate yellow and, cuz of that, being so easy to detect contamination. Your 20min hydration was at 12psi or just boiling? I do 15min at 15psi, dry for 1h and roll them in a tower before going to the jars ends up looking like this:

Yeah it was ugly out of the bag. Great value brand lol.
20 mins at 12psi is what I did.
Give em a good rinse before cooking next time. 20 minutes isnโt enough time. Are you using and Insta pot and thatโs why 12psi?
You wanna shoot for 90-120 minutes at 15-18psi for quarts of grain
Edit: sorry I misunderstood. That was just for cooking your grain not the full PC cycle
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Professor Chaos
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Re: Ask Quick Questions, Get Quick Answers [Re: TPython] 1
#28786424 - 05/24/24 03:51 PM (1 month, 1 day ago) |
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Quote:
TPython said:
Quote:
Professor Chaos said:
Quote:
Gleyck said: Somethings if off about that corn, besides being too wet... Was it looking that dirty before cooking? One of things I like about corn is the immaculate yellow and, cuz of that, being so easy to detect contamination. Your 20min hydration was at 12psi or just boiling? I do 15min at 15psi, dry for 1h and roll them in a tower before going to the jars ends up looking like this:

Yeah it was ugly out of the bag. Great value brand lol.
20 mins at 12psi is what I did.
Give em a good rinse before cooking next time. 20 minutes isnโt enough time. Are you using and Insta pot and thatโs why 12psi?
You wanna shoot for 90-120 minutes at 15-18psi for quarts of grain
Yeah it's an older instant pot.
I'll try again tonight with a good rinse.
The 20 min cook time was for hydrating, forgot to put that. I pressure cooked them for 3 hours after hydrating and drying.
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Buckdog
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Registered: 05/07/23
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Lol does anyone in here pasteurize their coco coir? I'm basically arguing with this guy on Facebook, he made a post talking about how he keeps failing after he spawns. He's trying to tell me that pasteurizing is cleaner than bucket tek, I mean maybe? But regardless he still has to squeeze it to field capacity manually which leave room for error in my opinion. He seems to think cooking it on the stove is easier than doing bucket tek, and I just can't understand it lol. He says his grain is fine so it must be his sub, or maybe bad conditions. But anyways does anyone here think pasteurizing is easier than bucket tek? And does anyone actually do it with coir?
-------------------- What seems to be the officer, problem?
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PBJ710
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Re: Ask Quick Questions, Get Quick Answers [Re: Buckdog]
#28786463 - 05/24/24 04:24 PM (1 month, 1 day ago) |
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I use my coco after it's been sitting in a unsealed tub for months of room temp storage and don't have any issues with it.
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3.A.M
Boop!



Registered: 10/17/22
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Re: Ask Quick Questions, Get Quick Answers [Re: Buckdog] 1
#28786467 - 05/24/24 04:27 PM (1 month, 1 day ago) |
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You donโt need to pasteurise coir, bucket tek at most, but hot water is fine, itโs definitely his spawn if heโs getting contam.
And for popcorn Iโve always just boiled for 45, strain then pack and pc.
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Buckdog
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Re: Ask Quick Questions, Get Quick Answers [Re: 3.A.M]
#28786489 - 05/24/24 04:41 PM (1 month, 1 day ago) |
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He also might not know exactly what he's looking at as far as it being bad since he seems to be relatively new and hasn't had success yet. I just thought it was funny that he argued it so much. Bucket tek is just so simple idk why you'd pasteurize it
-------------------- What seems to be the officer, problem?
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Professor Chaos
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Re: Ask Quick Questions, Get Quick Answers [Re: Buckdog]
#28786542 - 05/24/24 05:27 PM (1 month, 1 day ago) |
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Well after waiting a few hours, the popcorn jars I posted earlier have dried up a lot...however now some of thr popcorn is swollen and cracking. Is that an issue or should I keep em to see what happens?


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Herme5
Trismegistus



Registered: 04/27/24
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Quote:
Professor Chaos said: Well after waiting a few hours, the popcorn jars I posted earlier have dried up a lot...however now some of thr popcorn is swollen and cracking. Is that an issue or should I keep em to see what happens?



That means it's over-cooked. Popcorn is cheap, I'd try again, but with clean agar it should work?
-------------------- ๐
๐ด ๐ฐ ๐ผย ย ๐ฒ ๐ป ๐ธ ๐ฝ ๐ถ ๐
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๐ฐ ๐ฟ "The lips of wisdom are closed, except to the ears of understanding." - The Kyballion, Three Initiates Advanced Research of the Chronological History of Artifical Intelligence X
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Gleyck
bathtub fart


Registered: 08/17/22
Posts: 1,466
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these pics look way better! the cracking and swelling is a good sign, means they are hydrated. Wishing you a good flush on them!
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Herme5
Trismegistus



Registered: 04/27/24
Posts: 372
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Last seen: 8 minutes, 49 seconds
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Re: Ask Quick Questions, Get Quick Answers [Re: Gleyck]
#28786553 - 05/24/24 05:35 PM (1 month, 1 day ago) |
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Quote:
Gleyck said: these pics look way better! the cracking and swelling is a good sign, means they are hydrated. Wishing you a good flush on them! 
I thought you didn't want to cook them to the point they crack open?
-------------------- ๐
๐ด ๐ฐ ๐ผย ย ๐ฒ ๐ป ๐ธ ๐ฝ ๐ถ ๐
๐
๐ฐ ๐ฟ "The lips of wisdom are closed, except to the ears of understanding." - The Kyballion, Three Initiates Advanced Research of the Chronological History of Artifical Intelligence X
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Professor Chaos
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Re: Ask Quick Questions, Get Quick Answers [Re: Herme5]
#28786557 - 05/24/24 05:38 PM (1 month, 1 day ago) |
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Thanks guys.
I have another 32oz of corn drying after hydrating right now.
I think I'm gonna try to cook em for 2hrs this time and see how it comes out.
I have enough corn and jars to dial this in so I guess I'll keep em all and see how well each set does.
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