Jrey16 said:

Is this jar ready to spawn to bulk? It was inoculated 16 days ago. The other jar I have is finished but this one is taking longer to colonize on the top. Been waiting a couple days now for the top to fully colonize. I noticed it is starting to look a little dry on top.

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hannibal_barca said:

Why is my agar so slow growing and wispy? Its been kept at 77 degrees, the strain is Cambodian Gold. I put a line of permanent marker at the edge of the growth 4 days ago. Its been growing for about 2 weeks total.

It is not kept directly on the heat mat, I only put it there to take a clear pic.

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Tweeq said:

SWBZA said:

Well, you see, there you have it - I mustn't play with the big boys if I don't have the big toys! Flow hood for Xmas, please friends. Crowd source me one

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To tell you the truth, almost nobody really needs a flowhood. The things one can accomplish with only a SAB are far beyond what most people consider possible.

-Bags can be done in a sab. I place mine over the kitchen sink to make it far higher for bags.

-lc can be done in a sab as well.

Just growing cubes, woodlovers, Pans and exotics?
You don't need a fh

Growing under 30 kg dry per year?
You don't need a flowhood

I could stretch this much further:)

Just making the point that the sab is much mightier than it is generally given credit for.

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Dkeppel said:

Is this LC or a MS syringe?

I mixed Nat and Melmac spores together to make a MS syringe and knocked up a PF cake, it looks clean, and it's almost there but it's been sitting around for ages way way longer than 9 days.

I've got my finger in many cultivation pies so it's not a big deal, I'm mostly curious if the Nats and Melmac will get it on and make little hybrid Nat x Melmac babies.

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SWBZA said:

Tweeq said:

SWBZA said:

Well, you see, there you have it - I mustn't play with the big boys if I don't have the big toys! Flow hood for Xmas, please friends. Crowd source me one

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To tell you the truth, almost nobody really needs a flowhood. The things one can accomplish with only a SAB are far beyond what most people consider possible.

-Bags can be done in a sab. I place mine over the kitchen sink to make it far higher for bags.

-lc can be done in a sab as well.

Just growing cubes, woodlovers, Pans and exotics?
You don't need a fh

Growing under 30 kg dry per year?
You don't need a flowhood

I could stretch this much further:)

Just making the point that the sab is much mightier than it is generally given credit for.

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OK, Tweeq, I've been thinking about your comments about what can be done in the trusty SAB.  Regarding the comment on bags, highlighted in the quote: In my mind's eye I see the sterilised bag coming out of the PC, into the "large sink-based SAB", I can see you working in the SAB and noccing the bag with LC or Agar, not needing a SHIP.  But: how do you get your bag out of your "extra height SAB" to your impulse sealer without introducing contam?  I can sort of convince myself you can get from the PC to the SAB cleanly because you may fold over your bag before sterilising - so you only open the flap in the SAB.

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Sounds good. About the same here. I bring 4 bags into the sab. 2 stacks of 2 because it works better with a bag underneath ime as my sink is too deep otherwise.

Quote:

But I can't stretch my imagination to getting the nocced bag to the impulse sealer "cleanly".  What is your secret?

Ciao and TIA

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First let me note that it took multiple years of sab practice to build up to the point of confidence needed and that I don't recommend the following if you don't already have your usual sab work down to a tee.

There are a few options. There are things called 'bag clamps' ie from Unicorn that you could bring inside the sab before work and close the bag with that after inoculating it with lc (or grains). Then impulse seal later.

Or what I do is (this takes some practice and faith) just fold the end over on itself a few times until 'closed' then lift the front of the sab slightly so that the bag end can be slipped towards you. I have a flatiron and board ready against the counter at the same height and iron it shut with a piece of oven paper in between the flatiron and the bag.

It sounds a little hillbilly perhaps but once you have it down it's not really that hard ime. The key is to have everything handy in the right spot before getting at it (=always key with sab work).

A flatiron can make a multiple inch wide seal, which I think is of great advantage. Very secure.


Maybe I should make some kind of pictorial  some time as I have had this question before but I'm reluctant to do so because I realize that what works for me doesn't have to work for everybody. It can be done with great success though. And yes, you will lose a bag here and there while getting better at it.

Cosmikktraveler said:

Tweeq, did you try the zip-tie method for sealing a bag inside the sab ?

Sealing with the bag clamps first, then reopening them to seal them on the outside with an impulse sealer seems to me to be an additional contamination factor

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Tweeq said:

The point for me is I can handle 8 bags using only 2 Presto fulls in one sab setting.
I can't deal with the 40 jars that equates to and that would also more than double the number of sterilization rounds needed as I can only fit 9 1liter jars in a 23qt.process.

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Yeah, you kinda make my point.  I only have an 11qt PC, so making 2  bags or 7 pint jars...  The effort is very different.  I recently has such a high failure rate with bags and LC that I went and bought a host of brand new pint jars (I used to just re-purpose pickle jars, and will still use those that I have): 




It is a hell of a lot more work to nocc up those jars with agar, then shake them all twice (once at 30%, then again at full colonisation to test recovery), and then use multiple jars per tub when S2B.  With two bags I can process 7 lb (wet) grains in one go.  But, no use if they contam, right?

I've recently looked at my process and thought my major contam vector is getting the bags from my PC to my impulse sealer.  That was the only step where the bag was open to air, and even doing it fast and unfolding the fold only at the last moment seemed risky.  In the last batch I did this:



Ignore the two bottom seals for now.  The idea was that I make two half-way seals, making a "channel".  You can see at the top right I cut the bag to allow me to put a long not-so-tightly packed polyfill worm in there.  In theory, then, if I don't heat up too fast and cool down slowly, the "poly plug" won't get pushed out the channel, and the bag's normal GE seal won't blow.  That way, when I take the sterilised bag out the PC, I'd be very, very, very surprised if contam can "crawl up" that channel, through the poly, and into the bag before I can seal that sucker - 7 seconds at most.  You can see in the photo that my first seal (bottom one) was not hot enough (bag was still wet inside), so I did a second one just above it after adjusting the heat.  Man, I'm clever, don't you think? 

However, I just had 10% of those "new tech" bags contam on me  , hence previous questions regarding SHIPs - these bags all had homemade SHIPs and I nocced them up with home made LC.  Need to accept that the LC may not be clean, but the same LC was used on jars, and not one of them contammed.  Obviously the LC tested clean on agar before I used it.  Nor did the other 90% of the bags go bad.  So, hard to blame the LC, still weird for me to blame the SHIP, challenging for me to believe the bad stuff can get through my fancy channel, but there you have it - a host of friggin' glass jars on their way and much labor done and still coming   I'm still waiting for the first jar to shatter in my hand while I beat it on a shoe sole to try to shake the grains.  I'm so scared of glass - always was.  Maybe I should go see a shrink 

Anyway, thanks for all the advice.  I'll stick to the jars until my self-confidence recovers a little - then I may try bags again.

Cheers all, and happy growing.

Phaethon said:

Pennock said:

djbluntmagic said:

I haven't had much luck finding a local grain source. No bulk food/co-op stores near me that I can find. No feed stores in the city. So this is what I've got. I'm not really worried about the prices, just looking for recommendations on grains offered.

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Understood! I've only used millet but from what I've read I would think Wheat would probably be the best choice of those. Some seem to find oats hard to work with and rye berries I believe can be a complicated prep... If I'm wrong I hope someone corrects me.

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IMO rye is not too bad. You can get away with pouring into water that has just been boiled and leaving it off the heat for about 45 minutes - see Spitball's quick rye prep. I did get some burst grains with that method, probably from the shock of cold grain into boiling water. If I try it again I'll probably bring the water to boil with the grain in it, but will need some experimentation to find the right time to leave it sitting after the water boils.

Lots of different grain will work. I mostly use wheat because it's fairly cheap here and I can reliably prep it. Millet has the nice advantage of being easy to prep without any boiling, and if you don't mind some starch and can shake your jars immediately after the PC depressurizes, it's pretty suitable for no-prep. Milo/sorghum is easy and cheap too, though it is often really dirty and wants to be washed before hydrating.

Fuck oats. But really, they are pretty readily available many places as horse feed, and while it's tricky to get them hydrated perfectly, many people use only oats with plenty of success. I've just had more consistently non-fucked jars with wheat, but then again I was much more of a noob when I had oats around.

Consider also getting a brewer's bag or a 5 gallon paint strainer bag. Prepping the grains in a bag was a game changer for me. You can rinse (if needed), soak and/or boil, and drain in the sink, without taking the grain out of the bag.

Edit: DJ, if you're in the US, you will get better prices getting grain shipped to you from a mill than what you got quoted at the farmer's market. See e.g. centralmilling.com.

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