bruiser9811 said:

This is something that has confused me for a while now. Why does everyone use bucket tek when pressure cooking the substrate would be a much better way of ridding it of contamints?

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Because it is good enough. It is true that pc'ing coir would kill more endospores then bucket tek will, but we are spawning in open air and there is thousands of mold and bacteria spores floating around in open air unless you have a sterile room to spawn in.

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matsc said:

I learned the stinky way to NOT keep pasteurized coir sealed in jars at room temperature for extended periods. Once stuff goes anaerobic all manner of havoc can start up.

Had a spare pint after a recent project and so just left it in the mason jar for a while. Eventually cracked it open and was greeted by an oh-so-fascinating sulfur aroma filling my apartment.

Decided to play and bit and tried re-pasteurizing it. The sulfur scent went away but was replaced by a weird, potent, nauseating burnt rubber-y sort of scent. Dried the coir out in my oven, and the scent went away, but upon rehydrating, back it was. And so to the trash it went.

So, uh... yeah. Don't try and salvage vintage coir.

BUT, for the record, the project that I used the rest of that batch of coir for went fine. No weird scents, no weird growth patterns, no slime, just normal coir goodness.

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Mmmm ain't nothing like fresh rhino farts in the morning, smells like.... lager beer fermenting.



Not all coir are created equal and I have found everything from seeds to shoe laces in mine so of course. The longest I've kept hydrated coir around is probably a couple of months and it was still fine. However, I agree and see no reason to hydrate more then what I need for the next run, bucket tek is easy and only takes a minute, I never use my coir bucket for anything else then coir

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Mmmm ain't nothing like fresh rhino farts in the morning, smells like.... lager beer fermenting.

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matsc said:

Honestly, the sulfur smell wasn't even that awful, just unexpected. The weird neoprene/raw meat/hydraulic fluid scent it gained on cooking though.... THAT scent stuck in my nose for days and completely turned my stomach.

The useless nerd in me wants to know what the chemicals involved were. I'm legitimately annoyed that I didn't keep samples for anaerobic culturing just... to satisfy my brain.

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Sounds like that coir got a yeast infection. When yeast struggle they'll throw sulphur, I guess there wasn't much to feed off and so the yeast died. As the cells rupture, they release amino acids, lipids, and proteins that taste and smell like rotting meat, bouillon, or burnt rubber.

Then along comes something like Clostridium(anaerobi bacteria), that shit can generate pungent, foul organic acids (such as butyric acid, which smells like rancid butter or vomit) or putrefactive compounds

matsc said:

Quote:

Because it is good enough. It is true that pc'ing coir would kill more endospores then bucket tek will, but we are spawning in open air and there is thousands of mold and bacteria spores floating around in open air unless you have a sterile room to spawn in.

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I learned the stinky way to NOT keep pasteurized coir sealed in jars at room temperature for extended periods. Once stuff goes anaerobic all manner of havoc can start up.

Had a spare pint after a recent project and so just left it in the mason jar for a while. Eventually cracked it open and was greeted by an oh-so-fascinating sulfur aroma filling my apartment.

Decided to play and bit and tried re-pasteurizing it. The sulfur scent went away but was replaced by a weird, potent, nauseating burnt rubber-y sort of scent. Dried the coir out in my oven, and the scent went away, but upon rehydrating, back it was. And so to the trash it went.

So, uh... yeah. Don't try and salvage vintage coir.

BUT, for the record, the project that I used the rest of that batch of coir for went fine. No weird scents, no weird growth patterns, no slime, just normal coir goodness.

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