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Offlinescatmanrav
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How scatman does grain. * 2
    #4024831 - 04/07/05 02:30 AM (18 years, 9 months ago)

Heres what I do for grain prep. Work in progress..let me know if you see something odd or have any questions?

This is a combo of things I?ve taken from all over, but most of this I learned from Magash and then tweaked with some things from RodgerRabbit, myself, and others. Hope it helps

First thing for grain prep is deciding if you?re going to be spawning with it, or fruiting with it. If you?re fruiting with it, then I would suggest the soak/simmer method. Spawning works better when the grains are a bit drier though so a soak is enough. This write up is to deal with grain prep for fruiting. Skip to the notes if your spawning with it.

First thing to do is get the grains soaking. Rye/WBS combo is the best to use IMO. It gives the shrooms more nutes that they wouldn?t have had otherwise. Rye is also the better of the two grains when fruiting off of it IME, so this is why I do what I do. You can do as much or as little as you want, make the choice depending on how much you need and how much time you have. I have a scooper that I know, after time using it, that it makes about 2 quarts, and it holds slightly less then a pound of rye. My PC holds 10 quarts (and a pint) at a time, so I base my numbers off of this and how much time to do runs I?ll have. Generally I?ll figure 3 PC runs for 30 quarts from 15 scoops which is about 13 pounds of grain, total. This also needs to account for some verm added in later so I make it more like 13 scoops.

As I said before, I believe rye is a better grain to fruit from, which is why I use mostly rye. For 13 scoops, I?d put about 10 scoops rye into a pot that will hold 4 times the amount of dry grain as you put in (don?t put more grain in a pot than it takes to go ? way up). Then in a bowl throw in 3 scoops of WBS. Fill both with water and after 24 hours it should look something like this (these are different amounts so it will vary):


It will get pretty bubbly and pretty sour stinky smelling. That?s the whole reason for the soak, is to germinate the spores/endospores within the substrate to make them easier to kill when you PC them. You want to be careful that you don?t soak for to little, or to long. 12-24 hours is fine, I like 24 the best. In that time, the grain needs to stay FULLY submerged or it may germinate. It may anyways, and at that point you?ll need to cut back on soak time. Partially germinated grain can be used, but if it?s to much, it?s better to just toss it and take the loss then spend your time and spores.

I find that simmering my rye, and just leaving the WBS after the 24 hour soak is best. Simmering WBS can lead to too many burst kernels and after a 24 hour soak, its got a good amount of moisture in it. Don?t worry, there will be plenty of moisture in everything else! Rye will get a ton of moisture. It expands to about 3 times its dry size when it has fully absorbed all the water it can. I do not drain anything yet! At this point, I have not drained, or rinsed anything, I never bother. Add some more water to make sure the grains fully covered with an inch or two over it. You may need to add more as it cooks, absorbs, and swells. Throw it on high until it starts bubbling then turn it down to medium to keep it bubbling. Check on it every so often and keep it fully submerged, bubbling VERY lightly, until you start to see a couple burst kernels. As soon as you do, turn the water off and let it sit on the burner for about 10 minutes.

As soon as you start the rye simmering, dump the WBS into a strainer. I use 4 PVC pieces attached with corner pieces with metal screen stretched over it attached with zip ties and left with slack for stuff to sit and strain:


Strain well (small strainer multiple times into a bucket or bowl or something works, just takes way longer..large strainers are available cheap too that are smaller then mine at Wal-Mart) by spreading it out over the strainer (or if using a small one, strain for a good amount of time) and letting it drip while the rye simmers. I really suggest a large strainer if your going to be doing bulk fruiting of grain!

Now, once the rye has been simmered to perfection (see description above), dump it out, right on top of the WBS, on the strainer (again small strainer works, but sucks) and DO NOT RINSE! The steam is important! A lot of people have a hard time getting water content right and it needs to be full of moisture (which you know it is because its now 3 times its size) but look dry on the outside. If you rinse it you have to wait an hour for it to drain and people get impatient and start loading up wet kernels. So just let it steam.


Grab a spoon (it?ll be slimy and greasy and nasty) and start mixing it around or start tossing it around if you and your strainer can take the weight being tossed around. I mix it around letting it all steam off and mixing in the WBS and rye really well. It takes about 5-10 minutes to mix it all in well and all that time its straining and steaming getting rid of excess water. Try and keep it spread out as much as possible and don?t mix to quickly..mix then allow it to steam until it stops, then mix more..give it a chance to steam and drain.

Now after about 10 minutes of mixing and steaming to add in verm to make up the rest of the substrate. You only want to add about 1-2 (or 3 or 4 if you want) quarts of DRY verm. I don?t measure it, I just pour until the mix looks right. It should look kind of dry..but you don?t want a bunch of dry verm in there so pour and mix and add a little at a time..you can always add more but its hard to remove some. Once all mixed up (still steaming a bit and draining a bit):


You can load it into jars at this point and PC for at least 60 minutes at 15 PSI. I do 60 minutes but my PC is usually running about 17-18 PSI. Some people do 90 minutes though just to be sure. If you?re doing lots of this stuff, it would be beneficial to try 60 minutes on a batch and go with it if contams aren?t a problem, you?ll save yourself lots of time.

Jar lids are simple. Two small holes poked in the top. I just stab the tops of the jars with a Phillips head screwdriver. No need for huge swings, just get a pointy screw driver and drive it in quick, straight and firm. It does leave edges below the lid so if your concerned with that and want to take the time, you can pick up a punch set that will punch the holes or drill them. I never had a problem with edges since I just put the tyvek over the lid.


Going to walmart and finding the perfect spoon to fit into jars is a benefit (if you don?t already have one). I made sure it would fit regular mouthed jars too just because I bought my town out of wide mouth jars and so I have a number of regular mouthed quarts that I had to buy. You can see it in the picture with the steaming grain. Scoop and load the jars up with grain, leaving room to shake. The harder you think it is for you to shake things well, the more room you should leave yourself. I can shake the hell out of something so I load mine pretty close to the top, especially considering I usually do grain to grain transfers (adds a bit more to the jar, always take that into account if it applies to you). Then goes the lid with the two holes, a square piece of tyvek, the ring (band) and then screw on firm, but not to tight..it?ll help getting them off later if they aren?t tight when you PC them.


While the first run of jars is PCing you can continue loading up the jars for the next two runs. After you have PCed them for 60 minutes at 15 PSI (the 60 minutes only counts when the PC is at 15 PSI or over), turn off the stove and remove the PC from the burner. Don?t force cool it, just go sit and chill and smoke a bone or something. Once the pressure has dropped below 5 PSI you can open whatever valve you have and then open the PC..that usually takes about 30 minutes. Remove the jars and shake them up well USING MITS and tighten the band down (no need to prove how tight you can get it, just make sure its on good). They will look kind of slimey and a little wet, don?t worry about it unless you have standing water, which if you followed this, I don?t see how you could. Set the jars off to the side to cool till tomorrow. If you decide to force cool things at these steps, be warned that it may result in failure! Following directions exactly will get you more assured results. This doesn?t mean it doesn?t work, its just not good practices. In the long run doing huge runs like this, force cooling or not waiting long enough will hurt you more then help you.

Inoculate the next day. If you did everything right, the jars can be kept for weeks or months before use, though its best to use as quickly as possible. Then you incubate them until fully colonized and case them. You can fruit these as cakes (if made in ? pints or pints), but it doesn?t work SO hot.


NOTES
If you want to use straight WBS to fruit with, it will work fine. I suggest the 24 hour soak and strain the same way. After straining spread out well in the strainer, mix in verm until the kernels look dry-ish as described and shown above. You could also simmer it for about 10 minutes before straining and treat it as rye above.

If you are unsure of a contaminated syringe or if you get contaminations and you aren?t sure if it?s the way you make the jars, or something your doing after you PC them, keep a jar or few without putting anything in them. If its your jar preparation, these control jars will contaminate. If they don?t, then it was either your inoculation procedures, contaminated syringe (or whatever), or incubation practices (this is a rare one if the jars were made and sealed correctly during inoculation).

TYVEK is not a paper material. It is a plastic that will withstand the PC process. It will not allow contams to pass through it, but gases can. We use them to allow GAS exchange (not air exchange which is introducing fresh air during fruiting). Gas exchange is the release of excess gases that mycelium releases. No form of air flow is needed during incubation, other then these holes to be clear to allow gases to escape. Tyvek can be found free at your post office or here and they deliver for free too.

If you are just spawning to bulk, the process is much easier. I use straight WBS, soaked for 24 hours. Strain well and mix with verm if the outsides of the kernels still look a little wet. Then load into jars and PC as described above.

New note: I like to add a bit of worm castings..maybe 1-5%? Not much?but add it during the soak, don?t drain it off for the simmer (like normal in the tek), and then when you do finally drain it off, a lot of the castings and color gets into it. Speeds up colonization and adds nutes for fruiting directly off the grain. Any poo or poo water would help.

Some pictures of what rye can do:





--------------------
"life is like a drop of rain getting closer and closer to falling into a lake, and then when you hit the lake there is no more rain drop, only the lake."

Growing with bags, start to finish (including my new grain and substrate prep)
Anyone looking to start bulk tubs/mono tubs/shotgun hybrids? Good tubs to use..
How I do grain (old still good tips)
Turn your closet into a fruiting chamber
Casing layer colonization and overlay


Edited by scatmanrav (05/10/05 02:50 PM)


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Offlinescatmanrav
Brainy Smurf

Registered: 05/08/04
Posts: 11,483
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Last seen: 11 years, 25 days
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Re: How scatman does grain. [Re: coolman256]
    #4157979 - 05/10/05 02:47 PM (18 years, 8 months ago)

>is the verm mainly to soak up any excess water that may be on/cook out of the grains?

Correct. A big problem people seem to have when starting out is letting the grain drain properly. If you do it this way, not much has to drain off. Alot of the water steams off, while its draining, and the rest of the water is soaked up by the dry verm which can then be used later in the jars, instead of pooling up at the bottom of the jar causing colonization problems and bacterial risk. Its not needed, but I find it helps, especially those who are impatient. The verm I think also helps in the fruiting process, and if you like to dunk grain casings, colonized grain doesnt rehydrate well...so the verm would help it.

>have you tried out popcorn as a grain substrate?

I have not. I have not felt the need to. I know based on many many opinions that rye is better. I worked with rye and I absolutly dont think popcorn could be better. And I know it lacks certain things (B vitamins, triptophans) that rye does not. I've read a few thousand growlogs of cubies on grain alone, of all sorts of grain and every kind. The two most consistant have been rye and millet (main ingredient in WBS, wild bird seed). Not that I havnt seen popcorn flushes that are nice, but often they complain of potency if so. Eitherway, its hit or miss and WBS is much more stable (or millet if you can find straight millet) and cheap as all hell (get the cheap stuff as long as its mostly millet and milo). Give rye a try...it swells to three times its sized when fully hydrated, giving it way better water potential over other grains.

All that aside though. You want to really get serious, spawn WBS (or whatever, popcorn, rye, anything) to horse poo. Then you get some POTENT MOFUCKING mushrooms.



I also just added some rye pictures to the top post at the bottom, so you can see some of what rye can do.


--------------------
"life is like a drop of rain getting closer and closer to falling into a lake, and then when you hit the lake there is no more rain drop, only the lake."

Growing with bags, start to finish (including my new grain and substrate prep)
Anyone looking to start bulk tubs/mono tubs/shotgun hybrids? Good tubs to use..
How I do grain (old still good tips)
Turn your closet into a fruiting chamber
Casing layer colonization and overlay


Edited by scatmanrav (05/10/05 03:04 PM)


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Offlinescatmanrav
Brainy Smurf

Registered: 05/08/04
Posts: 11,483
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Re: How scatman does grain. [Re: Underhillmaster]
    #4158686 - 05/10/05 05:59 PM (18 years, 8 months ago)

I've seen those, but I just dont see it really saving me time. Using the black spoon here:


^^Thats about 12-15 dry pounds (20-30 wet) of Rye/WBS straining at a time BTW^^

It fits into widemouth, and regular mouth jars easy. I spoon 6 or so spoonfuls real quick into a jar, and each jar only takes 5-10 seconds (probably closer to 5) to fill using the spoon. Even with a funnel, I'd still have to spoon it into the funnel and let it fall through. Like on the video clips pinned to the top of the forum (the crazy guy with the sunglasses), he uses one of them and spends more time tapping the funnel to get the grain through then it takes me to fill a jar. Thanks for the suggestion though :smile: It is a good one for some people, I just happened upon this which works for me :smile:


--------------------
"life is like a drop of rain getting closer and closer to falling into a lake, and then when you hit the lake there is no more rain drop, only the lake."

Growing with bags, start to finish (including my new grain and substrate prep)
Anyone looking to start bulk tubs/mono tubs/shotgun hybrids? Good tubs to use..
How I do grain (old still good tips)
Turn your closet into a fruiting chamber
Casing layer colonization and overlay


Edited by scatmanrav (05/10/05 06:22 PM)


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Invisibleagar
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Re: How scatman does grain. [Re: drugsaregood]
    #4158914 - 05/10/05 06:57 PM (18 years, 8 months ago)

Try 3 containers. Bigger subs, get you bigger shrooms.


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Invisibleagar
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Re: How scatman does grain. [Re: drugsaregood]
    #4158937 - 05/10/05 07:02 PM (18 years, 8 months ago)

In reality, spawn to bulk will do far better than rye as a sub.

As in 10X


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OfflineIGnosticAbhorI
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Re: How scatman does grain. [Re: agar]
    #4159157 - 05/10/05 07:47 PM (18 years, 8 months ago)

Quote:

agar said:

As in 10X




Lol  :smirk:

I second that!

-Gnostic


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Offlinescatmanrav
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Re: How scatman does grain. [Re: coolman256]
    #4160468 - 05/11/05 01:31 AM (18 years, 8 months ago)

>but popcorn works, flushes well, and I don't see why so many people knock what is probably the easiest and cheapest grain to obtain.

Look man...say what you want...I've read just about every post thats come along in this, advanced, and grow log forums in the last year. Probably 90% of them. I've seen alot of popcorn grows, millet grows, WBS grows, rye grows, a tons of other things, or any mixture of them. Popcorn has worked out quite well for some others:



But there are probably half who report multiple failures with it. Then they switch to another grain, WBS or rye usually, and have much better results. Whatever problems they were having could very well be their fault, in not preping it properly. Thats not the point. The point is, when people start of with rye or WBS, theirs more like a 25% failure rate for people. Generally switching to the other that they werent using solves this. I have only heard of 1 case where someone tried WBS and rye and failed, then tried popcorn and succeeded. Statistics are against popcorn. That doesnt mean it cant work! Thats just why we dont suggest it first off. It generally causes fewer people to come back and go "hey whyd you tell me to use this crap".

And cheapest? Around here WBS is 40 pounds for 10 bucks. I think popcorn is more like 50 cents a pound. Rye is 50 cents a pound as well...

You can use whatever grain you please for this though...the point is just one way you can do grain, its not a rye/wbs is better argument. Thats just what I prefer to use. It's preformed quite well for me fruited straight off the grains. Its also preformed excellently as spawn.


--------------------
"life is like a drop of rain getting closer and closer to falling into a lake, and then when you hit the lake there is no more rain drop, only the lake."

Growing with bags, start to finish (including my new grain and substrate prep)
Anyone looking to start bulk tubs/mono tubs/shotgun hybrids? Good tubs to use..
How I do grain (old still good tips)
Turn your closet into a fruiting chamber
Casing layer colonization and overlay


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OfflineFungi_x
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Re: How scatman does grain. [Re: Underhillmaster]
    #4495165 - 08/04/05 12:59 PM (18 years, 5 months ago)

Quote:

Underhillmaster said:
Do you have a canning funnel? hehe,  It's the best $2 you can ever spend if you do a lot of jars.




I agree :thumbup: You really won't have to wait for the grain to fall in as the whole is almost as wide as the jar mouth. You will be able to use a bigger spoon and be less careful when loading. just hold the little handle and sorta keep it shaking gently and all the grain will fall into the jar. I bet you could load jars over twice as fast :wink:



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Offlinein_laymans_terms
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Re: How scatman does grain. [Re: scatmanrav]
    #5087642 - 12/20/05 10:18 PM (18 years, 1 month ago)

Quote:

scatmanrav said:
>but popcorn works, flushes well, and I don't see why so many people knock what is probably the easiest and cheapest grain to obtain.

Look man...say what you want...I've read just about every post thats come along in this, advanced, and grow log forums in the last year. Probably 90% of them. I've seen alot of popcorn grows, millet grows, WBS grows, rye grows, a tons of other things, or any mixture of them. Popcorn has worked out quite well for some others:



But there are probably half who report multiple failures with it. Then they switch to another grain, WBS or rye usually, and have much better results. Whatever problems they were having could very well be their fault, in not preping it properly. Thats not the point. The point is, when people start of with rye or WBS, theirs more like a 25% failure rate for people. Generally switching to the other that they werent using solves this. I have only heard of 1 case where someone tried WBS and rye and failed, then tried popcorn and succeeded. Statistics are against popcorn. That doesnt mean it cant work! Thats just why we dont suggest it first off. It generally causes fewer people to come back and go "hey whyd you tell me to use this crap".

And cheapest? Around here WBS is 40 pounds for 10 bucks. I think popcorn is more like 50 cents a pound. Rye is 50 cents a pound as well...

You can use whatever grain you please for this though...the point is just one way you can do grain, its not a rye/wbs is better argument. Thats just what I prefer to use. It's preformed quite well for me fruited straight off the grains. Its also preformed excellently as spawn.




i am a begginer who has tried a few experiments so far each ennding up with there own problems but i finally got a pressure cooker and i put ten jars through 6 of them rye and 4 popcorn. of the ten 5 of the rye were contaminated and only 1 of the popcorn. also i noticed that the popcorn colonized considerably faster than the rye. so i think popcorn is more contam resistant and faster colonization. i also find it pretty easy to get the right moisture through overnite soak then simmer. it just goes to show u everyones different. if ur really serious about this as a hobby ur gunna get it right eventually


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OfflineDr_Demented
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Re: How scatman does grain. [Re: Oatman2000]
    #5162635 - 01/10/06 01:01 PM (18 years, 21 days ago)

I tried popcorn as an substrate alone. Soaked 24h, then simmered till some popcorns cracked open. let them dry off and the PC for an hour or so. cased with 50/50 layer.

then i had to go away during Christmas and new years so it were left unattended for 2 weeks with no FAE and no misting.

as you can see they all were over matured and no even pinning. the ones who didn't grow tall aborted halfway. mainly because of no FAE and lack of moisture.
underneath the casing layer, hundreds of primordia had developed.

I will try again with popcorn and hopefully I will be around to check the progress...

/Dr.


--------------------
-It all makes sence if you think about it for a while.

All you need to success in growing!


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