I'd like to begin this post by thanking everyone who's been kind enough to answer my many noob questions. Really, you must have heard them all before, ad nauseum. But the results, for me, have been very enlightening in so many ways, not the least of which was having my first trip in about twenty years!
Also, let me apologize in advance for the long post, but I'm hoping some of my experience, such as it is, might help someone else just starting out. The many abbreviations used in these forums were a particular problem for me at first!
I've just put my first batch of PF cakes to rest after three flushes. Out of eight original cakes, five survived to produce approximately 1.5 oz. dry weight after the aforesaid three flushes. These original cakes took twenty-four days to colonize! I had ground my own BRF, but I ground it too finely, I think. Thus my cakes came out very dense, and even though I'd over-inoculated, it took forever for the bottoms to colonize. But I definately learned something!
Fourteen days ago, I inoculated another eight cakes. This time, I was careful to keep my flour on the coarse side! When I finished grinding in my blender, there was, of course, a lot of fine powder, but there were also many pieces of only partially ground kernels. Additionally, I soaked some whole grain rice for twenty-four hours, which I then boiled as if making rice to eat. I used a little of this whole grain to line the bottom of the jars, thus insuring plenty of air space there. Then I spooned the BRF / Vermiculite mixture on top of that, topped off with a dry verm barrier, ? la PF, and pressure-cooked. All in all, this saved me ten days over the first time, the cakes colonizing completely in fourteen days, even though I used much less inoculate this time (one syringe for eight half-pint jars).
While these jars were colonizing, the remainder of my original cakes were doing their thing in the fruiting chamber (FC). I used a sixty-six quart / sixty-three liter Sterilite container that I got at Target. In it, I had perlite, and used a Vick's Cool Mist for humidity and fresh air exchange (FAE). I heated a nail over the stove, and melted a half-dozen small holes a few inches above the bottom, opposite the Cool Mist, for CO2 exhaust. I added Hydrogen Peroxide (H2O2) to the water in both the perlite, and in the Cool Mist to help with comtam control. At the end, I think I did detect a little cobweb on one of the (exhausted) cakes, and the perlite began to show a reddish color in places. Lipstick, perhaps?
But now that my second batch of jars has gone so much better, I'd like to have the fruiting do better this time as well.
The first time out, I had decided to do the "Dunkin-Roll" technique. My first mistake was to not remove the "dry" vermiculite barrier from the cakes at birth. I had (erroneously) assumed that since the mycelium had worked it's way into the verm barrier, that an attempt to remove it would do damage to the cake. I believe that "dunking" the cakes by pouring water into the jar, through the verm barrier, was what introduced contams into my cakes. I'd defeated the barrier myself!
I then rolled the cakes in dry verm. I had much trouble getting the verm to stick, especially on the sides, and this resulted in much more handling of the cakes than was probably good for them.
My next big mistake was in assuming that they would require very little light, and low quality (for our purposes) light, at that! I had a sixty watt bulb up in the twelve-foot-high ceiling, putting the light at least six feet away from the chamber, which itself had an opaque lid. Duh!
After a week, I finally woke up and moved a clamp light over the chamber, and bought some plexiglass sheets to make a window in the lid of my chamber. Then the pinning began!
But my fruits all came out very fat and deformed looking! I'm still not sure why. I had plenty of FAE, but was never quite sure about the humidity. I didn't have the dough to get a decent hygrometer, so I took one out of my cigar humidor. Even though I'd calibrated it, I was never sure whether to believe it since most cheap hygrometers are made to be accurate at much lower Relative Humidity (RH) than the over ninety-five percent we are looking for.
Eventually, I bought a decent hygrometer and discovered that even with the Cool Mist running 24 / 7 via a one-foot long, three-quarter inch diameter hose, the perlite, and even misting, I could never get over ninety-one percent RH in the chamber!
Although the first flush came out fat and ugly, they were quite potent, an assessment with which everyone agreed (someday, I'll write a Trip Report about the first one). The second flush 'shrooms looked much more "normal", though. This was after another dunk. But instead of Dunkin-Roll, I did the Double-Ended Casing technique (DEC). Whether this was the reason for my more attractive 'shrooms, I cannot say. But my opinion is that it did work better for me. It was definately easier to do, and I ate a lot less vermiculite the second time around! That is, I found less verm embedded in the stems.
Here's how I'm thinking of handling my new cakes. I will, of course, scrape off the verm barrier. But should I dunk them this first time, or just Double End Case them, sans dunk? The cakes appear to have plenty of moisture. What do you think?
I will definately dunk them after the first flush. Then I will dunk them in their own jar. But I wonder if I shouldn't use bleach or peroxide in my dunks, and, if so, which one, and how much?
Any and all comments appreciated!
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