I will certainly be sharing them when they fruit. I always love to hear about others experiments, so please always feel free to share your findings. Fortune favors the bold 👍

​@@RenegadeMushroomsWhere are the Lion's Mane Mushroom fungal spores and how to extract the fungal spore species value?

Awesome, let me know how it works out for you. 👊

​@@RenegadeMushrooms I will! First lesson learned from last weekend: working with dry straw suuuuuuuucks, it's so messy! 🤣🤣

@@dangoesfast That's mostly why I'm in to pellets now. Straw works great but you have straw EVERYWHERE.

@@RenegadeMushrooms A couple of weeks in and the pellet bags are working great, although the straw bags are also colonising really well. There doesn't seem to be any benefit to the extra work of straw so I'm sold on your process :) I have six bags on straw, six on pellets, and I also did six spawn expansion bags. Next month I'm doing 2x 12-bag grows, the month after I'm going to do 2x 30-bag grows. I've got the parts to make a gordotek flow hood to get started with LC and I've watched almost all of your LC vids, I plan to have an LC process dialled by the end of the third month so I can go into the fourth month not having to pay for spawn 🤣 Thanks again for your videos, they helped me get started really quickly!

That's great that you were able to intervene and rescue those bags in time. Liquid culture straight to substrate isn't very effective as you found out. You really need that grain spawn as a carrier for your mycelium. Thanks for sharing your experience, and I hope your Cordycakes do well.

Absolutely. I am learning as I go. I wonder if the 20ccs had any effect at all. Moreso, this is a testament to how well pasteurization can work. Instead of a tote, I used a small cooler for those guys after pouring in the boiling water. As a brewer, I know they can handle the temps. Two of them fit snugly, and I left the lid shut for three hours. I doubt I could have gotten away with three weeks between inoculations with supplemented grain. @@RenegadeMushrooms

@@johnwinger7504 Good stuff. Injecting to HWFP is just too slow to out-race contamination, even with aggressive species. It seems to work better on straw based substrate, but grain spawn is still the way to go.

This one was a real game changer for me. This makes it even more viable to run a commercial operation on pasteurized HWFP. Next time I'll try even higher percentages. Hope your grows are going well 👍

@@RenegadeMushrooms hey I wanted to get your opinion on lights for a 4x4 grow tent . I was thinking of the Vivosun VS 1000 LED grow light on Amazon. Do you think I would be better off just getting a LED shop light from WalMart? thanks man you know I appreciate your input.

@@ranjanty I'm not sure I have a clear answer for you, but I'm interested in this as well. I've always used "blue" spectrum lights in the 6500K range. This is what is most often recommended as it seems to match the dim filtered forest light that most mushrooms we grow evolved in. That vivosun you are looking at is full spectrum and is designed for plants with higher light demands. What interests me is that with many mushroom species, light exposure levels can drastically affect the color of the fruit bodies. Typically, mushrooms exposed to more direct sunlight have caps that are much more colorful, which could be a desirable characteristic. Temperature also affects cap color, but what I'm wondering is if full spectrum or maybe blue combined with full spectrum would lead to sexier colored-up mushrooms.

Thanks 👍 Bummer about the contams. I'm recommending 5% at this point and yes you have to shake really well to mix the bran thoroughly, I noticed this on my blocks as well. I always use about 1 lb. of grain spawn per block. Going with 5%, thorough shaking, and 1 lb. of spawn, I haven't had any contams yet. If SWFP is all you can get, I would also recommend picking up an Italian Oyster culture (Pleurotus pulmonaris). They are delicious, very aggressive, and they fruit well on SWFP. The bran definitely boosts your yield a little, but it's not worth it if you hit contams. You could even back it off to 2.5% until you find your sweet spot. Keep up the good work and keep me posted on your progress.

Anish If you watch on KZfaq the channel mossy creek mushrooms he has a video of a substrate block I think with straw in it and he used liquid culture to inoculate it. I think it was with straw and it worked. If the contamination is on the bottom of your block LC might be good to use if you squirt it down the side of your block and falls onto the bottom.

@@koltoncrane3099 I generally go from Agar to LC to grain to fruiting block. My fruiting blocks are made with SWFP and not straw because it's less messy. I realised that while bagging my dry sub the bran just slips through the pellets and settles at the bottom of the bag. I tried giving it a good shake after adding the water but that's where my technique was lacking because most of the bran remained at the bottom. I now PC my blocks and the rate of contam has come down drastically. I tried experimenting with all in one bags (a layer of grain at the bottom and topped up with SWFP) and innoculated the grains with LC which worked wonderfully with Reishi. Next up I'm going to try going directly from LC to sub.

Those Michigan oysters did well on sawdust, but they did even better outdoors on totem logs. Thanks for watching 👍

Awesome! Glad you are having success. I've personally found that pink oyster fruits much better on straw. I think you will get much better production from your pasteurized sawdust blocks if you go with a quality P. ostreatus or P. pulmonaris strain of oyster. Happy growing 👊

@@RenegadeMushrooms thanks for the tip!

Cool man thanks. So, for my grain I kinda just eyeball it. I sprinkle some on and mix until the moisture looks right, I would say your 1:1 sounds good. For wood based substrate, I do 5% all the time with my easy pasteurization method and haven't seen any contam issues. If you follow my recipe of 2 lbs. dry fuel pellets, one level cup of bran works out to 5%. I always recommend people start out low and work their way up on the supplementation. I'm still trying new things and pushing the envelope, new video coming soon.

Thanks!!! Just to clarify, what’s your easy pasteurization method on the bran?

@@serrated0311 This short video shows and explains the whole enchilada. This is my current method: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/qriKf7WpyJuqcas.htmlsi=gAAUvGshxDsMlnNh

Thank you 😁 I buy them online from Unicorn Bags. They are model 3T.

I know it sounds crazy, but with 5% bran or less with my in-bag pasteurization TEK, I get zero contamination. If I ever get a contaminated bag, which I honestly can't remember last time I did, it's because the grain spawn had a bit of trich I missed.

I meant simple and effective.

Sawdust to sawdust works great for expanding spawn. You can also make fruiting blocks using sawdust spawn, it's just that grain spawn is preferred for fruiting blocks because the grain is very nutritious and increases the yields in your fruiting blocks. This is especially important when not using other nitrogen rich supplements in your fruiting substrate.

No I haven't, but I like the idea 👍

Yeah I think I posted results at some point on the channel, but to sum it up, yields increase incrementally with added bran. Only catch is, you don't always realize it on the first flush. It may take 2 or 3 flushes to realize the increased yield depending on species. 5% seems to work well without increasing contamination risk significantly when using pasteurization.

That's a very interesting idea, you should try it. It seems like it should help hold off contams. I have some more supplementation experiments planned for this summer. I'm excited to get back into it.

​@@RenegadeMushrooms I will give it a try and see how it goes with some oyster cultures I have going. Here's how I'd go about it. Dissolve 2g of Hydrated Lime per liter into ice cold water (with ice cubes). Then, with all my supplements combined into a jar or container, I'd add the cold lime water until all the dry supplements were fully saturated. Following that, I'd place that jar in my fridge overnight and the following day, strain and dump each cold pasteurized supplement jar into a bag with HWFP and proceed to pour your desired amount of boiling water and completing the steps as you do. I think it could work. The high pH from the lime followed by the hot water would give the nutritious supplements a nice combo of chemical and heat pasteurization. Also the hot water will convert any leftover hydrated lime to calcium oxide + water and if adding a bit of Calcium Carbonate to the mix could keep everything lightly alkaline. Cheers!

@@TheLitVic Please let me know how it works for you 👍

Did you ever try this? What were your results??

@@UCMan99 it works quite well! I've experimented with up to 30% soy hulls in Oysters

I hear that lol, I have tons of ideas, but the day job gets in the way. I found my food grade wheat bran in the baking aisle at my local grocery store. Agricultural feed stores will sometimes have larger bags that are much less expensive.

i live in a urban area & get my wheat bran from a bulk food store, they order me 5kg bags for $20

@@RenegadeMushrooms I work at a mushroom farm as the production manager & have lots of time to experiment + own my own mycelium culture business.

@@themyceliumnetwork What's the name of your culture business? I'll check you out.

@@RenegadeMushrooms website is not up yet, been too busy. if you need something my email is on my about page just let me know & we'll see if I have it

I would steer clear of coffee grounds. They work as a substrate additive, but are notoriously prone to contamination. Wheat bran is a better alternative imo.

@@RenegadeMushrooms Thanks

It could be the pellets or the strain you were growing. What species and strain was it, and what were your ambient temperatures?

@@RenegadeMushrooms found out Turkey tail needs supplementation . Did it with lions mane and it worked great !

@@Allyourbase1990 I don't supplement my Turkey Tail blocks personally, but I do spawn them pretty heavy at 1 lb. of grain per 5 lbs. of pasteurized HWFP. The heavy spawn rate serves as a nitrogen boost similar to adding bran.

Good stuff 👊 Thank you for sharing your process.

I don't use large quantities so I just get it in the baking aisle at the grocery store. It's cleaner, but more expensive. If you're going to use a lot of it and need to find it cheaper, check at agricultural feed stores.

Let me know how it turns out, sounds interesting. I've found plug spawn to be very forgiving as far as contams go. I haven't tried masters mix yet as I'm still hunting for a local source for soy hulls.

​@@RenegadeMushrooms alfalfa rabbit food pellets are a substitute that I've read about. never tried them myself

@@themyceliumnetwork I'm going to give the alfalfa a try. If it fails I can use the pellets to energize the vegetable garden.

I don't use a lot, so I just buy it in the baking section of the grocery store in small bags. You can get large bags much cheaper at ag feed stores.

OK, I'll put it on my list since your one of my long-standing and favoritest subscribers. I'll see if I can find them at TSC. I think people are blending them with HWFP right?

@@RenegadeMushrooms yes, with hwfp. Being able to successfully use them as supplements would make tsc a good one stop shop

Weight 👍

Sounds interesting, let me know how it works for you.

That's for sterilization, not pasteurization. If you want to only pasteurize your substrate, you can use less bran and simply add more grain spawn to boost your nitrogen levels a bit more.

kzfaq.info/get/bejne/h9GKpNFoqNewfn0.html Tried it in this video.

I have to do the same with a lot of recipes, liters to quarts, cups to millilitres, etc. I'm always doing conversions on my phone. If you tell me specifically which recipe you are working with, I can probably help you out.

@@RenegadeMushrooms thanks a lot. Actual I will work with the pasteurised substrate with 5% wheat bran. Is that right: 1,5 pounds pellets (750g), 37g wheat bran with 1,2 liter water? Roy

@@RoyWanfried OK, so for my fruiting block recipe, it's easier to do everything by weight. Here it is for 5% supplementation: 907 g. dry pellets 45 g. dry wheat bran 1,275 g. water (water should be at or near boiling for proper pasteurization temps) Once pasteurized I add about 454 g. of grain spawn.

@@RenegadeMushrooms cool, thanks. I think I have now to much water on my 3 testblocks. I have to try again..... You work here with 2 pounds pellets, in the other video for pasteurisation you take 2,5 pounds. Is that why you add wheat bran ?

@@RoyWanfried I have a video where I made smaller blocks with 1.5 lbs. pellets, but for all my fruiting blocks in all my other videos I use 2 lbs. pellets. I don't remember ever using 2.5 lbs. The wheat bran is totally optional, but it does boost your yields a little. You don't need to increase your water with 5% bran.

I actually wrote myself a note to try that next time, partially because the dry bran sticks to the sides of the bag really bad as well. Not sure it will do anything to decrease contam risk, but it's worth a try.

Not in depth no. I have played with coffee a little and found it very prone to contamination. I think it really needs to be sterilized and even then can lead to contamination issues from other growers I've talked to.

@@RenegadeMushrooms that's a shame. I can get roughly 10lbs/day for free

@@anthonysurrency7134 If you're willing to put some time in, I'm sure you can figure it out, but I think you will have to sterilize. I know some of the grow kit manufacturers use it mixed with sawdust, and those kits give really nice yields.

@@RenegadeMushrooms I did some buckets. Aspen chips and used grounds. Pasteurized with boiling water. The buckets nearly halved their colonization times. The ones with less grounds did the best. I'm thinking the liquid coffee is supercharging the wood chips

@@anthonysurrency7134 Cool, let me know how they fruit.

I really want to try abietus. My americanum seems to be pretty versatile, but it didn't like one bag of straight hardwood pellets I had. Who knows what could have been in there. Now I've switched to mostly straight up oak bbq pellets and it likes them. It seems to do well on the blend as well but as far as I know it was a hardwood culture from Tennessee.

I've been forced to use both interchangeably all my life as a citizen scientist in 'merica. Therefore out of spite, I think everyone else should too.

@@RenegadeMushrooms 😂