Could you naturalize the mycelium to eat mold? Paul Stamets notes that if you want to take a culture that's been grown in sterile conditions and grow it in the wild, you have to slowly introduce it to microbes because it's immune system hasn't been developed enough to compete well. I have first hand experience with this because I grew oyster mushrooms from store bought mushrooms. In the store it could have been exposed to large amounts of bacteria and mold spores. The base of the mushrooms have mycelium growing. I would clone them completely none sterile. Grew it on logs I steam steriled and placed in a see through tube. Green mold grew on the lower logs, the oyster mycelium was placed on top initial which quickly grew down very rizomorphically. When it got to the green mold it actually hovered over it then came down on it and it was never seen again. I also grew oyster mushrooms in coffee which had green mold grow on the side. The oyster mycelium just ran right through it and again never seen after that. The difference is I used tissue culture that had time to adjust to microbes. Maybe it would be worth looking into. While sterilization is great, having the extra insurance of having strains that can kill bacteria and mold would stave money.

Love your channel ❤️ I've been cultivating mushrooms for 2 years now for the wife and I. I just retired. I bought a small greenhouse 10×20 and thinking about selling small scale. I like your channel because your talking about what not to do reveling your mistakes and finding solutions to over come problems. I find your channel very helpful. Thank you 😊

I needed to hear this today, was having a few contam issues. Nice to know that people have walked the path before me! Mush love

Thank you from someone who is just starting out on their mushroom growing venture in the UK. I have just lost a whole batch due to black mold and I had an inkling that it was due to the substrate being too warm. Your video confirms my hunch. Thank you 🙌

Thank you. Started a farm here in colorado and as it warms up we are seeing a spike in contamination. Neurospora and trich are what we are fighting. Will try some of these teks.

Thank You, this is so helpful, I'm new and trying to learn what I can before I get to that stage. Still working with agar. The temperature to cool down will be a definite focus. Dump your bags in the woods friend👍👍

Super helpful thank you! If you keep track of enough data you should be able to figure out the optimum time to leave the bags in the steriliser to minimise/ predict contamination. E.g. track length of time in steraliser, temp on removal, material, # of contaminated bags. Then you can run a regression and see what the results are - predict the amount of contamination if you remove the bags after X hours.

Great advise mate

Thanks for sharing this Brian!

Love your testing mentality. Considering that this is more than 4 years old, would be cool to know who took some of your insights or hypothesis', applied them and now they are used by many. Thanks for your contributions.

Genuine respect. Thank you.

Very interesting, and thank you for showing the success and failures with possible solutions is awesome!

Around 6:00 , regarding top spawning, not mixing right away, damn that's a great idea. thank you for sharing that one. i hadn't thought about that!

Great, innovative material, thanks for advice :)

Súper súper súper súper súper helpful . Thanks for sharing your hard earned experience.

Thank you so much for that knowledge. Will likely help me avoid disaster in the future

Excellent information! Thank you for sharing your trial and error for us all.

There is away to introduce hepa filtered air into your drums and vent out of the top of drum keeping positive pressure in your sterilizer (sending cool air in the same time your leting hot air vent) would let your bags cool down in hours ver days.Keeping positive psi with filtered air . You would need to keep at least 2 psi on sterilizer to keep air pure during cool down..Thats how I do it at my work using 300 thousand gal. vessels and we have zero contamination.You also need to figure a way to keep your bags steril from sterilizer to inoculation.

I have doing a lot of reserch on mushrooms I have always hunted wild mushrooms but as I grow older I'm looking on ways to farm them. Thanks for the insight

All I can say is Mr. Callow,you seem to be the hardest working man I've seen in along time.Always looking to improve your system.

Fantastic observation man...gl in the future!

Thanku

so thankful ill pass it along have a great one

Thankyou for the info

That's interesting, I notice that Dr. Stamets bags had the wheat germ on top of the wood sub and the spawn on top of it. Makes sense as the mycelium can better digest the sugars in the wheat germ, it's really the mature mushroom that requires the wood then?

Great video!

wonderful content do you impulse seal. before you go into the steamer?

Thanks for sharing this, yet another thing for me to look out for :)

I've had this problem aswell... to much moisture in summer leads to compost!! The slow reaction of cooling down in presser causes them to dry out a extra... but seal emeadetly when cool enoff to touch.. hotter the better.. cold attracts, heat repells in this deminstration

Hey thanks for sharing especially in your moments of trial. I hope all's well 3yrs down the line. How long would you say a person should sterilize a large spawn bag(5qts of hydrated rye berries) @ 15-17psi? I learned from a dude using 64oz jars, but wanted to learn bags and I'm having trouble. Thanks for any advice. Hopefully you're still active on here.

I have a question . Do you usually cultivate directly to the substrate ? Or so you have to make grain spawn separate and then cultivate with substrate ? Is it diferente for each strain ?

Thanks for the sharing mate !! 'Cause what ever mushroom we grow, this tip is helpfull. Keep up with the good work ! I hope you'll figure things out with your comparison method, take notes ;) Keep shroomin' ! :D

Love your passion and spirit to overcome problems . I'm wondering, as an outside observer not involved with mushroom production , why you do the very complex and labour intensive batch process involving plastic bags , instead of the normal way of mushroom cultivation of preparing a sertile growing medium bed then inoculating the bed . your moving the medium in small batches with lots of handling and possible contaminations vectors ...this might seem an obvious question .....Cassie UK

Great! Very helpful video. Thank you!

So what did you figure out as time went on? How long are you cooking those bags now? How long do you leave them in for the cool down?

Brian-Thanks for posting so others can learn from your mistakes not just their own. I might have a semi solution for ya. I bundle my bags (unsealed) in a handkerchief. This does a couple of things. Bundle bags in a kerchief: 1: Pulls them tight so they are not as insulating. (heat gets to center quicker) 2 : Keeps them off wall of sterilizer - protects bag from melting. 3: Brightens my day to see the pretty colors ;) 4: After unloading, I have a bunch of sterile rags to wipe stuff off with. 5: I can move bags around without worrying about contams getting on the outside before spawning. 6: ***Mostly- as bags cool, the air sucking in gets filtered through the fabric.***

Hello . I did not understand well. Did you have less contamination after four days or after two days of cooling. Best wishes .

Great video. Ill start top spawning my bags with my next transfer.

I have a similar problem so did Your technique pretty much work towards success in the direction that You were aiming ?

Wow, new grower here who was discouraged because out of my 5 first bags I lost 3. Guess I'll just make 10 next run and try to do it better. Great vid, thx

Interesting Ive been unloading from hot and have had the exact same problem

My sweet John boy!! 😍😍☺️

I'm trying to get past Trichoderma, I have no doubt that I not only accidentally let Trichoderma spores into the air in my room. As well as having room temp too high a breading ground for Trichoderma so now I'm trying to Brainstorm what ever ideas I can to get rid of the trick spores from the air or on the wall, floor board etc even my grain spawn jars

Would love to learn on your farm, very inspirational stuff.

I don't understand your sterilization process for wood chips. As a chef for many years, i learned that when boiling and making different soup stocks, "they need to be cooled very rapidly" before storing in fridge. We do this to get it out of the "Danger Zone" or the temperature where bacteria loves to grow. So just some food for thought.

Hi I am getting tricoderma fungus in my ganoderma Mushroom bags. I autoclaved them for 1 hour. Do I need to increase the time limit?

Lets go Brenden

Get better filter bags I saw a mushroom grower just pour hot water over pellets to pasturize over night. Drain the bucket of pellets. - and inoculate the next day!

also have you seen paul stamets' method he found of anaerobic, water dunk pasteurization? if so, what thoughts do you have on it?

Hmm, wonder if you could set up a chilling loop, I need to go back and look at your process. We have Rv size Boilers at work, we usually run our processor Temps at 212.0c but we use heat exchangers and can cool down with chilled water. But we can also run that temp since we use inert gas, Co2 generated off the Boiler. And displacement of 02 by steam. Inert atmosphere keeps anything from burning/ catching fire. I'm just brain storming on a process that would take hours rather than days.

Also - the bags you are using could have a problem at the plant or something. Sometimes happens!

Hello...u use soda spawn because u make it,or its possible to buy also??

First thank you for your channel! I find it interesting! My background is in Pasta and I'm quite familiar with starting a business with "junk equipment" and building it into something that you can be proud of. Observations and Questions.. When sterilising your wood chips, is there a reason that you kettle cook the grow media or is the goal simply to sterilise? If the plan is to have bacteria free wood chips could you continuously feed a thin layer of media through a steam tunnel? This is coming from a Pasta manufacturing perspective where we run 60,000LB of pasta a week. At the end of the tunnel you could put a cooling tunnel so the output would be what ever temp you would need based on speed and length. Is this possible?

If you have a contaminated bag can you resterilize it and still use it?

why not oppening the bags inside a clean room so if they suck air inside they won't contaminate?

Thanks for the info I’ve literally been inoculating jars that are cold to touch after only 2-3 hours, now I leave overnight everytime and as long as correct moisture content there golden. I’m using Wild bird seed

Ive been having issues with a variety of different contaminations. My grain starts to colonize and then contamination hits hard. Cant figure out what the deal is but this video makes me believe that my incubation temp is too warm. Ive been incubating other species at 79 to 81 and it works great but the lions mane keeps contaminating. Good video and im gonna incubate at a cooler temp. The lions mane is the only one ive been having problems with. Everything else has been flawless. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

that lip clap really gets on my nervs...😂😂

I know this vids old. But I'd guess tge problem was that dirty air is coming in thru the filter. Sub bags. W a .5 micron filter cooling down and creating a vacuum not inside a clean room.

interesting!

Sad to see that...but yeah, as you said, small scale test your new sub/growing medium first

I am confused about your theory about the correlation between the bag temps at unloading and contamination. There may be something I'm missing but wouldn't the higher temp just further ensure the sterilization? It seems more like a correlation between different dates for inoculation and contamination.

Please am Ghana and would like to know how to prepare my spawn, love you work want to go into this very project. Help me start my bro.

l need the spawn bags with filter to buy live in Ghana

Can you use mushrooms from the grocery store for The Missoulian

When you go about sterilizing your substrate, are you sterilizing directly in your grow bags or do you sterilize the substrate and move it into bags once it is cooled?

Here is my 2 cents. Woodchips in the bag method never worked for me -- instant contamination. I believe that chips are MUCH harder to sterilize and it is not just about cooling down. It is about the fact that solid wood is a poor heat conductor. In fact it is almost perfect insulator. So, when we use sawdust it is minced to such a small grain that when we soak it makes wood cells all hydrated. Then the heat can reach every cell and kill contam. As to woodchips, you need to soak them 3-4 DAYS at least to make sure you have them properly hydrated, and then sterilized. With that regiment, it worked for me, but man, timewise this just doesn't make any sense. So, yea, back to sawdust pellets, 2.5-3 hours at 15psi, let cool down completely. Classic always works. Good luck!

Yo Joe! Where does mushroom compost come from? What is that material at the store?

The way mycelium is put in the bags, I'm really surprised you don't get a 100% contamination...same for the un-sealed bags in the cookers....

Wtf you have lost weight and look very healthy. Nice work bro

are you still doing farm visits?

2:51 damn it that sure is a lot of s'mold dude

Thank you for this video. Have really been struggling with bags. I get contam every time.

One thing I do to ensure my sterilizer is getting deep enough in my bags is for each Sterilizer I have a dedicated Thermometer that has the long cord for like puttingmmmout your house window so you can nnget and outside reading as wellmas indoor reading.....well mine has sharp tip so its like a icepick looking.....I run it inside the sterilizer and It gets stabbed into the absolute most center bag.....i call it my sacrificial bag../shrug. Just incase anythingnmgoes wrong w it later... anyway I get a realtime reading in mthe core of my most cored bag during the process and I can nget realtime reading as to when I know 100% that that batch did reach properm temps and. Faster knowledge as to when 100% cooled so we cannnpull em an start inoculations. Thats been an game changer for me.... speeds things by cutting down on cooling times, because I know forsure when it reached safe inoculation temps sooner and that each barrel did its job for X amount of time & temp. I myself have way better contam rates over all

"...the only way to learn is to make mistakes..." Why am I watching this then? 🤔

Has anyone solved the green mold problem?

Seems like you need to slow down, rushing always leads to fubar situations.

to much moisture....or heat

why not just do pasteurization instead of sterilization? because you already have a lab or another reason?

I did find it informative, but every mistake I make costs money.

are you able to recycle those bags in anyway?

Sorry you've encountered the complications and hope you can work through and eliminate your problems! If I may, though.... "The only way to learn... is to make mistakes." Is a statement that could only ever be true if you are the 1st and only to attempt something and so-happen to make mistakes while you are making your attempt. You can also learn from successes, reading, other's help, other's mistakes, observation... hell, I've even heard ya can learn stuff watching KZfaq! ...really, there are countless ways to learn something. I realize, it's kind of a shitty & douchey thing to say/write and it's probably not really what you meant... but... ya did say, "...that's kind of what this is all about..." I'm only a lowly newb embarking on his first attempt but I would guess, based on what you've said here, that maybe your substrate is too wet???

Education is important. If you had a basic AG degree, you could avoid contamination problems in this farm:

That's a pretty old sweater.

come and learn what in your farm? how to contaminate bags? All you want is Free labour SMH work for free like a dog for a month lol some 'professionals'

You don't always know what you don't know. I think i just found my 1st tattoo.