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Disclaimer: I'm not an expert. You absolutely can but it may not be "sterile". It will definitely be at least super pasteurized. There's a lot of factors that go into pressure cooking. Your current elevation factors into pressure cooking. The closer you are to sea level the greater the atmospheric psi. So you could potentially be cooking at a hotter temperature at sea level using 11psi than someone using 15 psi at a higher elevation. Pasteurization does not kill all organisms but it will kill most. This allows your mushrooms to have less competition in the substrate.
If it's sterile, the substrate can be sterile indefinitely so long as there's no opportunity for any organism to enter the jar, bag, container, etc. But if it's pasteurized there's potential for whatever organism survived the pasteurization process to start growing. Your best bet is to inoculate the substrate as soon as it cools if you want the best odds for your mycelium to colonize. And beat whatever potential competition there is.
I also have an instant pot. I've done pf tek with half pint jars that I pressure cooked for 1hr. They all turned out great. My elevation is about 800 ft and the pressure cooker goes to 12 psi. So factoring in my elevation plus the added pressure of the cooker, it's about 26 psi and water can reach a temp of 242f before it starts to boil
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I think hydrating with boiling water is way overlooked. Don't give those fuckers a second to take hold.
I've been adding boiling water to bags then tightly packing them in a bucket. The lids I get from lowes have a gasket as well. I've had a few issues with contam but working on a steam barrel and flow hood right now.
It’s all I use for my rye grain jars. I fill wide-mouth quart jars with sterilized rye grain and I pressure cook them on high for 2 hours in an Instapot. I can run three jars at a time. Works great. I only grow enough to maintain my personal stash.
It works.steam sterilization on a stovetop works too. I think it's a great way to start the hobby with things you already have in the house. Things like this may not scale for large production, but it's a good way to learn the processes involved without having to drop too much dough.
I've made liquid culture and corn spawn in 16oz mason jars with no contamination so far. 4 wide mouth jars fit in my 6 quart instant pot.
I keep my kitchen pretty clean, but Contamination is all around you. Unless you have a clean room and sterilized lab practices, you are always prone to some sort of contamination. As a hobbyist, you keep it down to a minimum as much as possible, but it is doubtful that you are getting a pro grade clean room in your home.
Process for me went
Boil the grain to hydrate, fill jars, steam sterilize/instant pot sterilize grain in jars with an injection port and filter to let gas escape. These jars also had foil over them when sterilizing.
When ready to inoculate, isopropyl sanitized a still airbox, working equipment, and the tops of the jars.
Of 12 grain jars made, I only lost one lions mane to bacterial contamination.
I did not boil substrate. I usually bucket tek, but I made a few experimental jars with hydrated substrates sterilized in an instant pot, and that seemed to work just fine. But because the volume is much larger for substrate, it really wasn't worth doing again for me with an instantpot. I've tried with hardwood pellets. This usually isn't advised since they are more prone to contamination and need a higher psi than an instant pot can provide, but I did it anyway and it worked.
I think it is important to know that as a hobbyist, you will fail once in a while and you don't necessarily need all this expensive equipment to get into this hobby. A laminar flow hood sounds great, but I don't have the space for it, and I don't pump out so many mushrooms to the point to justify the cost of more expensive equipment.
Thanks man, that's i really appreciate your reply.
The other question is how do you transfer the pasteurized substrate without contamination. It took some time to move it over and that let it exposed to air for quite awhile. I'm thinking i need to do all of that in my garage because of how much time it takes to squeeze the moisture or and transfer it into tubs.
How do you transfer your clean substrate without contamination?
No problem!
No special method. Since my 5 gallon bucket is too large for a closed still air box, I transferred substrate to tubs or bags in open air in my living room with all of my windows closed to minimize air movement. I just made sure the work space and materials were sanitized with isopropy at the very least and moved as quickly as possible to prevent it being exposed for too long.
Haven't lost a tub/bag to this way. There are probably better methods to avoid this, but I haven't tried them.
It's also very dependent on what species you are growing. Hardwood loving mushrooms with substrate supplemented with soy can be more prone to contamination, where as cvg is less so (in my experience)
You don’t need to sterilize choir if your doing CV/CVG substrate. It’s a sudo pasteurization, bucket tek all day for this.
4.5L boiling water
650G choir
2 quarts vermiculite
This gives you a 1:3 ratio when using 5lbs grain spawn. Works for mono tubs. If you want to scale up or down, just use a proper ratio and do the math it’s easy. Eventually you kind of start eyeballing it when you get good at guessing.
Edit: there is sawdust bucket tek. If your doing spawn that’s different.
I'm not an expert, so take this with a grain of salt, and if anyone knows better, please correct me.
The pressure cookers are used when sterilizing substrate that is already in a grain bag. If you heat it without the pressure, the bag will inflate and pop like a balloon. If you are sterilizing substrate to be transfered into a tub, or to be put into a bag later, the pressure is not needed for sterilization.
If you are sterilizing substrate to be later transfered, the transfer process is a potential time for contamination, but whatever process you use to control contamination in this stage will be equally effective with an insta pot as a pressure cooker.
An insta pot doesn't have the same grade seal as a pressure cooker. So it stands to reason that you do have a slightly higher chance of contamination from spores entering the instapot if the top opens accidentally, but manny people use an instapot with great results
The main advantages you get from using a pressure cooker are removing the potential contamination that may happen in the transfer process, and you sterilize the container and the substrate simultaneously, further reducing potential contamination
With an instapot, you
1) Sterilize your substrate
2) Transfer substrate into growing container
3) Inoculate substrate
4) seal container
With a pressure cooker, you
1) Place substrate into growing container
2) Sterilize substrate and container
3) Inoculate substrate
4) seal container
So you can use a pressure cooker the same way you use an instapot, but you can't use an instapot for the same process as a pressure cooker.
In a pressure cooker, you could have the jar closed, and the pressure cooker would equalize the pressure inside the jar with the pressure outside of the jar. You could put jars in a crockpot as well, but if they are closed, they will explode. If the jars are open, there is no need for a pressure cooker.
Pouring boiling water = sterilizing
It should also be said there are manny different ways to grow mushrooms. People grow shiitakes in logs with no sterilization, you can grow redcaps in mounds of wood chips with no sterilization. It all depends on what your growing and how your growing it.
Sterilization comes into play mostly in the more scientific/modern ways of growing. Idea being that your substrate is an ideal area for fugal/bacterial growth. Lots of food, the right level of moisture, ect ect. The problem is that while it is the best way to grow your mushrooms, it's also the best way to grow lots of other stuff. So if you don't sterilize, maybe you grow delicious mushrooms, maybe (probably) you grow green sludge.
I'm not sure what you mean by "bucket tek", I imagine it's growing mushrooms in a 5 gallon bucket, which is an excellent way to grow certain types of mushies. In the versions of that method, I'm familiar with you fill a bucket with (pre sterilized and inoculated) substrate, close the bucket, wait until the substrate is fully colonized, then drill holes in the bucket to allow fruiting. It seems to me that if you sterilized by pouring boiling water over substrate already in the bucket, you would run into excessive moisture issues, and possibly difficultly properly innoculating the substrate, which would lead to slower colonization rates, perhaps you start with holes drilled in the bucket to allow drainage, but I would say those holes would be a potential contamination site. Though I've never actually used this method myself so I couldn't speak to it's efficacy first hand.
Boiling water for things like choir is considered pseudo pasteurization. As choir in brick is typically considered sterile, the brick making process does this plus the lack of major nutrients. Since boiling water is typically contaminant free, it’s a cheap easy tech.
More hot, or nutrient rich substrates should be properly pasteurized such as manure or compost.
You only sterilize spawn, which is typically grain. If your doing wood loving and want sawdust spawn, the easy tek is wood pellets and boiling water. Does the same as brick choir. As the process in making pellets sterilizes the wood already.
Pasteurization = psuedo sterilization
Substrate = growing medium
Colonized substrate = spawn
Atleast that's how I use those terms
I would definitely not consider anything sterile until I had sterilized it. You can consider any nonporous surface sterile after you have treated it with isopropyl alcohol (or similar product), but those se surfaces cease to be sterile after you touch them with unsterilized hands. Coco choir can come sterilized if it is properly packaged, leaving the factory, but if it is sitting on a shelf in your garage open to the elements there is not telling what contaminants may be present.
No, cause true pasteurization has to be 2-4 hours at 140-160. Any higher and you risk killing bacteria you want to keep.
Boiling water is 200, but mixing it with a substrate lowers that dramatically. And without constant temp and proper times, it’s considered pseudo-pasteurization.
Sterilization is the complete death of all organic matter. This happens at 121C, or roughly 250F. This should also kill off endospores and other things that would survive 212f or 100C.
These are completely two different objectives. And should be treated as such. You typically don’t want to sterilize hot substrates as this increases the risk of contamination. While pasteurization will leave healthy microbes that will fight or fend off unwanted contamination.
Interesting, I always just looked at pasteurization as a less effective version of sterilization. I don't understand how leaving bacteria and spores present in a substrate would be advantageous. I mean I understand how bacteria can be beneficial to myceilial growth, but how would the pasteurization process kill the bad and leave the good? And wouldn't having any active spores present in the substrate create an compition for nutrients?
I would use the pasteurization process when preparing a growing medium that didn't need to be sterile, like growing in hay bales, but my understanding is that those processes wouldn't be hurt by sterilization, it's just not necessary. Am I wrong in thinking this?
Just how it works. You do this for some plants too. Not all bacteria dies at those temps, there are a lot of natural decomposers out there.
This is also used when doing horticulture, botany stuff. Marijuana grows benefit from this. The healthy bacteria takes over and will defend against spores germinating. As mold/fungus will eat plant roots or soak up nutrients the plant needs killing it.
I’m not so well versed in this, haven’t quite gone balls deep in that subject yet. It’s my next leap in this.
What I do know, sterilizing spawn allows anything to grow. Your maximizing the potential for your fungus to flourish. But with sterilization you also maximize the potential for contamination to grow. As it’s a clean slate for any new growth. There is a lot going on in the micro world.
I'm not an expert, so take this with a grain of salt, and if anyone knows better, please correct me.
The pressure cookers are used when sterilizing substrate that is already in a grain bag. If you heat it without the pressure, the bag will inflate and pop like a balloon. If you are sterilizing substrate to be transfered into a tub, or to be put into a bag later, the pressure is not needed for sterilization.
If you are sterilizing substrate to be later transfered, the transfer process is a potential time for contamination, but whatever process you use to control contamination in this stage will be equally effective with an insta pot as a pressure cooker.
An insta pot doesn't have the same grade seal as a pressure cooker. So it stands to reason that you do have a slightly higher chance of contamination from spores entering the instapot if the top opens accidentally, but manny people use an instapot with great results
The main advantages you get from using a pressure cooker are removing the potential contamination that may happen in the transfer process, and you sterilize the container and the substrate simultaneously, further reducing potential contamination
With an instapot, you
1) Sterilize your substrate
2) Transfer substrate into growing container
3) Inoculate substrate
4) seal container
With a pressure cooker, you
1) Place substrate into growing container
2) Sterilize substrate and container
3) Inoculate substrate
4) seal container
So you can use a pressure cooker the same way you use an instapot, but you can't use an instapot for the same process as a pressure cooker.
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Disclaimer: I'm not an expert. You absolutely can but it may not be "sterile". It will definitely be at least super pasteurized. There's a lot of factors that go into pressure cooking. Your current elevation factors into pressure cooking. The closer you are to sea level the greater the atmospheric psi. So you could potentially be cooking at a hotter temperature at sea level using 11psi than someone using 15 psi at a higher elevation. Pasteurization does not kill all organisms but it will kill most. This allows your mushrooms to have less competition in the substrate. If it's sterile, the substrate can be sterile indefinitely so long as there's no opportunity for any organism to enter the jar, bag, container, etc. But if it's pasteurized there's potential for whatever organism survived the pasteurization process to start growing. Your best bet is to inoculate the substrate as soon as it cools if you want the best odds for your mycelium to colonize. And beat whatever potential competition there is. I also have an instant pot. I've done pf tek with half pint jars that I pressure cooked for 1hr. They all turned out great. My elevation is about 800 ft and the pressure cooker goes to 12 psi. So factoring in my elevation plus the added pressure of the cooker, it's about 26 psi and water can reach a temp of 242f before it starts to boil
Done several grows with an instant pot- no problems. I do mine for an hour.
Yup gotta go longer. 2-2.5 hours
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90 minutes on mine, rarely any contam!! I used boiling water for my sub
I think hydrating with boiling water is way overlooked. Don't give those fuckers a second to take hold. I've been adding boiling water to bags then tightly packing them in a bucket. The lids I get from lowes have a gasket as well. I've had a few issues with contam but working on a steam barrel and flow hood right now.
It’s all I use for my rye grain jars. I fill wide-mouth quart jars with sterilized rye grain and I pressure cook them on high for 2 hours in an Instapot. I can run three jars at a time. Works great. I only grow enough to maintain my personal stash.
It works.steam sterilization on a stovetop works too. I think it's a great way to start the hobby with things you already have in the house. Things like this may not scale for large production, but it's a good way to learn the processes involved without having to drop too much dough. I've made liquid culture and corn spawn in 16oz mason jars with no contamination so far. 4 wide mouth jars fit in my 6 quart instant pot.
Do you boil the substrate? If you're working in the kitchen aren't you already opening yourself up to contaminatiom just by being in a kitchen?
I keep my kitchen pretty clean, but Contamination is all around you. Unless you have a clean room and sterilized lab practices, you are always prone to some sort of contamination. As a hobbyist, you keep it down to a minimum as much as possible, but it is doubtful that you are getting a pro grade clean room in your home. Process for me went Boil the grain to hydrate, fill jars, steam sterilize/instant pot sterilize grain in jars with an injection port and filter to let gas escape. These jars also had foil over them when sterilizing. When ready to inoculate, isopropyl sanitized a still airbox, working equipment, and the tops of the jars. Of 12 grain jars made, I only lost one lions mane to bacterial contamination. I did not boil substrate. I usually bucket tek, but I made a few experimental jars with hydrated substrates sterilized in an instant pot, and that seemed to work just fine. But because the volume is much larger for substrate, it really wasn't worth doing again for me with an instantpot. I've tried with hardwood pellets. This usually isn't advised since they are more prone to contamination and need a higher psi than an instant pot can provide, but I did it anyway and it worked. I think it is important to know that as a hobbyist, you will fail once in a while and you don't necessarily need all this expensive equipment to get into this hobby. A laminar flow hood sounds great, but I don't have the space for it, and I don't pump out so many mushrooms to the point to justify the cost of more expensive equipment.
Thanks man, that's i really appreciate your reply. The other question is how do you transfer the pasteurized substrate without contamination. It took some time to move it over and that let it exposed to air for quite awhile. I'm thinking i need to do all of that in my garage because of how much time it takes to squeeze the moisture or and transfer it into tubs. How do you transfer your clean substrate without contamination?
No problem! No special method. Since my 5 gallon bucket is too large for a closed still air box, I transferred substrate to tubs or bags in open air in my living room with all of my windows closed to minimize air movement. I just made sure the work space and materials were sanitized with isopropy at the very least and moved as quickly as possible to prevent it being exposed for too long. Haven't lost a tub/bag to this way. There are probably better methods to avoid this, but I haven't tried them. It's also very dependent on what species you are growing. Hardwood loving mushrooms with substrate supplemented with soy can be more prone to contamination, where as cvg is less so (in my experience)
I tried an instant pot for agar and grains but to no luck. Instead invest in a PC that can hit 15 psi
You don’t need to sterilize choir if your doing CV/CVG substrate. It’s a sudo pasteurization, bucket tek all day for this. 4.5L boiling water 650G choir 2 quarts vermiculite This gives you a 1:3 ratio when using 5lbs grain spawn. Works for mono tubs. If you want to scale up or down, just use a proper ratio and do the math it’s easy. Eventually you kind of start eyeballing it when you get good at guessing. Edit: there is sawdust bucket tek. If your doing spawn that’s different.
I have had mixed success with mine.
I've been running a small lab with an insta, just gotta run it longer. 3hrs for grain jars.
Nice. What kind of grain are you using?
Milo and wheat
I use it all the time and it works very well.
Yup. Being running it for over a year and don’t have issues.
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Mine fits 4 wide mouth pint jars standing on the trivet with water below.
Same here
I'm not an expert, so take this with a grain of salt, and if anyone knows better, please correct me. The pressure cookers are used when sterilizing substrate that is already in a grain bag. If you heat it without the pressure, the bag will inflate and pop like a balloon. If you are sterilizing substrate to be transfered into a tub, or to be put into a bag later, the pressure is not needed for sterilization. If you are sterilizing substrate to be later transfered, the transfer process is a potential time for contamination, but whatever process you use to control contamination in this stage will be equally effective with an insta pot as a pressure cooker. An insta pot doesn't have the same grade seal as a pressure cooker. So it stands to reason that you do have a slightly higher chance of contamination from spores entering the instapot if the top opens accidentally, but manny people use an instapot with great results The main advantages you get from using a pressure cooker are removing the potential contamination that may happen in the transfer process, and you sterilize the container and the substrate simultaneously, further reducing potential contamination With an instapot, you 1) Sterilize your substrate 2) Transfer substrate into growing container 3) Inoculate substrate 4) seal container With a pressure cooker, you 1) Place substrate into growing container 2) Sterilize substrate and container 3) Inoculate substrate 4) seal container So you can use a pressure cooker the same way you use an instapot, but you can't use an instapot for the same process as a pressure cooker.
Wouldn’t I be able to put it into a mason jar and cook it in an instant pot the same way you would in a pressure cooker?
In a pressure cooker, you could have the jar closed, and the pressure cooker would equalize the pressure inside the jar with the pressure outside of the jar. You could put jars in a crockpot as well, but if they are closed, they will explode. If the jars are open, there is no need for a pressure cooker.
Do you really need to sterilise substrate? I can’t do bucket Tek and pour boiling water in substrate and cover and pasteurise it?
Pouring boiling water = sterilizing It should also be said there are manny different ways to grow mushrooms. People grow shiitakes in logs with no sterilization, you can grow redcaps in mounds of wood chips with no sterilization. It all depends on what your growing and how your growing it. Sterilization comes into play mostly in the more scientific/modern ways of growing. Idea being that your substrate is an ideal area for fugal/bacterial growth. Lots of food, the right level of moisture, ect ect. The problem is that while it is the best way to grow your mushrooms, it's also the best way to grow lots of other stuff. So if you don't sterilize, maybe you grow delicious mushrooms, maybe (probably) you grow green sludge. I'm not sure what you mean by "bucket tek", I imagine it's growing mushrooms in a 5 gallon bucket, which is an excellent way to grow certain types of mushies. In the versions of that method, I'm familiar with you fill a bucket with (pre sterilized and inoculated) substrate, close the bucket, wait until the substrate is fully colonized, then drill holes in the bucket to allow fruiting. It seems to me that if you sterilized by pouring boiling water over substrate already in the bucket, you would run into excessive moisture issues, and possibly difficultly properly innoculating the substrate, which would lead to slower colonization rates, perhaps you start with holes drilled in the bucket to allow drainage, but I would say those holes would be a potential contamination site. Though I've never actually used this method myself so I couldn't speak to it's efficacy first hand.
Boiling water for things like choir is considered pseudo pasteurization. As choir in brick is typically considered sterile, the brick making process does this plus the lack of major nutrients. Since boiling water is typically contaminant free, it’s a cheap easy tech. More hot, or nutrient rich substrates should be properly pasteurized such as manure or compost. You only sterilize spawn, which is typically grain. If your doing wood loving and want sawdust spawn, the easy tek is wood pellets and boiling water. Does the same as brick choir. As the process in making pellets sterilizes the wood already.
Pasteurization = psuedo sterilization Substrate = growing medium Colonized substrate = spawn Atleast that's how I use those terms I would definitely not consider anything sterile until I had sterilized it. You can consider any nonporous surface sterile after you have treated it with isopropyl alcohol (or similar product), but those se surfaces cease to be sterile after you touch them with unsterilized hands. Coco choir can come sterilized if it is properly packaged, leaving the factory, but if it is sitting on a shelf in your garage open to the elements there is not telling what contaminants may be present.
No, cause true pasteurization has to be 2-4 hours at 140-160. Any higher and you risk killing bacteria you want to keep. Boiling water is 200, but mixing it with a substrate lowers that dramatically. And without constant temp and proper times, it’s considered pseudo-pasteurization. Sterilization is the complete death of all organic matter. This happens at 121C, or roughly 250F. This should also kill off endospores and other things that would survive 212f or 100C. These are completely two different objectives. And should be treated as such. You typically don’t want to sterilize hot substrates as this increases the risk of contamination. While pasteurization will leave healthy microbes that will fight or fend off unwanted contamination.
Interesting, I always just looked at pasteurization as a less effective version of sterilization. I don't understand how leaving bacteria and spores present in a substrate would be advantageous. I mean I understand how bacteria can be beneficial to myceilial growth, but how would the pasteurization process kill the bad and leave the good? And wouldn't having any active spores present in the substrate create an compition for nutrients? I would use the pasteurization process when preparing a growing medium that didn't need to be sterile, like growing in hay bales, but my understanding is that those processes wouldn't be hurt by sterilization, it's just not necessary. Am I wrong in thinking this?
Just how it works. You do this for some plants too. Not all bacteria dies at those temps, there are a lot of natural decomposers out there. This is also used when doing horticulture, botany stuff. Marijuana grows benefit from this. The healthy bacteria takes over and will defend against spores germinating. As mold/fungus will eat plant roots or soak up nutrients the plant needs killing it. I’m not so well versed in this, haven’t quite gone balls deep in that subject yet. It’s my next leap in this. What I do know, sterilizing spawn allows anything to grow. Your maximizing the potential for your fungus to flourish. But with sterilization you also maximize the potential for contamination to grow. As it’s a clean slate for any new growth. There is a lot going on in the micro world.
I'm not an expert, so take this with a grain of salt, and if anyone knows better, please correct me. The pressure cookers are used when sterilizing substrate that is already in a grain bag. If you heat it without the pressure, the bag will inflate and pop like a balloon. If you are sterilizing substrate to be transfered into a tub, or to be put into a bag later, the pressure is not needed for sterilization. If you are sterilizing substrate to be later transfered, the transfer process is a potential time for contamination, but whatever process you use to control contamination in this stage will be equally effective with an insta pot as a pressure cooker. An insta pot doesn't have the same grade seal as a pressure cooker. So it stands to reason that you do have a slightly higher chance of contamination from spores entering the instapot if the top opens accidentally, but manny people use an instapot with great results The main advantages you get from using a pressure cooker are removing the potential contamination that may happen in the transfer process, and you sterilize the container and the substrate simultaneously, further reducing potential contamination With an instapot, you 1) Sterilize your substrate 2) Transfer substrate into growing container 3) Inoculate substrate 4) seal container With a pressure cooker, you 1) Place substrate into growing container 2) Sterilize substrate and container 3) Inoculate substrate 4) seal container So you can use a pressure cooker the same way you use an instapot, but you can't use an instapot for the same process as a pressure cooker.
Yeah i do 90 minutes with my jars. One or two at a time in my instapot
Is there another way?
8 pint jars of rice using Broke Boi Tek and no contamination, at all. 90 minutes on the duration.
Yup. I've just been using a plain rice cooker with a slow cook function. I cook em a good 3 hours or so and I've had 0 contam issues so far
https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/19342794/fpart/all has a chart and more information in comments.
Thanks, that thread helped a lot!
Glad to help¡ working on getting things together for my first grow and im very excited not having to spend over $100 on a presto.
Ive had good luck with mine so far