Hey tyler

How do you store long term the pink oyster strain? Does is support cryogenic freezing?

thanks

No grain, no pain! The future is liquid!

I woke up to the Agar Slurry video after a late night of churning out a large percentage of our culture library into slurries. And I wish I would have watched the video first, because pint jars are a much better idea than the quarts I've been using..

We've pretty much moved to liquid spawn (liquid innoculant, pshh) for all our smaller bags (2 and 5#). I plan for an extra couple weeks of colonization on the shelf with the liquid and only use sterilized, not pasteurized sub. There seems to be a slight yield decrease with most varieties (not lions) vs. grain, but tossing in some grain or feed pellets with the combo pellets seems to make up for this. An enriched combo pellet may be ideal for a liquid future...

I started trials last night of liquid culture vs agar slurry inoculation to combo pellets, as I've pretty much only used the agar slurry to noc up liquid culture, then noc the bulk with the LC. This gets the LC going super quick.

Anyways, some notes from my experience:

Species:

-Lion's and chestnuts work great, as does Ganoderma, but the reishis will creep up on you. It seems to do nothing for ~3 weeks, then quickly colonizes the bag. I've hydrated combo pellets with pure liquid culture (lions and chestnuts), no pasteurization, open air pour and had success with 0 visible contams. That's a lotta liquid though!

-Pio's work well, just a little slow, and seem to take off way faster on straw.

-I don't have as much experience with shiitakes, but they have been inoculating bulk sub in China with shiitake liquid spawn for decades.

-Oysters don't take off as well from liquid, with the exception of eryngii. It seems to take 1.5 months on the shelf with no shaking for most oysters, and they get a little pissy. Some improvement seen with some straw and feed pellets in with the MM combo pellets.

Rates that seem to work well:

-1 90mm plate to 120ml H2O

-60ml agar slurry to 4L LC to 200L LC

-30ml LC to 2# master's mix, 60ml to 5# and 120-300ml to 10#.

Lions don't seem to mind the added moisture, but everything else seems to do better on a bit dryer sub. Even factoring in the added liquid to the final moisture.

Tips: 

-glue/silicone that gasket onto the blender base

- definitely use aerated culture if going direct to bulk

- horizon bags, or anything with a bit more air exchange helps

- pour thin plates for agar slurries, otherwise you'll make an LC syringe with all that extra agar and it will get real thick if not used right away

Hello! Any news about sending your cultures in Europe?

Hey guys,
I started watching the deep dive on Di-mon. Super stoked y`all are tackling these more complex and fascinating topics and simplifying it just enough so more of us who haven't gone into the more advanced aspects can also get stoked about it.

I heard something in the beginning that I wasn't sure was correct, so I wanted to check, cause maybe my own understanding is off. 

Towards the beginning, Gregory said something along the lines of "If they like each other, they will become dikaryotic There will be plasmogamy, but won't be fusion of cytoplasm, just sharing of nucleus." Did he mean there won't be fusion of nucleus, just sharing of cytoplasm? My understanding was that with plasmogamy there is sharing of protoplast (cytoplasm and organelles) but not yet the fusion of nuclei, which happens during karyogamy. 

Does anyone have experience sending strains abroad (not through a company)? I feel like they are gonna get very suspicious at customs, since it is biological material, and they won't let it through. 
I want to send cultures to Portugal. My plan is to try both by mail and, if that fails, in my suitcase. The method I'm gonna try is 5 ml cryovials with agar plugs in distilled water, but if there is a better method to fly under the radar, I would like to know.
Anyone have specific tips or experience with this?
I appreciate it as always.

Hey CapnStem. Do you guys have any leads on possibly tincture people looking for Cordyceps within New England? I've got quite a bit. Also have a lot of space to grow a crazy amount if I really needed to. 

Hope everyone had an Amazing April 20th up there

🤘☮️🤘

I'm looking for more information on CNS's hericium strains. With summer coming up, I'm looking for something that's a little more heat tolerant, something that can handle 80F if necessary.  Which CNS  Hericium strain(s) would you recommend? HE 9514, HE CNS, or HELP!?  

Y’all’s new video on LC had me thinking about a few things I’ve been messing with. One, is there any real problem with pouring LC over injecting it? Using the needles seems wasteful and a contamination risk in some ways. Especially reusing without a zapper. 

Two, Can you feed an LC jar with fresh broth, like kombucha? I’ve used lc from an old jar to make a new one. I know you are loosing a generation vs going back to the master plate but sometimes it seems easier and not necessary if it’s right out of Cryo

Mushroom Coffee/Koffee Coughee Crowd source:

The biggest coffee roaster in our region has reached out about doing a mushroom coffee.  I'm trying to figure out our wholesale pricing and it led me down this rabbit hole.  We have been making mushroom chai tea and extracts that you can put in coffee but it's as good as a supplement and I have been recommending people put it into their cup even tho it's not as fine as commercial sand blasted stuff.  

Putting it into a drip/pour over filter kinda clogged it.  I was wondering if anyone knows if companies that make mushroom coffee with coffee have a courser grind to the mushrooms to help it not clog the filter and do they extract the mushroom beforehand like boiling or pressure cooking or let the hot water do the extraction?

I've been telling people to drink or eat as much of the chunks as they want in our current products but I've been wondering once it's an extract do you get the whole value of it by drinking the tea made with it or do you have to consume the mushrooms to get the full dose?

In order words,  does the mushroom getting brewed or pre-extracted getting brew still pass the benefits through to the coffee?

Hey!

I was watching the deep dive episode on blotch and how you should treat the water with the pond fogger in it with 150-250 ppm of bleach.

I contacted a company that is selling Clo2 to get the dilution right.

However, the chemist advised against using it in the vat of water that humidifies the fruiting room, as it could damage the mycelium.

Any thoughts on this?  Thanks for the great content!