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