We are recently going over hydration standards and experiments for grain hydration and at first I fell into the same trap! it's not as truly intuitive of a calculation. for grain hydration you divide the weight of water by the total weight of wet grain (H20 lb / total wet grain lb.) so in that case above it would be 6/16 = 0.375 for grain hydration. Granted it's oats so the natural hydration is about 15%. 10x.85 = 8.5 lbs of starting dry grain.

Meaning you gained 7.5lbs of water, so the closer calculation would be 7.5/16 = 0.468 or roughly 47% hydration. In our trials a full 24h soak of oats went from 40lb to 80lb consistently, and then a 15 minute boil only raised us up to 82lbs so we just did the soak and then a sterilize or pasteurize and the grains have been performing great!

Tyler Yeah forsure seems water related with the tote and well water but we have been seeing tons of success with UV cleaning so that may be a nice little bandaid while you are working on getting the new water system. Also great to hear about the insulated padding I don't think anyone has ever messaged back about reusing them so i'll have to send word to our packing manager😂

Alrighty, if there is a problem going on with trich contamination then it would be best to ensure your oats are actually achieving the 200f mark, granted if you are running a 24h cycle I would imagine the oats are achieving this standard. But any type of data about the internal temp of your spawn would be great.

For hydration of grain before hand, Oats are very versatile and I have found that an overnight soak achieves a 50% hydration rate and then when pasteurized are free of contam. My only other thought with dry bagging and then pasteurizing is that part of that process will be solely dedicated to raising the temperature of your water with grains rather than the entirety of time being dedicated to raising the temp of grains already filled with water. Couple questions how hydrated are your oats after pasteurizing? is any bursting occurring? and is it a complete take over of trich or appearing after an amount of time? 

Yep, we reuse our suits. Nothing special we just run them through the autoclave and store them in the clean lab. I would imagine if using a traditional washer some bleach or anti-bacterial detergents would be best to prevent any sneaky contams.

Great video!

I don't know the most about rosecomb mutations but yes it seems to originate from water sources, either being a bacterial thing or just chemicals in the water causing some loss of genetic integrity. Clean filtered water always helps and for our clean room we have all epoxy floors for sealing and ease of cleaning. Would love to see some pics!

I think the positive pressure idea would definitely help and shouldn't affect the sterility of your room. It would just be making sure that positive pressure is actually taking place, but based on the size of the room and your flowhood I imagine that would be easy to create. A grow tent can help to clean the air (especially with a purifier) and then just checking on the pre-filter regularly. Also as you mentioned, maybe just too much iso is being used. I usually do a big spray and wipe down all working surfaces and then after that just minimal 1 or 2 spritz for gloves as I work. Granted, I have never measured the amount of iso that I use in a regular day but i'll keep track and get back to you on that.

WOOO keep on chuggin along! is that the stamets bible I see??

Please contact sales@capnstem.com with the 12 cultures you would like to receive and your CC 2.0 purchase order so that our books can confirm. We don't have a direct form as the culture bank is constantly changing, along with any fresh cultures that need to be started if our current lots are on the older side. We are putting together a list of all available and even experimental cultures for people to choose from and it will be on the next newsletter. Sorry for the inconvenience and thank you for the support

Please contact sales@capnstem.com with the 12 cultures you would like to receive and your CC 2.0 purchase order so that our books can confirm. We don't have a direct form as the culture bank is constantly changing, along with any fresh cultures that need to be started if our current lots are on the older side. We are putting together a list of all available and even experimental cultures for people to choose from and it will be on the next newsletter. Sorry for the inconvenience and thank you for the support