We haven't ventured down this route but cactus hat mushrooms has a lions mane blend coffee that we use here at the office and he sells. I don't know his exact process but it appears to just be grinded up fruiting bodies mixed in with the coffee grounds and then letting the hot water do the extraction. I think in reality it will transfer a little taste and some of the benefits but it wouldn't be anything close to say a tincture or supplement. In general just the more you are able to grind the mushroom and closer to say a dust then more of it's benefits would be transferred through into the coffee. Just the idea of more surface area the finer the grind.

Phillipe Kenny Also from talking to Erik the first place to start is going to be getting that temperature to be in a more stable state instead of fluctuating so drastically. Then as you said, make sure that hydration rate is nice and solid to ensure full coverage of the pellets.

Phillipe Kenny In terms of stroma we have specifically seen it across all oyster strains and no others (except a white beech bag recently). I don't have an accurate rate of stroma appearing from non stroma spawn but it does certainly help. Before we have tried to use master spawn with small stroma spots to see if it is viable but it does translate to more stroma in the fruiting block and in the spawn blocks. Recap, if spawn has stroma it will translate more into the fruiting block, and yes stroma is pretty oyster specific.

Phillipe Kenny for blue oysters, they don't go through a stage of sclerotia, they will just make a denser bundle that is currently forming into the fruiting body. For king oyster specifically tubers, they go through a stage of creating that hard sclerotia from which a fruiting body evolves from. Also I'm pretty sure morels undergo this process of the sclerotia formation.

hope this helps! i'll try to get Erik to hop on and see if he has any extra insights

Right off the bat those very hard spots of mycelium where you are also seeing some discoloration is stroma forming and already formed. The not fully colonized blocks that are getting problems would be more likely due to some type of contamination that the mycelium is competing with. It appears on those not fully colonized blocks, that lots of overlay is happening on the edges of growth. This could be due to the lack of moisture and dryness with the pellets as well, causing damage to the mycelium. The more fully colonized block with large yellow spots is just a forsure sign of stroma which we are trying to find solutions for as well. Only real concern there is the flucuation of 55-75 as that is quite the gap for a mushroom to remain in a constant state of growth. Where on the lower end it can slow down growth and if persisting in that higher end could lead to heat damge and overlay. We have noticed that on blocks that develop stroma they rip a lot hotter than a normal healthy block. 

Since the strain is from the wild it might be important to identify the type of substrate on which it was growing on (oak, cedar, pine, the ground itself etc..) The wild strain fruited on that substrate in nature so it has most likely adapted to producing fruiting bodies on that specific substrate. This will just be wild strain to wild strain as some might be more adept at being cultivated with a normal masters mix and some might just be lacking in ability to produce fruiting bodies without that natural key, which caused it to fruit in nature. That's really my only insight on it, but I hope that helps. Pretty much just figuring out what that fruiting body trigger may be for the wild strain, and it's substrate in nature is always a good place to start.

Swain Just to clarify here, it's not a total runtime of 35 minutes, it is 35 minutes once all of the substrate has reached temp. People saying 2-3 hours is them saying it takes that first hour and a half or 2 hours for all the substrate to reach temp. and then they start the timer of 25-35 minutes depending on your preference. Standard practice is keep at sterilization temp. for 25 minutes but we recommend 35 minutes just to be safe. If you want to aim for lower times then you would need a data logger so you can track and see how the temp. is changing overtime and then you can dial in the exact time.

A cover will help to preserve the lifespan of your filter. This will just stop dust or any possible spores from getting into the filter and possibly propagating inside of the HEPA filter. I think that the setup is possible to work in, just making sure that all work is done in front of that HEPA filter. You don't have to run it all the time but before starting to work you will want the filter to be running for about 15-20 minutes to cycle through the air and "clean" the air in the room.

Swain I don't know if it's quite a big deal as the pasteurizer because that requires the steam to reach all around, while a pressure cooker makes the space inside hot and up to temp. In general though the more substrate in a space the longer it should take for the entirety of it to come up and reach temp as there is more heat transfer that has to take place.