Hey George, so after endless amounts of transfers in a day sterilizing tweezers or a scalpel in the red hot ceramic sterilizer, agar goop gets all gummed up on the transfer utensils, so after each transfer we dunk our tools in alcohol to get the agar goop off the utensils before putting them into the ceramic sterilizer again. This way we don't bake sticky, crusty agar goop onto the transfer tools, because that would be a contamination vector without a doubt. Also having done that dance without the alcohol when you cool the transfer tools in the agar and it is covered is blacked agar goop, it splatters all over the top of the agar dish causing a gnarly splattering of black debris.  Maybe we should do a Lab protocol video?! bring back some old school Roger Rabbit style goodness to the channel?!

That’s a good point! It’s funny, i personally haven’t gone into research mode which it comes to recycling by incineration but I’m intrigued to know more!

Marcos de Alencastro Curado Filho

Thanks for putting this info out there Marcos! One of the factors not explored in bag/block cultivation that much these days is the addition and amount of calcium’s and their effect on blotch, which might be a really good experiment to go down the rabbit hole on for us here in the states. We have always added it to our spawn recipes and on and off we have added it peristaltically to substrate hyrdration, prior to sterilization…I think most folks in the states on block methods don’t add any calcium…stoked to explore it in different quantities for perhaps a deep dive comparison episode!

We haven’t yet but it would be radical to add that data to the ever growing PCR data that folks like Alan Rockefeller are building! If you want to go in on any costs for sequencing let us know! Consultations@capnstem.com

Fuck Yea! So so glad ya'll are diggin them! We have plenty more coming on a monthly basis!!!

So glad you dig the cultures! Ok so the one we sent out was from Funga Farm over in Denmark, If you check out their instagram he has a whole thing on cultivating this particular strain, pretty radical stuff, Like David Medlock, we have had a lot of luck just fruiting it outside whereas the dudes from Funga have fruiting them indoors for quite a while now!

Oh Hell Ya man! I bet he would Approve! Let us know how it Fruits!

Thank so much! So glad you dug the episodes...I think what is greatly lacking in the mushroom cultivation world is transparency when it comes to strains, that's why aside from our house strains we call em as we found em! I think you should be able to ask anyone selling strains what the hell the origin is and they should disclose such. It is the only way to get proper data from an array of suppliers. We will definitely jam into the winter strains coming up! We had mixed results with masters mix with shiitake strains, the only one that seems to be able to handle 50% soy is 3782...3790 and KOM cant quite make sense of the soy, but there are ways to cut it and say get your masters mix down to 20-30% soy which is similar to a traditional shiitake mix which would be 20-30% wheat midd/bran. An alternative is rice bran, which is the main supplement for all of far west fungi's shiitake blocks.

Not currently...should we make one?

Chris Wilkes In terms of controllers the Hart Solenoid Valve hooks into the POLA system and its controlled via that! So its all you need!