Bucket TEK Pasteurization: How to prep your Bulk Substrate!

welcome back to the fungi Academy lab today we're going to be making some pasturized bulk substrate for making monot tubs method we like to use is called the bucket Tech came across it on shumer years ago we find it works really well it's very simple for beginners and about if you're using a 60 54q mono tub one bucket is the perfect size so this is just the perfect way we like to go about it to keep it simple for beginner students all right let's get started the main ingredient in our bulk substrate recipe is Coco core we use cocoa core cuz it's non-nutritive so that means it's difficult for other contaminants to jump in our tub and eat it cuz there's not much to eat it's also great at retaining water which is the most important part when you're growing mushrooms in a monot tub you want a high hydration content because mushrooms especially of the cilos variety or species are 90% water so we need lots of water to get lots of mushrooms and for this bucket Tech we're going to use 650 g of Coco core so you just break up little pieces it doesn't have to be really small once this gets hydrated it expands and breaks apart and you'll see when we add water we mix it up very well so don't worry about getting it super fine it will fall apart and break apart once it's hydrated the next ingredient we use is vermiculite it's very good for creating uh paracity so the mycelium is able to move throughout the substrate with a enough space and it's not too jammed in so it's able to breathe it's able to move it's able to grow this is also non-nutritive it's also very cheap we use two quarts that ends up being about 300 G um I use 350 just so I can get it to a th000 and the numbers are very uh easy to calculate the next piece of the the CBG recipe is gypsum so gypsum is calcium sulfate it's really great for as a pH buffer and it's also just super awesome because it's calcium and sulfur and those are great mineral resources that your myum loves it encourages faster growth encourages less contamination so I've mentioned it before I'll mention it again we add gypsum in pretty much every part of our grow process from agar liquid cultures grains to bulk substrate so with gypsum you just want to do with a bulk substrate about 5% so if we have 650 cocoa core 350 vermiculate then 5% of a th000 is 50 so it's 50 g of chipumk you [Music] Garrett so we've got a pot of water heating for the recipe that we've talked about I'll say it one more time 650 g of cocoa Core 2 quart of vermiculite which is around 300 to 350 G 50 g of gypsum of water now you can use four I always go a little more so I can squeeze when I'm making my tub and make sure I have the Field capacity but for this recipe four quarts is enough I'm just a little finicky so I'm going to use 5 quarts so now we're heating up those 5 quarts of water I've got this thermometer to keep an eye on the temperature what we want to get it up to is about 175 to 180 F once it hits that temperature we'll me mediately cut the gas what I like to do is I'll pour half of the water into the bucket with our mixture of the cocoa core and vermiculite and everything so I'll pour half the water in there let it sit for about 10 to 15 seconds so that cocoa core will soak up all the water and break apart I'll mix it I'll immediately get the second half of the water pour it in mix it and then I measure the temperature of the middle of the substrate and what I'm looking for is it to be around 160 to 155 f if it's above 155 you're good to go you put the top on really quickly make sure the seal it's sealed and then I like to put it in a blanket or a sleeping bag just to maintain that temperature usually I do this in the evening or night and then I'll let it sit overnight and then I'll make my tub in the morning because then it will be pasturized and it will have cooled down so you're not uh shocking the mycelium why do we pasteurize instead of sterilize there's a few reasons you buy p izing we keep around 20% of the microbial life alive in this substrate and that while it would seem is uh would lead to higher rates of contamination it actually helps buffer and serve as kind of like we explained at the funy Academy like a bouncer that's fighting off contaminants um so they can't just land on your substrate and take over that's the bucket Tech that's how we do it at the fungi Academy this is a great way to get started with a very beginner recipe once you get this dialed in you can move into manure based substrates and things like that and you can add more ingredients and you can get really detailed and finicky and and that's great but this is just a great kind of basine recipe to work from for beginners so thanks for joining us and we'll see you in the next video [Music] ciao

Channel: Fungi Academy

Views: 107,203

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Id: EF82VEU7Qoc

Length: 5min 22sec (322 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 10 2022