How to Make Liquid Culture the Easy Way: A Magical Hack for DIY Mushroom Cultivation

hi folks thanks for joining me today in this video I'd like to show you how to make liquid culture the easy way never give up [Music] in my first YouTube video I described a process for making liquid culture that I use to start from an augar plate and it's a really really effective technique but what I didn't adequately emphasize in that video is that it relies heavily on sterile equipment and techniques specifically it's very very difficult to successfully make liquid culture using the blender method that I described in that video without a laminar Flo Hood what I want to tell you about today is a much simpler quicker easier process that you can use to turn any old liquid culture that you buy on the internet into not only a bunch of grain spawn that you can use to grow mushrooms but also a whole new batch of liquid culture that you can Brew at home keeping your ref refigerator and pull from for weeks or even months to come first I'll quickly go over the things that you'll need and then I'll show you a basic recipe and we'll get on to sterilization so before we just Dive Right In I'll clarify a little bit about what liquid culture actually is liquid culture is melium that we're actually growing in liquid usually just a little bit of sugar water now I'll show you how to do all of this but it's important to understand that we're starting from a single isolated fungal organism and that fungus is growing in in the liquid in such a way that the melium is constantly broken apart into these individual little clusters of cells what makes liquid culture so valuable for mushroom cultivation is that every single one of those little clusters of cells becomes its own unique satellite of growth once we add it to grain spawn or put it into mushroom substrate every single one of those little satellites will then grow together and they'll fuse back into a single unified organism it's really beautiful to watch and it's the reason that liquid culture is the most efficient way to expand fungal biomass for mushroom cultivation obviously if you want to grow liquid culture from a liquid culture that's where you got to start you can go to the funga shop for a selection of gourmet and medicinal varieties and if you're in the market for a wider selection I highly recommend that you go check out the sponsor of today's video true blue genetics for an unbelievably vast selection really great pricing and Incredibly consistent sterile liquid culture really love those guys and I'm sure you will too make sure you use funga at checkout if you're interested now the next things you're going to need besides all of the ingredients which I'll go over shortly is specifically a vessel to cook your liquid culture in now for this I really prefer a 1 quart regular Mouth Mason jar as you can see my mason jar has a modified lid and this lid has an injection Port that's just a glob of silicone that you can use to inject your liquid culture syringe into the jar after it's been sterilized to prevent anything from being able to go into that jar there's also a sterile air filter under that lid I made a whole video on how to prepare these Lids go check out injection Port Lids on my channel once you've got your jar and your airport lid you'll also want to put something down in there uh that will help break up the mycelium as you're incubating it personally I prefer to use a magnetic stir bar and a magnetic stir plate however when you're doing this by yourself at home you don't necessarily want to invest even the $25 in a cheap stir plate even a marble or any like chunk of a glass a rock it's going to get sterilized so really anything that's in there will be fine to circulate and break up to my celium this is a sterile process so you're also going to need a sterilizer instant pot works really well for this um most people just start out with a basic Presto caner pressure cooker um got a whole video on sterilization equipment so make sure to go check that out if that's something that's new to you uh we also need a variety of different ingredients the most important of all being water water is a very important ingredient in mushroom cultivation and it turns out to be a very precious resource here on the planet oracus if you are using regular tap water for this process and it doesn't work that's the first thing you should change I personally get Spring Water shipped in it's kind of a pain if you have a well that's ideal if you have a friend with a well that's ideal but the main thing is use some charcoal filtration or just give it 24 hours for your tap water to dechlorinate if that's your route the next most important ingredient ingredient is sugar and there's a lot of different sugars you can use people use honey corn dextrose um rice syrup table sugar a lot of people like to just use corn syrup um I personally always have just stuck with your good old light dry malt extract I think this is a really really wonderful basic highly fermentable sugar for liquid culture recipes the sugar that you use is not really that important what's really important is the concentration we want 2% sugar for this batch I'm going to be Brewing half a liter of liquid culture which will leave plenty of room in the jar for stirring that culture around so 2% sugar for 500 M of water would be 10 g of sugar sugar is the main food that we're feeding our fungus in this case but it's always good to give it both a little bit more variety in its nutritional sources and I think that it's incredibly helpful to give it a little taste of the food that you're going to be feeding it later on the easiest way to do this in my opinion is to use an old coffee grinder or I have personally come to really enjoy using a Magic Bullet so I'm going to be using Ry grain to um grow my grain spawn with this liquid culture afterwards so I'm going to throw a couple of pinches of Ry grain into the hopper here I'm also then going to be spawning that Ry grain into hardwood sawdust because I'm growing uh Ganoderma poly chrum here this is a bronze RI that I cloned from um here in the valley in wallow Walo where I live uh it's a very very beautiful medicinal mushroom that uh was growing on a maple tree and prefers a variety of different Hardwoods I'm also a big fan of potato flakes I put them in just for fun mostly you can put those right in the jar they'll dissolve now this is a wood loving mushroom uh it's not generally something you would find growing in Cow Patties however I know many of you are interested in dung loving mushrooms um so just a nod to you we'll throw a little bit of the blessing poop in there one ingredient that I find incredibly helpful in all liquid culture and augar media recipes is a little bit of nutritional yeast and this specifically is organic nutritional yeast just one little tiny pinch is enough but it confers a lot of vitamins and peptones and other things that uh support the growth of the the fungus I also am going to be specifically using Alder so I'll throw in a little bit of that I know I already got some of the hardwood in there but you know variety can't hurt and last but not least uh always just a pinch of gypsum chop chop chop ch to [Music] to once you've mixed the dry ingredients measure and add your water and stir until the sugars are completely dissolved making sure to get any chunks that are stuck to the bottom wipe the rim of the jar with a damp towel so no sugar lingers there to entice competitors then put on your filtered injection Port lid making sure to leave it a little loose for the pressure cooker it's also a good idea to cover the jar with a piece piece of aluminum [Music] foil next it's time to load your pressure cooker if you're new to this process make sure to check out my video on sterilization equipment and follow the instructions carefully as pressure cookers can be quite dangerous use a rack to keep your jar from resting on the bottom of the pressure cooker I use some 1 and 1/2 in stainless steel carriage bolts to create a little extra space add water to the pressure cooker according to the manufacturer's instructions this is usually about 2 [Music] quarts place the pressure cooker over high heat and allow it to heat up until it's steadily releasing Steam for several minutes before placing the Shaker weight on top and bringing it up to a full 15 psi of pressure once it begins to Rattle turn it down and set your timer for 30 5 minutes if you overcook it the sugars in the water will caramelize and become inedible to the fungus once the time's up turn off your pressure cooker and allow it to gradually cool until it reaches atmospheric pressure if it continues to cool Beyond this point the pressure cooker will begin to draw vacuum pulling in dirty outside air for best results you'll want to open the pressure cooker while it's still hot and tighten the lid down right away using some kind of heat resistant glove this way the sterile air filter will seal tightly and protect the sterilized liquid as it gradually cools let the sterilized jar cool completely before moving on to inoculating it with your liquid culture syringe you'll only need a very small amount usually 1 to 2 milliliters is sufficient so you can save the rest and use it to make grain spawn or to make more culture in the future make sure to check out my video on how to use a liquid culture syringe for more information about the inoculation process as always visit us at the funga shop for all your Gourmet and medicinal mushroom needs and make sure to go visit our partners and the sponsor of today's video at true bluene genetics. org for a huge selection of the most consistent clean vigorous liquid culture on the market make sure to use the coupon code fungia at checkout if you used a magnetic stir bar and you have a stir plate go ahead and start that up now try to get it set to the lowest possible setting that still keeps the liquid moving constantly otherwise just make sure to agitate it manually at least twice per day by gently swirling the jar as you do this try not to Splash too much liquid culture on the filter you'll want to incubate your liquid culture at least at room temperature I keep my laboratory set at a steady 75° you'll incubate for about 1 to 2 weeks or until the jar looks like it's full of thick chunky mycelium now it's ready to use to inoculate grain spawn fill syringes or to keep it in the refrigerator for later now that we've gone through that process few things that I want to cover here first I want to talk about storage liquid culture stores best in the fridge however you want to make sure that when you're using a filter lid that you cover it I usually actually sterilize a separate lid under lamon or flow put a just a regular jar lid on there and I I use some paraph film to seal it completely but if you're just doing this sort of the DIY fashion that I've showed you in this video you can just cover it with a piece of aluminum foil um or something just to prevent condensation from building up moisture around that filter I've actually had this happen where I had mold that could grow through the filter uh that formed on the top of the jar and then release spores inside and ruin the liquid culture as long as it remains clean the liquid culture can actually stay totally viable in the fridge for a very very long time the beauty of this is that you can make one jar and then you can pull small amounts of that liquid culture out of the jar using the syringe the exact same way that you inoculated it in the first place you could even pull quite a few of these syringes and then store them in the fridge and use them one at a time another thing that I think is worth mentioning is it's quite helpful to use a large amount of liquid culture when you're inoculating your Gra spawn for faster growth rates and just in general for healthier mycelial growth when you're purchasing liquid culture off of the internet you're usually trying to really stretch it as far as you can because you only have so much but now that you have an abundance go ahead and use it use 10 milliliters or more for a three to four pound bag of grain or maybe half of a syringe for a mason jar of grain spawn you'll see a a really really remarkable difference in growth rates if you do it that way while your liquid culture is fermenting it's it's really good to keep an eye out for contamination but unlike with grain and with augar it can be very difficult to spot in liquid culture the main way that you're going to be able to tell whether your culture is clean is to test a small amount of it before you use the whole batch and spoil a bunch of grain so usually I streak test it on an augar plate and I also generally add a small amount or I'll inoculate one jar of grain or one one bag before I do a whole run just to make sure that there isn't any bacteria or Yeast or mold that's somehow found its way into that jar now if you're interested in more about inoculation how to make grain spawn all of these other parts of the mushroom cultivation process um I've got some videos about how to use a liquid culture syringe I'm working on a lot of others so make sure to check out the rest of the channel there's just a couple more things I want to mention or at least touch on in this video and one of those is that if you're going from liquid culture syringe into liquid culture it's best to only do that transfer once the reasons for this are more just for my personal experience than anything I've been able to like prove or establish but I can tell you that each time you transfer the liquid culture for one thing it significantly increases the rates of contamination and I also just I have this feeling that the liquid fermentation process is a very stressful time in the life cycle of the fungus they're really not evolved to live in fast moving liquid there are a lot of things that are like bacteria and yeast and so going from a liquid culture into another liquid culture you're further stressing the fungus you're not giving it time to recover and then you're also creating a larger window of opportunity for other organisms to get in there so generally what I recommend is use a small amount of liquid culture to create a master culture batch and continue to use that as long as you can and then either go back to that original liquid culture to do the same thing again or make sure that you plate it out onto an augar plate or you put it into some grain spawn or maybe you clone one of the mushrooms that grew because every single one of those will allow the mycelium time to kind of recuperate from the stressful moment you'll be capturing in a state of much more wild and vigorous growth and that's the point that you want to bring it back into the liquid fermentation stage thanks so much for checking out this video folks I hope it's been helpful for you my name is Paul Lynn and my goal here is to create free accessible comprehensive mushroom cultivation education I think mushroom cultivation is a really important part of how we can have a deeper relationship not only with our food and with our medicine but also with our world so it's really important to me to be able to share this as widely as possible and it means a lot to have your support if you are interested in any grain spawn all-in-one grow kits any liquid cultures on the funga website at fungia dolie also make sure to go check out our partners over at True Blue genetics because not only do they have an unbelievably huge selection in a really beautiful fungal library that they've been curating for a long time they produce some of the most clean vigorous LC I've come across at a very very reasonable price and even more affordable if you use that coupon code funga at checkout not only will that give you 20% off your purchase it'll also help us to continue to be able to create these videos for you I also want to let you know I think it's pretty cool they've got a scholarship program so if you reach out to them uh you fill out a short application they'll also sometimes Pro provide free and reduced cost liquid culture to those of you who are struggling to afford access to these fungal genetics so make sure to go check out true blue and make sure to check out the rest of the videos on this channel of course hit that like subscribe appreciate you and I'll catch you on the next [Music] one [Music] [Music] Come tempester traderma Sail on my cities

Channel: Fungaia

Views: 51,640

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Id: ybOImNKrOaY

Length: 17min 24sec (1044 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 12 2024