Preparing Grain Spawn for Growing Mushrooms | A Beginner's Guide to Mushroom Growing

foreign [Music] in this video I'm showing you how to use popcorn to make mushroom grain spawn now popcorn kernels are one of my favorite grain spawns for mushroom cultivation and the main reason for that is because it's very easy to screw up it's very forgiving when you you cook it and then when you're colonizing it it I've had really good luck with it I have low contamination rates um High colonization rates and so I've really loved working with it I've actually had a harder time working with other things like Millet or wheat problems with wet rot I have a really hard time getting the moisture content right with popcorn it absorbs a lot of moisture it's hard to over cook it and I'll show you what that looks like here in a few minutes um but this is my popcorn Tech it's pretty simple what we're going to do is take popcorn kernels we're going to cook it in my insta pot I do everything in my insta pot when it's done being cooked we're going to strain it out in a colander and then we are going to lay it out on this cookie sheet covered in some paper towels so it's a pretty simple process um again hard to screw up but you the main thing you want to do is make sure you don't overcook your popcorn uh any kind of popcorn Works White kernel white kernel yellow kernel um I've used white kernel before the downside to that is it's harder to see the mycelium growth at first it really stands out on the yellow kernels like this you can do this on a stove top in the stove you don't have to use uh your insta pot you don't have to use a pressure cooker for this initial part to cook the popcorn I'm going to actually cook my popcorn in the instapot then the part that I mentioned or the part that I forgot to mention is after we lay it out on uh our pan and after we cool it in our colander we need to load these into our jars and then we need to sterilize our jars in the pressure cooker or the instapot so you will need this but you can cook your popcorn Grain on the stove top in a pot of boiling water that's basically what we're doing here I have water in here already I'm gonna have to go get a little bit more but I pour my popcorn in I put it on for 25 minutes and then I see how it is it's usually not fully done yet so then I turn on the saute mode and I'll cook it a little bit more on top but what we're looking for for these kernels which are completely hard right now we want them we want to be able to squeeze it apart with our thumbnail or like cut it in half with our thumbnail and then have it be a little a little squishy on both sides you don't want to be able to smear it completely to where it's uh complete to Mush but you do want to be able to uh cut it in half some people bite it in half instead that's what I've kind of become used to but you you want there to be some give when you squeeze it you don't want them all to be split that'll cause too much um I think it's starch uh correct carbohydrates probably somebody correct me if I'm wrong but it'll make it really sticky and it'll make it hard for uh mycelium to colonize I don't use direct measurements I have enough extra jars that if I go if I make too much I'll just prepare a bunch of jars so I'm going to cook as much of this as I can if you need a direct ratio there's some websites online that show you uh in their popcorn Tech how to measure it out precisely for uh like if you want two jars they'll tell you um you know cook a half or cook cook two cups or something like that for me I'm just going to pour it in okay who appoint that that I think when because this is going to swell up and fill up the pot more so I don't think I want to add all of this maybe I will but I have a feeling this is going to swell up and fill up this pot you can see I've got some water in there but I need some more so I want this to be completely covered in water so I'll be right back with some take a look foreign this popcorn is going to absorb a lot of water so make sure you put a lot of water in there fill it up at least an inch or two above the popcorn line all right we're ready to cook this for our first step so as a reminder what we're doing here we're cooking this in our insta pot I'm going to do it for 25 minutes I am it's putting it on the pressure cooking mode so I'm basically pressure cooking these kernels give it 25 minutes like I said that probably in for past runs that has not been enough to cook them all the way what I'll do then is take the lid off cook it on saute mode and let it boil like I would on a pot on the stove if you're using a pot you're going to do the exact same thing just fill it with boiling water put your kernels in boil it until they're to the right uh texture and consistency that we're looking for then what we're going to do once you're done cooking we're gonna drain them we're gonna shake it out really good and let the steam uh evaporate a lot of that water from there we're going to take it and spread it out onto a cookie sheet that's going to be covered in paper towels and then we're going to let it dry completely we don't want any moisture left on there that's why we're taking so many steps to dry this if you do it all when it's burning hot it will Steam and it will dry pretty quickly uh within a couple hours so then from there once it's all dried we're going to load these up into jars I guess I could have brought my jars over here too we're going to load it up into jars I think I'll probably have enough for 10 jars in there as my guess and then we're going to put tin foil on top of that load those into the insta pot and cook those for 90 minutes each at least you can do two hours two and a half hours if you want I can fit three in here at a time I'll show you what that looks like in the next stage of this right now we're letting our insta pot charge is building pressure and is going to cook those popcorn kernels for 25 minutes at that point I'll come back and I'll show you what the popcorn kernels look like and we'll take a look at what uh type of texture we're looking for in our popcorn kernels so from there we'll dry them out load them into the jars then we'll sterilize them then we'll have popcorn grain kernels that are ready to be uh colonized with mycelium with your liquid culture grain to grain transfers I'm going to be doing both uh I have some videos on making liquid cultures be sure to check those out I use Capri Sun to make all my liquid cultures and uh after doing this popcorn Tech I'm going to be doing some grain to grain transfers on the colonized grain that I have that I used the liquid cultures for so anyways we'll be back in a few minutes once this popcorn is cooked I'll show you what it looks like all right our time is up in the insta pot we did 25 minutes we're gonna release our Presser and then what we're going to do next is make sure that the um popcorn is cooked right to the right consistency or the right texture and we'll do that by squeezing it trying to cut it in half if it's not quite there yet we'll saute it for a while let it boil if you're doing this on a pot do the same thing just cook it to that right texture and then uh keep boiling it until it's completely done all right come on I thought more pressure would be out of it by now once this is done once this is done we'll take we'll take it to the sink and strain it if you have a metal calendar like this this is the best thing you can use uh it really lets it steam you can shake it really well and then you can steam out a lot of the popcorn that way before you pour it out onto the cookie sheet now I have enough popcorn here what I usually end up doing is keeping half of it in the colander half of it on here until it's completely dry and I'll let it sit for a few hours um like I'm gonna go out tonight go out to dinner uh I'll be back in a few hours and it should be all dry at that point I'll start loading it into my jars put the lid on cover it with tin foil on top put it into the pressure cooker I can put instant pot in my my case I can fit three at a time Let It Go for 90 minutes and then it'll be sterilized and ready to be colonized with your liquid culture with your colonized grain with your agar all right let's take a look fingers crossed that they're cooked not cooked too much okay good we did not overflow oh shoot lost my little rubber gasket it's not broken it just needs it comes off when it gets really hot sometimes um but you can see the popcorn filled up the insta pot luckily it didn't overflow it and you're gonna need some hot pads as well or some oven mitts or a towel use a towel quite a bit take this over to the sink because it is hot like I said um let's check on our popcorn first we'll just give it a stir I can tell by looking at it I don't think it's quite done yet they're not fully plumped they haven't fully absorbed enough water so I'm going to turn on the saute mode just to get it warmed up and boiling foreign but in the meantime these are really hot so keep that in mind if you see any of them that are split you know that you've probably overcooked it a little bit but if if some of them are split it's okay but if you see that they're split that's a good indicator that your popcorn is cooked enough here a few grains we're going to test uh we're gonna test the doneness of these to make sure they're done we're gonna see if they're done you want to be able to cut it in half with like your thumbnail which I can do now when you do that you want to be able to kind of Squish it a little bit which this is still really hard I guess if I squeeze really hard I can swish part of it but part of it's still part of it's still hard so I want to cook them a little bit longer this one like I can't cut through with my thumbnail it's not cooked quite enough I'll try to bite it yeah you can tell really well with your teeth you know because you can see how much exactly how much of the corn is cooked and when the kernel gets hard again you can tell with your fingernails but not quite as well as with your teeth so give your teeth a try if you need to but you can just squeeze the whole kernel as well it should have some give to it without smushing completely these aren't quite done yet so I turned this on it will boil the water that's in here and it will continue to cook the popcorn for a few more minutes and you can tell I can cut right through with my my thumbnail my fingernail and then the rest of the kernel is not squishy but you can you can smush it a little bit I push really really hard on a big one on a full one I should say like I can smoosh it completely that's exactly where you want it to be it's not split open but it's it's firm but you can squish it a little if you bite it yeah you can tell you can bite right through its tender it's um maybe five minutes away from being cooked into a soft exploded kernel so I need to get the rest of these out of here which I'm going to do right now I'm going to go drain them in this then I'll bring them right back here uh to show you what it looks like when I dump it out on here now when I drain them I just empty them into the sink shake them out like crazy and let the water drain off for a couple minutes so I'll be right back after doing that let me take this it's always helpful to have oven mitts so I'm going to take this over to my sink and we'll drain it all right I just drained that and that I cooked enough corn to completely fill up my colander totally full one thing you want to try to do is um that's really helpful anyways with these colanders is to shake the corn and it helps get a lot of the moisture out of there it helps it Steam but this is twofold to do that so this is what I usually do I'm going to dump half of it or so out onto the cookie sheet all right and then this is going to do the same thing these are going to steam dry in this thin layer and dry pretty quickly on the paper towels I'm gonna have a lot of jars to fill this is awesome so I got some grain to grain transfers to do all right so this is like half full now this is what I was meaning it's a really good way to get some moisture out just shake it for a while otherwise it can kind of sit in there and just stay wet at the bottom this helps distribute the moisture helps it steam off don't send them flying everywhere like I do [Laughter] all right so now I'm gonna let this sit and cool this is kind of the boring part now I have it cooked now we got to let it cool completely we want to let it to be it's it's got to be completely cool but it's got to be dry as well so the way we'll test that is we'll do kind of a paper towel test we can I can show you real quick where we just take some kernels I don't fully trust this either but it's one of the better techniques I've seen and you put some of them on a paper towel and it shouldn't leave any moisture behind and you can see it did leave some moisture on the paper towel so those are still wet those aren't dry enough to be added to our jars you want them to be as dry as possible before you add them to the jars if there's too much moisture in there before you seal them up and pressure cook them you're going to have wet rot you're going to have too much moisture in there so what I actually do I let this dry out for a few hours to where it's completely dry I'll load up my jars keep the lids off of them except for the ones that I'm pressure cooking I'll pressure cook those and some moisture will come up during the cooking process and during the sterilization process when you pull it out you will see condensation inside so I actually don't inoculate these for at least three days after I cook them I'm shaking them every day Distributing the moisture inside and trying to get it to evaporate uh and or soak up through the popcorn so the days after cooking this this is this is a slow process a long process but it works it gets the popcorn to the perfect consistency uh the perfect moisture content and it's a really great grain spawn so it's worth the wait you don't want to load these into the jar when it's too wet anyways um we're gonna let this sit and dry for a couple of hours I'll load our jars I'll start pressure cooking them and then like I just mentioned after that um for the next uh at least two to three days I'm taking the jar and just shaking it and distributing the moisture and then once it's all dry inside that's when I'll finally inoculate it so I'll show you all what that looks like in a little bit uh for right now we're going to let this dry and then we'll come back and we'll load up our jars all right this popcorn's been drying now for a couple of hours closer to three hours and I can tell now it's completely dry I don't get any moisture on my hand uh I've been mixing it up like this as well over the last few hours shaking it like this and that helps it dry out I also laid some paper towel over the cookie sheet to help dry out and draw moisture from the top of these popcorn kernels but they're all feeling very dry as well this was the next step I'm going to load up these jars but first I'll do a paper towel test just to make sure just to show you all what it looks like but we'll put some kernels in a fresh paper towel let them soak in rub them in if you want to and see if it makes any water marks we got nothing so we know the popcorn kernels are dry we can start loading up our jars so now I'm going to zoom through this part you fill up your jars about three quarters of the way full so you have room to do a shake and break later on during colonization don't fill them all the way full like this like this is a little too much so I'll empty some out get about three quarters of the way full and then move on to your next jar I like to load all of mine up first and then I'll put the tops on them once I'm done so let's Zoom through these [Music] foreign [Music] thank you I've got lids with holes in them filter patches on them that's an important part of this otherwise your jars will explode and then put the ring on all right then I'm gonna do tin foil the tin foil is really important in your instapot or pressure cooker we don't put that on your jar we'll fill with water then you're screwed on the moisture so put your tin foil on make sure it's nice and tight then I have [Music] a little wire rack that I put underneath here that keeps the jars from going directly on the bottom but I can put them in here three wide I can't fit four in here I can only fit two at a time but the water goes up maybe you gotta figure out what works for you but I've got maybe two or three inches in there um usually use more tin foil than this but this should be fine that's all I have right now and then I'm going to cook it for 90 minutes and that's going to sterilize my popcorn if I'm around and I can turn it up for another half hour give it uh a full two hours versus an hour and a half I'll do that but 90 minutes has worked just fine for me in the past without any issues so I'm going to do these three 90 minutes uh it's actually night time here so I'll do the rest tomorrow so I am going to put Lids on the rest of these jars um but we'll cook these ones we'll take them out in the morning and then we'll keep cooking the rest of them and we'll be done and ready to uh shake these out over the next couple of days let's set this for 90 minutes there we go set this for 90 minutes I'll cover up the rest of my jars and we'll call it a night it's a bit of a process to make popcorn for popcorn Tech once you do it is worth it trust me you will enjoy working with popcorn so give this 90 minutes put Lids on these and we'll come back at it tomorrow to finish things up all right we're on our last jars here I'm gonna empty these three out we have four done now I've got seven more to add to that ouch I'll show you what the condensation looks like in those jars I need to get these jars in here first um I need to get some cold water because when I add my jars to hot water they're liking to crack I don't want crack jars foreign just to give you an idea I only put a couple of inches of water in there I don't add a lot of water you don't want it to dry out but you got to have enough um you know to come up a couple inches on the jar but you don't need to have too much so again I do three jars at a time that's what fits in my insta pot this is what kind of instant pot do I have an elite Platinum I don't know I got this if I haven't mentioned it already I'm just proud of this I got this for ten dollars at a Goodwill and I've been using it for going on two years now without a problem um so I do 90 minutes the way I do that I I pick the highest setting which is 40 minutes and I can add up to 50 more so the highest I can go is 90. if I want to add an extra 30 minutes I have to come back and set it again but 90 minutes is good that's what I've done on all these I got them in there with tin foil on the tin foil keeps the jars dry without um letting moisture go inside however when you uh sterilize these it's going to be hot on the outside it's going to bring moisture out on the inside of the jar from the popcorn and you can see on the top of the jar all of that condensation is on the inside these are still really hot but um let me get zoomed in here so that's why once these are gone we're gonna shake the hell out of these every day I do it just every time I walk by I'll come and I'll shake these that's going to distribute the moisture throughout the jar instead of it all being on top now you can't see all those water droplets because they've been absorbed into the popcorn and spread throughout the jar when they're sitting what's going to happen that moisture is going to form lower to the bottom and go down to the bottom you'll see it form at the top still let's see if these ones have any these ones have been sitting for a while afterwards and you don't see it up in here but you can definitely see down at the bottom there's more moisture sitting there it's not pooling it's not like dripping wet but you can tell that those kernels are holding more moisture so it's important to shake these out I probably do Overkill I do I'll let them dry out today they finish yesterday and I'll let them dry out tomorrow then I'll start inoculating them the day after that if I let them dry out for a good two days and then I keep shaking them over those two days that'll distribute the moisture and it's going to reduce your chances of getting wet rot because remember we're adding moisture to these at least if we're doing a liquid culture or even agar we're adding moisture if it's already wet it's it's going to make the inside of this too wet we don't want that it's going to leave like I said the dry rot or other contamination I want these to be the perfect moisture inside so shake them out to distribute that moisture do it every time you walk by or you think about it do it several times per day over the course of the two days then start inoculating these and you'll be really good to go so anyways guys that's been my popcorn Tech let me walk through really quickly what I did I added water to my insta pot uh I added popcorn to that I filled the water up a couple inches over the popcorn I pressure cooked it for 25 minutes then I cooked it on sauteed just boiled it for another 10 minutes you can do this on a pot on the stove with boiling water you can also do it with your insta pot cook it you know uh you can do it with a pressure cooker pressure cook the popcorn for 25 to 30 minutes then once it's done you're gonna put it in a big colander strainer shake the hell out of it to get the steam to evaporate empty it out onto a cookie sheet with paper towels on it to absorb the moisture once it's uh cooled once it's dry let it sit in the colander on the cookie sheet for at least three or four hours I think uh is best then load them into your jars put the lids on put tin foil on then start sterilizing them in your pressure cooker or your insta pot they need at least 90 minutes in here if not longer you can do two hours but do at least 90 minutes in the pressure cooker or your instapot my insta pot is what I use for everything if you have any questions on how to use it let me know once they're out of here we're going to let them cool but we're going to shake them over the course of the next two days we're gonna shake these multiple times per day to distribute the moisture and then after that happens you'll notice that they're nice and dry on the inside these ones are already they're a day old after being sterilized and they're already looking pretty dry on the inside they're going to look even better tomorrow and then they'll be ready to start colonizing so there you have it you guys this has been my popcorn Tech if you have any questions please leave me a comment I answer back to my my viewers very quickly so leave me a comment I'll get right back to you if you have any if there's anything I missed or anything you would add leave me a comment and let me know if you like this video please give it a thumbs up like it and if you you're liking my videos on my Channel please be sure to subscribe it helps me out a lot I appreciate it when you all follow again leave me some comments go ahead and like the video please subscribe and if nothing else try out this popcorn Tech it's really easy and it works really well for colonizing um magic mushroom spawn all right thank you guys

Channel: Time-For-Rain

Views: 23,806

Keywords: growing mushrooms, coco coir, growing mushrooms at home, growing mushrooms in jars, growing mushrooms in monotubs, how to grow mushrooms, how to grow mushrooms at home, how to grow mushrooms in a monotub, how to grow mushrooms indoors, how to grow mushrooms indoors step by step, mushroom cultivation monotub, mushroom cultivation process, monotub, popcorn tek, TEK, mushrooms, mushroom, grain spawn, mushroom cultivation, grow mushrooms, mushroom grain spawn, how to, grain, spawn

Id: jcAuIfDQ1Hw

Length: 30min 1sec (1801 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 24 2023