All things shrooms

[tobh]

When you say, comes from an SAB, what is that?

SAB = Still Air Box

And this is the inevitable question to you and @Aqua Man , what's the cheapest entry point to making my own spore prints and then liquid culture? Do I need a whatchamacallit filter vent/ workspace?

You do not need a laminar flow hood (so affectionately called a whatchamacallit filter vent/workspace). You can do just about everything in a SAB just fine, and I highly recommend everyone that's interested in mycology start there. If you can pour agar and not get contamination, you have clean enough technique to do just about anything else.

A laminar flowhood isn't a magic bullet. If you have poor aseptic technique, you'll still have problems. I digress.

A SAB is your entry point. here's a simple tek for making spore prints.

Materials needed:

• A box of ziplock sandwich bags
• 2" x 2" aluminum foil squares
• Thumb tacks -- the kind that have that plastic handle bit, not the flat ones
• Fresh, sporulating mushrooms. keep the stems attached for now
• A fresh razor blade -- the kind for box cutters, not a shaving blade
• Ozium (not lysol)

Process:

1. Wipe everything (aside from the mushroom caps) down with ISO and load into your SAB. Do NOT open the sandwich bags, just wipe down the outside.
2. Load your mushrooms into the SAB
3. Bomb the SAB and the room the SAB is in with Ozium
4. let the shit settle for 15 minutes
5. Dawn your gloves, rinse your gloved hands and forearms with ISO
6. Take a mushroom, cut the stem as close to the gills as you can
7. Stick a thumbtack in the top of the cap
8. Set the cap gills down on a piece of foil
9. Slide the foil with the cap into a ziplock bag
10. Clean the razor blade
11. Repeat steps 6 - 10 for all caps
12. Leave the bags in the SAB for two to three days
13. After a few days, come back, don gloves, repeat ISO wash on hands and forearms, and remove caps. Seal bags.

You've made spore prints. You should NOT move to a MS syringe from these prints. Agar work from print is damn near mandatory. Are spore syringes a thing? yes. should they be used to inoculate LC or grain? No. Does it work? yes. but, you stand a high chance of contamination.

 

[ninjadip]

SAB = Still Air Box

You do not need a laminar flow hood (so affectionately called a whatchamacallit filter vent/workspace). You can do just about everything in a SAB just fine, and I highly recommend everyone that's interested in mycology start there. If you can pour agar and not get contamination, you have clean enough technique to do just about anything else.

A laminar flowhood isn't a magic bullet. If you have poor aseptic technique, you'll still have problems. I digress.

A SAB is your entry point. here's a simple tek for making spore prints.

Materials needed:

• A box of ziplock sandwich bags
• 2" x 2" aluminum foil squares
• Thumb tacks -- the kind that have that plastic handle bit, not the flat ones
• Fresh, sporulating mushrooms. keep the stems attached for now
• A fresh razor blade -- the kind for box cutters, not a shaving blade
• Ozium (not lysol)

Process:

1. Wipe everything (aside from the mushroom caps) down with ISO and load into your SAB. Do NOT open the sandwich bags, just wipe down the outside.
2. Load your mushrooms into the SAB
3. Bomb the SAB and the room the SAB is in with Ozium
4. let the shit settle for 15 minutes
5. Dawn your gloves, rinse your gloved hands and forearms with ISO
6. Take a mushroom, cut the stem as close to the gills as you can
7. Stick a thumbtack in the top of the cap
8. Set the cap gills down on a piece of foil
9. Slide the foil with the cap into a ziplock bag
10. Clean the razor blade
11. Repeat steps 6 - 10 for all caps
12. Leave the bags in the SAB for two to three days
13. After a few days, come back, don gloves, repeat ISO wash on hands and forearms, and remove caps. Seal bags.

You've made spore prints. You should NOT move to a MS syringe from these prints. Agar work from print is damn near mandatory. Are spore syringes a thing? yes. should they be used to inoculate LC or grain? No. Does it work? yes. but, you stand a high chance of contamination.

this seems doable!! is there a name for this tek?

man i appreciate your time to make this list!! it does not go unappreciated

follow up:
this SAB must be the boxes people outfit with dish gloves fastened to them, i'm assuming, just didn't know the acronym.

i know about some ozium, makes a car smell brand new, especially for smokers. i do have a portable powered ozone generator i use for bursts in the car now to clean. could i use this constantly in the SAB or will the oxygen radicals kill the spore work i'm doing?

i'll look up about this agar process, that's the stuff in the petri dishes i'm guessing. i have some vegan sunflower agar agar powder, but i'm sure that's not what i need i'm assuming

 

[tobh]

this seems doable!! is there a name for this tek?

man i appreciate your time to make this list!! it does not go unappreciated

follow up:
this SAB must be the boxes people outfit with dish gloves fastened to them, i'm assuming, just didn't know the acronym.

i know about some ozium, makes a car smell brand new, especially for smokers. i do have a portable powered ozone generator i use for bursts in the car now to clean. could i use this constantly in the SAB or will the oxygen radicals kill the spore work i'm doing?

i'll look up about this agar process, that's the stuff in the petri dishes i'm guessing. i have some vegan sunflower agar agar powder, but i'm sure that's not what i need i'm assuming

alright, let me break this down.

A SAB is not a glovebox. When gloves are affixed, it becomes a glovebox and is not what you want. Glove boxes encapsulate all the air within them, so any movement creates significant more air disturbances. A SAB leaves the holes open, and because there is space for the air to equalize with external pressure, the air disturbances inside the box are minimized (within reason -- move slooooow).

Do NOT run an ozone generator anywhere near your face in a confined space. That's how you die. Seriously, just don't. Bomb the space with Ozium, leave for 15 minutes, wash down with ISO and do work. Ozone is highly hazardous, don't fuck with it.

Agar agar is sourced from seaweed. What you have likely will work. My recipe for agar is:

500ml
9g agar agar
9g light malt extract

Sometimes I get fancy as do a nutrient yeast broth in place of the 500ml water, but I'm not trying to overcomplicate it here. The above recipe will work.

You 100% need a pressure cooker or autoclave though. You CANNOT do agar work without that single component. Also, DO NOT run a pressure cooker on a glass/ceramic top stove. You stand the chance of the stove top exploding and throwing molten glass everywhere. Just don't do it. Get an open element hot plate or a turkey fryer burner instead. Or, foot the bill and buy an electric autoclave and don't worry about it. That's my next big purchase, personally.

 

[tobh]

@Aqua Man i'm gonna give the pan cyans another go. I've had luck with pan bisporus germinating on agar no problem -- it's an aggressive variety for sure -- but i haven't been able to get pan cyans to germinate on MEA (same recipe as above) and have tried on probably a dozen plates. Just waiting on the bisporus T1 plate to show clean then I'll get that culture on grain. Same with the APE.

I'm thinking about adding a tablespoon or so of manure to the agar recipe to give that a shot, as well as sacrificing a jar of grain to potential contamination by way of doing a multispore inoculation from the syringe. I've read they're notoriously difficult to get going on agar but do fine on BRF and grains, then taking a transfer to agar is much easier.

Any advice? I know you've worked with this variety before, hence the ping.

 

[Aqua Man]

@Aqua Man i'm gonna give the pan cyans another go. I've had luck with pan bisporus germinating on agar no problem -- it's an aggressive variety for sure -- but i haven't been able to get pan cyans to germinate on MEA (same recipe as above) and have tried on probably a dozen plates. Just waiting on the bisporus T1 plate to show clean then I'll get that culture on grain. Same with the APE.

I'm thinking about adding a tablespoon or so of manure to the agar recipe to give that a shot, as well as sacrificing a jar of grain to potential contamination by way of doing a multispore inoculation from the syringe. I've read they're notoriously difficult to get going on agar but do fine on BRF and grains, then taking a transfer to agar is much easier.

Any advice? I know you've worked with this variety before, hence the ping.

Yeah they really do much better with some manure added. Its night and day atleast with the many substrains i worked with from spores.

My manure of choice was turkey trot since its dried pellets and super easy to work with. I believe i used around 1 gram per per 500ml of agar because its really hot.

That agar works great for all species too even cubes loved it and showed a noticeable difference. I used to also add it to my sub but I can’t for the life of me remember the volume

 

[tobh]

Yeah they really do much better with some manure added. Its night and day atleast with the many substrains i worked with from spores.

My manure of choice was turkey trot since its dried pellets and super easy to work with. I believe i used around 1 gram per per 500ml of agar because its really hot.

That agar works great for all species too even cubes loved it and showed a noticeable difference. I used to also add it to my sub but I can’t for the life of me remember the volume

awesome. i have some aged cow manure on hand, so I'll make up a batch of agar and give it a go. figure it might wake up cubensis syringe i have that's been rather finicky about germinating on agar too.

realized i've only tried one of the four varieties of pan cyans i have as well, so i just knocked up a plate with a second variety to see if i can achieve better results.

i need to get some antibiotics because i have one other cubensis syringe that is NOT clean at all (this is why you should only buy genetics from trusted, well known vendors) in hopes of getting a clean mycelium culture. fuckin syringe cost me six jars last year, and every plate i've knocked up with it has gone fully bacterial within a few days. bastards selling dirty shit piss me off.

 

[tobh]

How it should & shouldn't look - NEW CULTIVATORS GUIDE

The below visual guide is designed for novice and inexperienced mushroom cultivators. For some, it's easier and more comforting to know they are(or aren't) on the right path by visually making a...

www.shroomery.org

Absolutely excellent thread. highly recommend anyone new to growing mushrooms takes a look at that!

 

[ninjadip]

How it should & shouldn't look - NEW CULTIVATORS GUIDE

The below visual guide is designed for novice and inexperienced mushroom cultivators. For some, it's easier and more comforting to know they are(or aren't) on the right path by visually making a...

www.shroomery.org

Absolutely excellent thread. highly recommend anyone new to growing mushrooms takes a look at that!

You are right that is a good thread, especially for a newb.

This cool ass pic came up on my feed today

 

[Oldsog]

I have a tub of enigma and a tub of tidal wave that is almost ready to fruit. Need to make 3 tubs for the penis envy i have colonizing.
I should have plenty of extras

 

[MiGrampa]

It's been a while since I have given a good update so here it goes.

First off, my wife and I decided to delay our Fall/Winter grow this year. We have an abundance of flower in the house. It's a bit of everything I have grown over the last 2 years. Even the older stuff is still good despite it's age ...



So for now, I'm doing my best to look like a home hobby mycologist. I've got some psilocybe natalensis that are just beginning to fruit. I've had some struggles with my equipment which has allowed things to dry out and has slowed the process down. My opinion on AC Infinity products has take a huge hit. I've had a lot better luck using my older WiFi Inkbird controller.



One thing I've been doing since the middle of the summer is making a liquid culture of all my genetics when I purchase them. This makes a 10 ml spore or liquid culture syringe into an almost unlimited supply. I store the cultures in the refrigerator when not in use.



I'm currently waiting on a batch of agar plates and I'll begin keeping a plate for each strain I run. I'm also waiting for the following to arrive:

– Pans Cyan Estero 10ml Research Syringe
– Pearly Gates 10ml Research Syringe
– Hillbilly 10ml Research Syringe
– Ghost 10ml Research Syringe
– Penis Envy 10ml Research Syringe

I'm also making up my own spawn grain bags/jars. I'm also making my own coco based substrate mix.



So far, it seems like my extra large insta-pot has been up to the task of steam sterilization. The only drawback is I can only fit 4 quart jars in it at a time.

 

[Aqua Man]

I have a tub of enigma and a tub of tidal wave that is almost ready to fruit. Need to make 3 tubs for the penis envy i have colonizing.
I should have plenty of extras

How long are the tidal wave and enigma been for you fruiting? The PE seem quite a bit longer than other cubes i have grown but the holy grail enigma im looking at getting takes months to fruit. Just looking for some insight into these type of strains

 

[Aqua Man]

It's been a while since I have given a good update so here it goes.

First off, my wife and I decided to delay our Fall/Winter grow this year. We have an abundance of flower in the house. It's a bit of everything I have grown over the last 2 years. Even the older stuff is still good despite it's age ...

View attachment 26250

So for now, I'm doing my best to look like a home hobby mycologist. I've got some psilocybe natalensis that are just beginning to fruit. I've had some struggles with my equipment which has allowed things to dry out and has slowed the process down. My opinion on AC Infinity products has take a huge hit. I've had a lot better luck using my older WiFi Inkbird controller.

View attachment 26251

One thing I've been doing since the middle of the summer is making a liquid culture of all my genetics when I purchase them. This makes a 10 ml spore or liquid culture syringe into an almost unlimited supply. I store the cultures in the refrigerator when not in use.

View attachment 26252View attachment 26253View attachment 26254

I'm currently waiting on a batch of agar plates and I'll begin keeping a plate for each strain I run. I'm also waiting for the following to arrive:

– Pans Cyan Estero 10ml Research Syringe
– Pearly Gates 10ml Research Syringe
– Hillbilly 10ml Research Syringe
– Ghost 10ml Research Syringe
– Penis Envy 10ml Research Syringe

I'm also making up my own spawn grain bags/jars. I'm also making my own coco based substrate mix.

View attachment 26255

So far, it seems like my extra large insta-pot has been up to the task of steam sterilization. The only drawback is I can only fit 4 quart jars in it at a time.

Wow you are full blown bro

 

[Oldsog]

How long are the tidal wave and enigma been for you fruiting? The PE seem quite a bit longer than other cubes i have grown but the holy grail enigma im looking at getting takes months to fruit. Just looking for some insight into these type of strains

Enigma Tub has just about started pinning, tidal wave is about the same. Enigma seems slow at colonizing the tub and fruiting, tidal wave will probably finishes faster by the looki

 

[Observer]

It's been a while since I have given a good update so here it goes.

First off, my wife and I decided to delay our Fall/Winter grow this year. We have an abundance of flower in the house. It's a bit of everything I have grown over the last 2 years. Even the older stuff is still good despite it's age ...

View attachment 26250

So for now, I'm doing my best to look like a home hobby mycologist. I've got some psilocybe natalensis that are just beginning to fruit. I've had some struggles with my equipment which has allowed things to dry out and has slowed the process down. My opinion on AC Infinity products has take a huge hit. I've had a lot better luck using my older WiFi Inkbird controller.

View attachment 26251

One thing I've been doing since the middle of the summer is making a liquid culture of all my genetics when I purchase them. This makes a 10 ml spore or liquid culture syringe into an almost unlimited supply. I store the cultures in the refrigerator when not in use.

View attachment 26252View attachment 26253View attachment 26254

I'm currently waiting on a batch of agar plates and I'll begin keeping a plate for each strain I run. I'm also waiting for the following to arrive:

– Pans Cyan Estero 10ml Research Syringe
– Pearly Gates 10ml Research Syringe
– Hillbilly 10ml Research Syringe
– Ghost 10ml Research Syringe
– Penis Envy 10ml Research Syringe

I'm also making up my own spawn grain bags/jars. I'm also making my own coco based substrate mix.

View attachment 26255

So far, it seems like my extra large insta-pot has been up to the task of steam sterilization. The only drawback is I can only fit 4 quart jars in it at a time.

 

[tobh]

Agar plates. Nothing too exciting yet.

 

[Aqua Man]

Agar plates. Nothing too exciting yet.
View attachment 26310View attachment 26311View attachment 26312View attachment 26313View attachment 26314View attachment 26315

Agar is always exciting

 

[tobh]

Agar is always exciting

if only i can get these damn pan cyans to germinate... day three and still no signs of germination.

 

[tobh]

the tan plates are MEA and the blue plates are nutrient yeast MEA, same base recipe I listed before but made with a broth made from nutrient yeast instead of straight water.

 

[Aqua Man]

if only i can get these damn pan cyans to germinate... day three and still no signs of germination.

After close to a year of fucking with them i decided its just not worth the hassle for a piss poor yield of very potent shrooms

 

[Aqua Man]

the tan plates are MEA and the blue plates are nutrient yeast MEA, same base recipe I listed before but made with a broth made from nutrient yeast instead of straight water.

Almost a must to have manure imho

 

[tobh]

Almost a must to have manure imho

that's the next step. my goal is to just get one solid fruit to clone given the speed of colonization and ability to get really solid flushes once you have everything dialed in. for fruiting, they like the same conditions as reishi too so it would be reasonable to grow em.

really it's an ego thing, too. i've grown so many cubes that stepping up to more challenging varieties is keeping it interesting. plus, pan cyan and oyster mycelium is very similar (super aggressive but weaker to contams) so the techniques can be very helpful for perfecting oyster techniques.

 

[ninjadip]

Funny, never heard of pan cyans until recently, or this muscaria thing I heard about on a JRE show, but I want to try my hand down the road on them

This one isn't the biggest but it has the coolest veil I think
View attachment PXL_20231019_205752192.mp4

 

[ninjadip]

I've been on the look for mushroom swag , found this for $5

Love the "see the good"

 

[MiGrampa]

My latest DIY. I bought the sterlight container and the Hepa filter. Everything else I had on hand. If I want to use the 6" carbon scrubber fan in a tent again, all I have to do is pick it up off the top of the tub. I put a 6" hole in the lid and an 8" hole in a 12" x 11" x 1" piece of insulation board. It seals well enough to force all the fan air through the filter.

 

[tobh]

My latest DIY. I bought the sterlight container and the Hepa filter. Everything else I had on hand. If I want to use the 6" carbon scrubber fan in a tent again, all I have to do is pick it up off the top of the tub. I put a 6" hole in the lid and an 8" hole in a 12" x 11" x 1" piece of insulation board. It seals well enough to force all the fan air through the filter.

View attachment 27296

now, make up some agar and test to make sure it's a clean stream of air

 

[MiGrampa]

now, make up some agar and test to make sure it's a clean stream of air

@tobh - I have the agar plates already. What exactly is the process? Turn on the air and allow it to flow over the agar for a few seconds?

Edit: BTW, thanks ... you have been very helpful as I've ventured into this new hobby.

 

[tobh]

I have the agar plates already. What exactly is the process? Turn on the air and allow it to flow over the agar for a few seconds?

turn the air on and let the unit run for a couple hours. then, while in the air stream, open the agar plate and leave it sit for an hour or so. Close the plate back up, parafilm it (or whatever you're gonna use to seal the edges), then turn the air off. Let the plate incubate for a few days and pay attention for any signs of growth.

I keep my tests plates for a month just to confirm nothing sluggish is going to crop up. i also do a control plate somewhere else in the garage, outside the stream of air, as a control.

 

[MiGrampa]

turn the air on and let the unit run for a couple hours. then, while in the air stream, open the agar plate and leave it sit for an hour or so. Close the plate back up, parafilm it (or whatever you're gonna use to seal the edges), then turn the air off. Let the plate incubate for a few days and pay attention for any signs of growth.

I keep my tests plates for a month just to confirm nothing sluggish is going to crop up. i also do a control plate somewhere else in the garage, outside the stream of air, as a control.

Good information, thanks ... I will do that.

 

[tobh]

just so anyone else looking to build or use a hood knows, best practice is to turn the unit on a couple hours before beginning work. This does a couple things:

1. kicks anything that may have landed on the filter surface off and away from the working air stream.
2. scrubs the air of the room, especially in the immediate vicinity of the flow hood, so there are additional guarantees that the air will truly be clean.

when working with agar plates some techniques to adopt:

1. never turn the lid of a petri dish upside down. lift it straight up, and if you must set it down, set it down the same way it came off the plate.
2. never put your hands or tools in front of the air coming at the plate.
3. it's best to have some kind of platform to raise any working materials off the surface of the table the flow hood is sitting on. this should be a material that can be sterilized, and put any working materials within the air stream coming from the filter face.
4. as when doing any clean, aseptic work, there's no such things as being too clean. continuously wipe everything down with ISO, including your hands. wearing a mask is recommended but not mandatory.

 

[tobh]

Don't do this

 

[tobh]

Nor this

Conn. Man Allegedly Ran $8.5 Million Mushroom Factory Out of Home: Police

Weston Soule, 21, is charged with possession with intent to sell/ distribute narcotics and operation of a drug factory.

people.com

 

[ninjadip]

Do you all agree about cocoa enhancing the effects? I made my first bar using 1/8, then ate 1/8 of that bar(one square) and it felt like I ate much much more dosage wise

This is a bar I made last night, really proud of this one. I'm getting the hang of it now I think

 

[Dirtbag]

Do you all agree about cocoa enhancing the effects? I made my first bar using 1/8, then ate 1/8 of that bar(one square) and it felt like I ate much much more dosage wise

This is a bar I made last night, really proud of this one. I'm getting the hang of it now I thinkView attachment 32745

100% agree. I made liberty cap chocolates one time that dosed to about 1.5g per person, a couple buddies and I ate them then headed into the woods to have a fire, and we weren't even 5 mins into the walk before we started feeling it. Ended up close to as high as I've ever been on mushrooms, intense visuals in the clear night sky, laying on my back in wet slush beside the fire just staring up. Felt like I'd eaten 3 grams of libs or more.
Ate them with chocolate ever since.

 

[Observer]

100% agree. I made liberty cap chocolates one time that dosed to about 1.5g per person, a couple buddies and I ate them then headed into the woods to have a fire, and we weren't even 5 mins into the walk before we started feeling it. Ended up close to as high as I've ever been on mushrooms, intense visuals in the clear night sky, laying on my back in wet slush beside the fire just staring up. Felt like I'd eaten 3 grams of libs or more.
Ate them with chocolate ever since.

serotonin, tryptophan, phenylethylamine, tyrosine, tryptamine and tyramine, are all in Cocoa, and are probably (definitely) interacting with the Psilocybin.

1-4 cups of water, 3-10grams Cubensis CWE (Cold water extraction) + Citric Acid + Ginger + honey + Cocoa extract = sounds like a good time.
add any tea, oranges/lemons/limes or other fruit/tea to one's Pref.


.....i should attempt to sterilize some Media and Innoculate again.

The neuroprotective effects of cocoa flavanol and its influence on cognitive performance - PMC

Cocoa powder and chocolate contain numerous substances among which there is a quite large percentage of antioxidant molecules, mainly flavonoids, most abundantly found in the form of epicatechin. These substances display several beneficial actions ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

[Dirtbag]

I'm not sure, but I think in addition to the flavinoids in the cocoa, lecithin which is also in most chocolate also helps. I use dark chocolate when I do it. Blend up the mushrooms to a fine powder and mix it really well with melted chocolate then put into a silicone mold that makes little chocolate robots lol.

 

[Aqua Man]

I cannot say for certain but the info provided by @Observer makes absolute sense to me… im not sure if the lectin will help like it may with cannabinoids but definitely food for thought

Thank you @ninjadip for bringing this up. Definitely something im going to test out and look into

 

[Dirtbag]

I cannot say for certain but the info provided by @Observer makes absolute sense to me… im not sure if the lectin will help like it may with cannabinoids but definitely food for thought

Thank you @ninjadip for bringing this up. Definitely something im going to test out and look into

Lecithin is used to enhance the absorption of a lot of drugs, it helps penetrate cell membranes more easily or something. Makes it more quickly absorbable.
I used it mostly as an emulsifier when making weed oils and edibles.

Just a theory. But regardless, I have no doubt whatsoever that cocoa or dark chocolate enhances the effect of shrooms.

 

[TomH]

100% agree. I made liberty cap chocolates one time that dosed to about 1.5g per person, a couple buddies and I ate them then headed into the woods to have a fire, and we weren't even 5 mins into the walk before we started feeling it. Ended up close to as high as I've ever been on mushrooms, intense visuals in the clear night sky, laying on my back in wet slush beside the fire just staring up. Felt like I'd eaten 3 grams of libs or more.
Ate them with chocolate ever since.

I believe, but I'm no expert, that chocolate acts as a weak, reversible MAOI causing significantly higher availability in your bloodstream. You can accomplish the same thing by using a "lemontec" method to prepare them or eating them with grapefruit juice.

 

[Aqua Man]

I believe, but I'm no expert, that chocolate acts as a weak, reversible MAOI causing significantly higher availability in your bloodstream. You can accomplish the same thing by using a "lemontec" method to prepare them or eating them with grapefruit juice.

Yeah i can vouch for lemon tech. Tried personally a few times not so long ago

 

[Oldsog]

Enigma finally finished