Mushroom thread

1diesel1 · Nov 12, 2020

Dirtbag said:
Awesome man! How long did you rock the Pftek before jumping to grain?
Im skipping the PF altogether and jumping straight to rye and oats. Not sure if its the best decision... Who knows. Ill find out soon.

I did kinda the same with beer making, jumped straight into all grain and bypassed extract kits completely.

Started pf tek last April,
Caught me hook line and sinker:)
First thing I did was build a sterile box it’s been great fun and lots of patience:)

Dirtbag · Nov 12, 2020

Kanzeon said:
AS IT SHOULD BE. Nothing terribly complicated about making malted grain and hop soup.

There isnt. Its fairly easy, excpet for maybe all the godforsaken cleaning..

Kanzeon · Nov 12, 2020

Dirtbag said:
100%, early chidhood trauma is something else completely. Sorry i shouldnt lump all PTSD scenarios together. Some are more easily treated than others. I didnt start to pile on any trauma in my life until i was in my early 20's. So i was a lot more easily treated in my 40's compared to someone who is traumatized young or worse cant even remember their trauma.

I've had a lifetime of small to medium traumas, but getting PTSD at 34, 2 years after being diagnosed as autistic and starting to get a handle on that, just wrecked me. Now it's like I have the tools and ability to be around people sometimes, but when I don't/can't, it's like a switch goes off and I'm a horrible person. Once I land, I'll look into PTSD psychologists around. Maybe one day I'll even sleep once every 24 hours!

amekins · Nov 12, 2020

Dirtbag said:
100%, early chidhood trauma is something else completely. Sorry i shouldnt lump all PTSD scenarios together. Some are more easily treated than others. I didnt start to pile on any trauma in my life until i was in my early 20's. So i was a lot more easily treated in my 40's compared to someone who is traumatized young or worse cant even remember their trauma.

I don’t mean to minimize any trauma or PTSD. It’s all pretty sucky and keeps us from being our best selves.

amekins · Nov 12, 2020

Kanzeon said:
I've had a lifetime of small to medium traumas, but getting PTSD at 34, 2 years after being diagnosed as autistic and starting to get a handle on that, just wrecked me. Now it's like I have the tools and ability to be around people sometimes, but when I don't/can't, it's like a switch goes off and I'm a horrible person. Once I land, I'll look into PTSD psychologists around. Maybe one day I'll even sleep once every 24 hours!

Yeah that’s a lot to manage and process.

Dirtbag · Nov 13, 2020

Kanzeon said:
I've had a lifetime of small to medium traumas, but getting PTSD at 34, 2 years after being diagnosed as autistic and starting to get a handle on that, just wrecked me. Now it's like I have the tools and ability to be around people sometimes, but when I don't/can't, it's like a switch goes off and I'm a horrible person. Once I land, I'll look into PTSD psychologists around. Maybe one day I'll even sleep once every 24 hours!

Awesome! That makes me very happy to hear. Knowing you personally even though our face to face encounters were brief, I can tell youre a good dude, you deserve it man. They help to unearth things weve buried to confront and acknowledge the trauma, and they provide tools to identify and handle triggering situations, and see things from different perspectives. Importantly for me, they also helped me make serious life decisions that id been struggling to make before then.

A good psychologist should be able to do what they do in 3-4 visits. They arent meant to be an ongoing therapy type thing.

Kanzeon · Nov 13, 2020

Dirtbag said:
Awesome! That makes me very happy to hear. Knowing you personally even though our face to face encounters were brief, I can tell youre a good dude, you deserve it man. They help to unearth things weve buried to confront and acknowledge the trauma, and they provide tools to identify and handle triggering situations, and see things from different perspectives. Importantly for me, they also helped me make serious life decisions that id been struggling to make before then.

A good psychologist should be able to do what they do in 3-4 visits. They arent meant to be an ongoing therapy type thing.

Thanks man, that means a lot. You too, @amekins. There are some legitimately amazing people on this site, I'm just glad my brand of argumentative detail-oriented weirdness is welcome here.

Once I get some of these lines stabilized and my life back in order, y'all are gonna be getting some fire!

amekins · Nov 13, 2020

Kanzeon said:
Thanks man, that means a lot. You too, @amekins. There are some legitimately amazing people on this site, I'm just glad my brand of argumentative detail-oriented weirdness is welcome here.

Once I get some of these lines stabilized and my life back in order, y'all are gonna be getting some fire!

I plan to start some small scale recipe testing for some new treats to put in your goodie box.

Dirtbag · Nov 13, 2020

Back to the mushroom front, ive been doing some thinking. Maybe too much, but im gonna throw this out there to see what others think.. Am I crazy, is it way overkill etc.

To keep the environment my still air box is in clean, im thinking of throwing up a 5x5 tent i have in the corner of the living room to act as a sort of clean room. I could run a hepa air purifier in there overnight before working in it. Turn off the air purifier a few hrs before i go in to work. Have a little table and chair setup with the SAB and flame source secured to the table. Extinguisher also on the table obviously. It would essentially be like an SAB inside an SAB. Double the layers of protection against air currents essentially. DubTek
Not to mention Ill clean the shit out of myself in the shower before even going in there, and possibly going in walter white style in my tighty whities!.

Of course if im gonna go through the trouble of popping up a tent just for this, I'll want to do quite a bit of work in there while its setup. Agar to agar, MS to agar, and all the agar to grain i have culture for. Make the time spent as productive as possible.

amekins · Nov 13, 2020

Dirtbag said:
Back to the mushroom front, ive been doing some thinking. Maybe too much, but im gonna throw this out there to see what others think.. Am I crazy, is it way overkill etc.

To keep the environment my still air box is in clean, im thinking of throwing up a 5x5 tent i have in the corner of the living room to act as a sort of clean room. I could run a hepa air purifier in there overnight before working in it. Turn off the air purifier a few hrs before i go in to work. Have a little table and chair setup with the SAB and flame source secured to the table. Extinguisher also on the table obviously. It would essentially be like an SAB inside an SAB. Double the layers of protection against air currents essentially. DubTek
Not to mention Ill clean the shit out of myself in the shower before even going in there, and possibly going in walter white style in my tighty whities!.

Of course if im gonna go through the trouble of popping up a tent just for this, I'll want to do quite a bit of work in there while its setup. Agar to agar, MS to agar, and all the agar to grain i have culture for. Make the time spent as productive as possible.

DO IT.

beluga · Nov 13, 2020

Dirtbag said:
Back to the mushroom front, ive been doing some thinking. Maybe too much, but im gonna throw this out there to see what others think.. Am I crazy, is it way overkill etc.

To keep the environment my still air box is in clean, im thinking of throwing up a 5x5 tent i have in the corner of the living room to act as a sort of clean room. I could run a hepa air purifier in there overnight before working in it. Turn off the air purifier a few hrs before i go in to work. Have a little table and chair setup with the SAB and flame source secured to the table. Extinguisher also on the table obviously. It would essentially be like an SAB inside an SAB. Double the layers of protection against air currents essentially. DubTek
Not to mention Ill clean the shit out of myself in the shower before even going in there, and possibly going in walter white style in my tighty whities!.

Of course if im gonna go through the trouble of popping up a tent just for this, I'll want to do quite a bit of work in there while its setup. Agar to agar, MS to agar, and all the agar to grain i have culture for. Make the time spent as productive as possible.

Sounds like you're sponging well.
Certainly not a bad idea to add an extra layer of protection or just another buffer to prevent extra air currents from bringing in more stuff... but, when you open the door.. WOoosh... populated.
I have noticed, however, that sometimes I'll take all these precautionary methods and still end up with about the same success/failure rate as when I have a tote on the kitchen island with cats rubbing up on me...
All about getting that sterile/aseptic technique down, as far as I'm concerned. Making sure your tools are properly heat sterilized before jabbing them into a sterile nutritious medium and that the handles don't float over it.. and, most importantly, making sure that your dirty-ass body doesn't pass over any of said media - which, again, being clean and having minimum skin/hair exfoliation will definitely help to keep those rates down, but not nearly as much as perfecting your movements.
You're a man of science and probably some OCD... I'm sure you know that water and soap is only offering so much

and that every environment everywhere is just teeming with spores, cells, and more.
Face coverings and nitrile gloves are about all I do as far as keeping my biome to itself. And, otherwise, that small still-air environment that doesn't get disturbed is graced by the laws of physics rather than chemistry in keeping our shit clean.

Dirtbag · Nov 13, 2020

Is a scalpel absolutely necessary for cutting the agar? or has anyone used a different type of blade? Im wondering if its possible to use a utility knifle blade.. I could put it right into the pressure cooker to sterilize and then also flame sterilize it again.Maybe ill try and find a scalpel somewhere...

But yeah its starting to make a bit more sense in my brain. I also did a section on bacteria and fungi when i was in school for horticulture that gave me a bit of a foundation for understanding this stuff. We used Petri dishs of agar to demonstrate how far a droplet of something hitting the floor can contaminate the area. But the course covered basic sterilization and sanitary practices.

My professor taught us a different way to heat sterilize the scalpel and tools compared to how i see people doing it in forums though. We dipped the tools in alcohol and then lit the alcohol on fire. When the alcohol burned away it was considered sterile.

beluga · Nov 13, 2020

Dirtbag said:
Is a scalpel absolutely necessary for cutting the agar? or has anyone used a different type of blade? Im wondering if its possible to use a utility knifle blade.. I could put it right into the pressure cooker to sterilize and then also flame sterilize it again.Maybe ill try and find a scalpel somewhere...

But yeah its starting to make a bit more sense in my brain. I also did a section on bacteria and fungi when i was in school for horticulture that gave me a bit of a foundation for understanding this stuff. We used Petri dishs of agar to demonstrate how far a droplet of something hitting the floor can contaminate the area. But the course covered basic sterilization and sanitary practices.

My professor taught us a different way to heat sterilize the scalpel and tools compared to how i see people doing it in forums though. We dipped the tools in alcohol and then lit the alcohol on fire. When the alcohol burned away it was considered sterile.

I started with craft knives and they work just fine. There is a certain amount of dexterity that you get with scalpels that just works perfectly for the application.
A problem you run into is the quality of the steel blade and it breaking down after sterilizing it in that way. It becomes pitted and jagged (at least microscopically) after even one use. Transferring sticky agar pieces or fibrous/wet tissue with that becomes a total pain in the ass after many uses.
That said, I've seen people use paring knives to some success... so... there are workarounds and you can make what's available to you work. I'd say being able to replace a high quality blade cheaply and frequently is probably the main priority.

I've seen people drop isopropyl on a petri dish and have stuff grow out of it... not to say that's controlled or tested well by any means, but food for thought.
As far as I know, you have to bring something to incandescence (glowing hot) to truly sterilize it. Also, as far as I know from being a bit of a pyromaniac, lighting alcohol burns the vapors around the liquid and just brings the liquid to a very hot temperature... not sure how hot, but likely not to the sterilizing temperatures required for good cell culturing. I've never actually tried.

FourthCity · Nov 13, 2020

Dirtbag said:
Is a scalpel absolutely necessary for cutting the agar? or has anyone used a different type of blade? Im wondering if its possible to use a utility knifle blade.. I could put it right into the pressure cooker to sterilize and then also flame sterilize it again.Maybe ill try and find a scalpel somewhere...

beluga said:
I started with craft knives and they work just fine. There is a certain amount of dexterity that you get with scalpels that just works perfectly for the application.
A problem you run into is the quality of the steel blade and it breaking down after sterilizing it in that way. It becomes pitted and jagged (at least microscopically) after even one use. Transferring sticky agar pieces or fibrous/wet tissue with that becomes a total pain in the ass after many uses.
That said, I've seen people use paring knives to some success... so... there are workarounds and you can make what's available to you work. I'd say being able to replace a high quality blade cheaply and frequently is probably the main priority.

I've seen people drop isopropyl on a petri dish and have stuff grow out of it... not to say that's controlled or tested well by any means, but food for thought.
As far as I know, you have to bring something to incandescence (glowing hot) to truly sterilize it. Also, as far as I know from being a bit of a pyromaniac, lighting alcohol burns the vapors around the liquid and just brings the liquid to a very hot temperature... not sure how hot, but likely not to the sterilizing temperatures required for good cell culturing. I've never actually tried.

On that note, I have individually wrapped, sterile, single use, medical grade scalpels that I use for cutting clones. @beluga, would those need to be flame sterilized too or would it be ready to go if I just unwrap it in the still air box?

beluga · Nov 13, 2020

FourthCity said:
On that note, I have individually wrapped, sterile, single use, medical grade scalpels that I use for cutting clones. @beluga, would those need to be flame sterilized too or would it be ready to go if I just unwrap it in the still air box?

Well, you generally want to sterilize them between contacts with different cultures.
For instance, if you were to take a small tissue sample from a plate that was inoculated with a spore syringe, you would definitely want to sterilize it before you took a transfer from a cleaned up plate. So, it'd get wasteful fast if they're the type with plastic handles that won't hold up to heat. I'd consider them one-time use.
I've never used them, so I might be missing something in their potential.
I would probably suggest using a utility or craft knife if they're available to you before those.

For just starting out though, before you get into taking transfers from dirty plates and clean plates and sterilized grain jars. I can see them being effective enough for acquiring a clean culture.

Dirtbag · Nov 13, 2020

Scored this 22qt mirro pressure canner today. $20!

Shouldnt be a big deal to put a pressure guage on it. But it does have a nice plyable safety pressure release. Gasket is like new. Im pumped to get this thing cooking!

amekins · Nov 13, 2020

Dirtbag said:
Scored this 22qt stainless mirro pressure canner today. $20!

Shouldnt be a big deal to put a pressure guage on it. But it does have a nice plyable safety pressure release. Gasket is like new. Im pumped to get this thing cooking!View attachment 1055323 View attachment 1055324

Nice score!!!

beluga · Nov 13, 2020

Dirtbag said:
Scored this 22qt mirro pressure canner today. $20!

Shouldnt be a big deal to put a pressure guage on it. But it does have a nice plyable safety pressure release. Gasket is like new. Im pumped to get this thing cooking!View attachment 1055323 View attachment 1055324

Nice! That'll definitely do the thing.
Never seen a rocker/weight like that. I assume it comes off? Venting is a pretty critical factor. But... manufacturers know that and design them with some way of doing so.

beluga · Nov 13, 2020

Dirtbag said:
Scored this 22qt mirro pressure canner today. $20!

Shouldnt be a big deal to put a pressure guage on it. But it does have a nice plyable safety pressure release. Gasket is like new. Im pumped to get this thing cooking!View attachment 1055323 View attachment 1055324

Get any agar/cell culturing supplies?
I can kick my ass in gear and go through making agar/pouring plates if you did.
But I'm sure you wanna get that colonized dish to grain ASAP... although, if you wanna keep it going... you'll want some extra plates.
Also always a good idea to make sure they're clean by taking a little sample culture before you put it to grain.

Flexnerb · Nov 13, 2020

Dirtbag said:
Scored this 22qt mirro pressure canner today. $20!

Shouldnt be a big deal to put a pressure guage on it. But it does have a nice plyable safety pressure release. Gasket is like new. Im pumped to get this thing cooking!View attachment 1055323 View attachment 1055324

Nice! You seem like a logicsl kind of guy....so im using a portable AC to cool my room and heat the rest of my living space with the exhaust...is this the stupidest thing i could be doing? If refrigerant leaks even just a little will i smell it taste etc? Any idea what i can do to mitigate it from leaking besides over use overheating?

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