Wienerwoods' Microscopy Adventure

[Wienerwoods]

Today I spawned to bulk for the first time in my life. Shit is getting exciting!

That's a relatively small 32 quart tub. The substrate consists of about 5 quarts of coir, 1.2 quarts of vermiculite and 1/4 quart of gypsum. And water, of course. I used about 3 quarts of spawn.

I also made a small tray to put in the SGFC but in hindsight I probably should have fit it all in the monotub.

Oh, and I'm glad to say that the cloning project is still alive; turns out that the extra growth is cubensis as well. Either my scalpel hit another grain on its way out or one rolled over the initial biopsy at some point when moving the jar.

 

[Wienerwoods]

It's been about 5 days. The small tray is nearing full colonization already but the monotub hasn't really woken up yet. That's probably because I abused the grains quite a bit more when mixing the bigger substrate.

I messed around with 160 proof vodka some more and this time I reduced the final product further than before.

I used just over 5 grams of cracker dry shrooms.
Once the ethanol had evaporated and there was only water left, the goo was extremely resistant to drying. Even now after more than 6 hours in the oven at 50°C (125°F) and a full 24 hours in a desiccant drying chamber it remains very sticky, despite seeming dry and crystallized.

But it's dry enough to load in 500 mg gelatine capsules.

That's roughly 1400 mg of mushroom extract, compressed in about 1.66 gel caps.
I'm very curious to see how much of the magic I was able to retain.

EDIT: The extract produced an extremely clean trip with no notable nausea. It's pretty hard to approximate the potency but I'd say the experience was typical for a 3.5-4 gram dose. Overall the exposure to oxygen, heat and light over the couple of days it took to prepare the extract seems to have done very little to degrade the actives. The come up was a bit too intense to fully enjoy so it probably would be a good idea to eat a decent meal beforehand to dial back the absorption a bit.

Really nice method to enjoy shrooms, a little work goes a long way here. Filtering with household supplies can be a bitch so a small erlenmeyer flask and büchner funnel are a good investment.

 

[Wienerwoods]

Well, that was mildly depressing. I just disposed of the monotub contents due to several different contaminations. Yeast and green mold at least.

It's a damn shame but least I think I know where I went wrong. The bulk may have been ever so slightly too warm when spawning which along with the excessive mixing contributed to weakened mycelium too slow to outrun contams. OH WELL.

On the bright side I've still got some 20+ grams of cracker dry surplus, as well as about a quart of fully colonized bulk thanks to not putting all my eggs in one basket. The mini tray is already covered in hyphal knots and I'm getting ready to dunk it and move it to FC.
Oh, and shortly after spawning I found out that the foil had no function at all on the bottom part of the tub. When people line the inside of the tub with black tarp it isn't even to block the light. Well now I get to correct that mistake...

Still, that was three weeks' worth of work and wait down the drain.

 

[Roasty McToasty]

Sorry to hear about that tub, sucks when the green goblin strikes. Lesson learned and you won't do that again. I am pretty aggressive with my grain b4 spawning, I break it up into very small pieces, then shake with sub and spawn together in a filter patch bag pretty harshly to mix well. Pack it all down like a cow patty, and get colonization in 5 days. 6-7 if the temps are cooler. I do a 1:1 spawn to sub ratio for fast colonization. I've also spawned to substrate fresh out of the fridge with good results. I never spawn to too warm sub so i cant say if that was the problem. Mycelium dies at 106 F if i remember correctly, but yeah 90's would definatly hurt them at spawning.
Can you tell us how you made your sub?

 

[bubblekarma]

Bummer bro. Better luck next time I guess haha.

 

[Wienerwoods]

It's all good. The green mold actually took over a week to appear so the underlying problem must be bacterial contamination. This would also explain why the grains barely did anything.
I didn't pack the substrate down at all, I just made the surface smooth since packing substrates too tight usually seems detrimental to colonization speeds.

I put half a brick (about 5 liters) of coir and about 1.2 liters of vermiculite in a bucket, poured in about 2 liters of boiling water. I put the lid on and let it sit. After about 20 minutes I came back to mix it and add 250 ml gypsum.

Then, when the substrate had reached about 95 degrees I started loading it in the tub. Every once in a while I emptied a pint jar of spawn and mixed thoroughly. This is where I think I went wrong. The coir temperature might have been a bit too much at the core and I really did manhandle the shit out of the grains when mixing. Of course they were already broken up when I added them & in hindsight I think I should've just laid down a layer and continued adding coir.

The small tray was made after the monotub and I only lightly mixed it. The coir had also cooled down in the bucket considerably. That thing was colonized in a week or so.

 

[tripaholic88]

It's a damn shame but least I think I know where I went wrong. The bulk may have been ever so slightly too warm when spawning which along with the excessive mixing contributed to weakened mycelium too slow to outrun contams. OH WELL.

yea i think thats what happened.. i spawn around 80*F

Oh, and shortly after spawning I found out that the foil had no function at all on the bottom part of the tub. When people line the inside of the tub with black tarp it isn't even to block the light. Well now I get to correct that mistake...

i use a tashbag to keep out light and prevent a microclimate from forming between the substrate and your tub to prevent side pinning...

 

[Wienerwoods]

Patience is a virtue I've yet to gain. But enough about my failures for now.

I've got eight jars full of sterilized grain cooling down and I'll be transferring later today. Since I can only cook four jars at a time I'll have two more jars on hand after that (donor jar + one extra) which I'll be inoculating with the two clones. Then, after I've spawned today's eight jars I'll multiply those clones further and eventually race the two against each other. I really hope I managed to save something that beats multispore.

Anyway, the tray started pinning yesterday so I hydrated it for a few hours and moved it into the sgfc. Here's a picture from yesterday (there were more pins this morning and they keep popping up like crazy)

 

[Wienerwoods]

Here we are. I just picked five of them, about 55g. Big ones weighed just under 20 grams each.

New grain jars are well on their way too so it won't be long until I can have another go at that monotub!

 

[Roasty McToasty]

Man those are lovely, nice size fruit too. Great job!