Faht's tek's index

[fahtster]

ok, i'm making this thread so that i can stick it in my signature. just an index to the various work i've done here over the years.

Kickass Lid Design
Lids that have stood the test of time. - Mycotopia Web Forums (Lids that have stood the test of time.)

-Fahtty Isolation/Mycelium syringe tek-
*I'd suggest using my double injection port lids on these 'master' jars. this is no place to take risks
Mycotopia Web Archive: Fahtty Isolation/Mycelium syringe tek (old version)
-Fahtty Isolation/Mycelium syringe tek- *REVISED* - Mycotopia Web Forums (-Fahtty Isolation/Mycelium syringe tek- *REVISED*) (new version)

"Faht's Oven Bag Clone Tek: TWO VERSIONS"
-this two versions of the same tek. The first one is the older version. Complete with full explanation and pictorial.
Faht's Oven Bag Clone Tek: REDONE - Mycotopia Web Forums (Faht's Oven Bag Clone Tek: REDONE)
here is a thread where all the substrains used in the thread are done using this tek...
Faht gets some new strains! (Faht gets some new strains! :)) - Mycotopia Web Forums

Pok-A-Print's
*i'd suggest using my self-healing lids with double injection port instead of just plain tyvek
Mycotopia Web Archive: Pok-A-Prints...!!!

Fahts self-healing lids and bag patches ***outdated-check kickass lid design above, at least for jar lids.. as for the bag patches, hip just uses a glob of silicone on the bag itself and that seems to work great***
Fahts self-healing lids and bag patches - Mycotopia Web Forums (Fahts self-healing lids and bag patches)

Rolling cakes in vermiculite
*this tek is more of a novelty... it doesn't really add anything to the performance of the cake. I've found that it DOES promote pinning all around the cake but that the cake would have produced those mushies anyway except more likely at the edges of the cake where it meets up with the verm DEC. it does remove/soak up the water after a dunk quite easily tho.
Here is a link to a pic of cakes that were rolled in verm after a dunk... a lot of pinning occured in the middle of the cake and not on the more common edges of the cake.

Attachment 41504

Medium Verm in cake recipe VS Fine verm in cake recipe
Fine verm vs. Medium verm in cake recipe and also some HillBilly Mycopron - Mycotopia Web Forums (Fine verm vs. Medium verm in cake recipe and also some HillBilly Mycopron)

Dual greenhouse setup
Mycotopia Web Archive: My setup as requested

Super Simple Drying Setup
Mycotopia Web Archive: Super simple drying setup

Lazy-ass teks
washing jars??? - Mycotopia Web Forums (washing jars???) Washing jars??
Re-using Contam'd Jars. - Mycotopia Web Forums (Re-using Contam'd Jars.) Re-using Contam'd Jars.

The Method of "Late Casing"
http://forums.mycotopia.net/fungi-gr...te-casing.html

A step by step makin of a mushroom chocolate
*couple changes to this tek... use a coffee grinder instead of a food processor and use the microwave to nuke your choc. 3 min. on high works much better than a double boiler. also, if you use bagged chocolate chips... i'd use 'nestle mini morsels' they melt like nothing
Mycotopia Web Archive: A step by step makin of a mushroom chocolate

CAKE TIPS
This is just some things to think about with water content in cakes. it's all IMO/IME.. nothing is really proven either way except for my own findings.

The idea is a simple one... if you want more mushrooms, you need more water... if you add more water, you need more FAE. There is a certain point of water retention in a cake that is most beneficial to the cakes production of pins and the maturation of those pins into full fruit-bodies. I call it the "Arc of Excellence", others call it the "Point of Diminishing Returns".

Picture an Arc and at the pinnacle of this arc is a point... this point is where the retention of water is at it's most beneficial to pin formation/development and then the maturation of those pins, hopefully 100% of the pins formed or at least most of them while safely resisting contams or drying out. To the left of that point is less water and to the right is too much water. Going too much to the right can result in contamination due to the water content being too high and the cake cannot cycle all the water has available to it. This over-saturation can also lead to poor pin formation and/or pin abortion. Not enough water can also cause poor pin formation/maturation. adjustments on either side of the point are easy to make... simply add more water if the cake is too dry or allow the cake to dry out a bit if it's too wet.

The inner reservoir is a great way to increase water distribution evenly throughout your cakes. even tho it's a small column (about the diameter of a nickel), it has no nutes and therefore is not completely colonized; only partially which keeps the reservoir intact and allows for absorption all along its length. This also acts as an extension of your top and bottom casing layers providing water to all parts of the fruiting surface. it's true that cakes have more surface area, but without proper water hydration, that extra area is unused. I highly recommend the inner reservoir and that it's made when the cakes are made... this allows the cake to slightly colonize it which, again, keeps it intact and stops water from just draining out the other end and also allows the cake to absorb water from it thru the myc that thinly colonizes it.

It's quite easy to know when to add water to the cake if we follow the processes and environment that the cake is subject to. Adding water to the cake right after birth is the best way to achieve that "point". This is because the cake is sterile right after birth, which helps with the contamination risk. The cake also doesn't have to struggle and reserve water; resulting is a healthy, unstressed cake right from the get-go. This is why dunked cakes or cakes that water has been fractionally added typically do better than undunked cakes on their first flush.

If you dunk your cakes after birth, I would dunk for no longer than 12 hours; changing the water every 4 and do it in a fridge if possible. Then apply a moist to wet casing layer and leave be unwatered until about mid pinning.. of course doing your FAE's at least twice a day. I've done both, but lately I've chosen fractionally adding water after birthing over dunking. This is how I do that:

You can (highly recommended, def. during the summer months) pasteurize your casing material before application and boil the water you plan on using for the soaking of the casing via bottle sprayer

1. I put down a piece of tin foil on the perlite and put a small pile of verm on the foil and soak with water.

2. open the jars and poor off any uncolonized verm air barrier... I don't scrape off the verm that is attached to the cake... why? this is sterilized casing material.. no reason to remove it if you're just going to put verm on there anyhow (unless of course you are using a verm/coir mixture or something similar). But regular verm by itself works great.

3. then I birth the cake and hold it under water for about a minute with verm barrier and all... this hydrates that verm in the inner reservoir and the air barrier.

4. I then apply a thick casing layer, about that size is good (1.5 inches), to the top of the cake and soak it with water... to the point that there is water draining off the cake when it's tilted a little bit and place it on top of the pile of wet verm on the foil. the cake will suck up this water in the next couple days... basically, this is a slow dunk but with lots of air available during the absorption.

5. Now you can do what I like to do and stack another cake on top of that one... this is a great space saver and utilizes the space you are already using. To stack the cakes, you need to put another piece of foil between them or water will get pulled down from the top cake via gravity; this will water log the bottom cake and dry out the top cake. You'll probably get a nice flush from the bottom one but that cake will probably contam the next time around due to being water logged... putting a piece of foil between them stops this action of forcing the water down or at least slows it considerably. Now just repeat the steps for the top cake and put a small pile of soaked verm on the foil and so on.

6. Now once you have your single verm soaked cake, you give it a couple days to absorb that soaking... I come back on the third day of birth and soak the top casing layer again to the point of pooling... This gets the cake about to the that "point" on the arc...

**note** -if you are doing the two cake "towers" only soak the top cakes top verm casing layer... the bottom cake just doesn't need a second soaking... it doesn't lose much water due to it being in close proximity of the perlite and being "capped" off by the top cake which allows for less evaporation. some of the water from the top cakes does find it's way to the bottom cake too, so that second soaking will most likely water log the cake.

7. Now I let the cakes go without another watering until mid fruiting where the cakes need lots of water to extend their fruits. Watering here can replace the need for a dunk between flushes one and two.

There are is a large amount of factors that also play a role in when you should add water to the cake (which I do so by watering the center of the top casing layer directly over where the inner reservoir is located). The stages in which the growth of the myc. is in is a big one.. which is also entwined with when you birthed the cakes. If you birth the cake before pinning starts invitro, longer periods of evaporation need to be taken into consideration before the cake starts pinning, which can be upwards of a week or more. But then entwined with that is the RH of the air that you are exchanging when doing your FAE's. So lets say you are in a climate where in the winter the RH is very low and the air is dry... when you do your FAE's in that climate, more evaporation is going to take place from your cakes and perlite; whereas, if you are doing your FAE's in a climate where the RH is high (the summer months anywhere), then less evaporation after exchanging your new air is going to occur and that balance on that "point" will remain steady with little fluctuation so less water will need to be replaced. Even if you are in a low RH environment, a small amount of water will need to be replaced as there is little growth in the way of pins which results in little need for the cake to tap into it's reserve within it's structure. Even during the pinning stage, small amounts of water are used in pin formation (more than before pin formation but not much). This can be seen in how dense the pins are.

Myc. is going to produce its pins at a point on the cake where four factors come together in the best ratio for optimal fruit development through spore dispersal: nutrients, air, water, and structure. This is why pinning on the edges are a preferred place for myc. in a overlayed casing or normal casing or on a cake, where the DEC and myc. meet. (thanks Golly ). This is why you want to keep your DEC nice and moist during the pinnig stage... this signals the cake that this is a good spot to grow a whole shit load of mushies.. and if the cake is nice and healthy and not struggling in any way, it'll put out a nice pinset and see all, if not most of those pins to maturation. But in order to see all those pins mature, another step should be taken.

This is where larger amounts of water can be added safely to the cakes' casing.. Right after pin maturity (right before the caps starts breaking away from the stem), the cake is getting ready to use A LOT of it's water reserve. This is because it is using this water to inflate and elongate the cells in it's fruitbodies... not to say that tissue gain in the fruits is completely stopped but certainly slowed as water inflates the mushrooms. This is (ime) why the growth of mushrooms happens so rapidly after pin maturation. So it's during mid fruiting that water should or can be added to the casing layer so that the cake can easily use this new water through absorption by gravity and inner reservoir. This will permit more of those mature pins to go on to mature sporulating fruit-bodies. This watering can also keep the water retained in the cake high in volume if it's replaced as the cake used it during pin maturation. once the cake is fully mature.. the cake will still be heavy and therefore all that is needed is a bleach dip and a new pasteurized casing layer to be added and once again soaked (minus the third day of flush soak, it's unneeded and possibly harmful to your cakes--- but should be taken into consideration by how hydrated your cakes are if it should be done or not) to bring the cake back to that "point". But a dunk is never a bad idea... just other ways to go at it. And some strains prefer dryer conditions than others so you really should play around with it... find your own way of doing things.. keep track of what you do and your results... And if you do decide to experiment, don't put all your eggs in one basket, so to speak.

I use medium grade verm. and mix 1 1/2 slightly heaping cups med. verm with 1/2 cup of slightly heaping Brf to 2/3 cup water... this gets me about 2 3/4 worth of half pints of substrate. the trick is to get the water content to juuuuust before the mix starts getting gooey.. i also use 'arrowhead mills' brand brf.

Quick Step Rye Prep
http://forums.mycotopia.net/fungi-gr...-rye-prep.html

Popcorn prep. - First, put your corn in the pc without your jar rack (the plate the pc comes with to keep the jars off the bottom of the pc.) and cover with at least three inches of water.
you can probably go a little less once you get the hang of how much the dry kernels will absorb. on average the kernel will expand 3 times it's size.
Now pc at 15 psi for 1 hour. after an hour, turn off the pc and left the pressure adjust back to zero... once the safety nob drops, you can unscrew the lid. be very careful.. the pc will still be very hot. don't let the steam get ya in the face.
Now pour the corn into a strainer. I rinse off the corn with hot water first. the kernels will have lots of starch on them.. if you rinse with cold water first the starch will coegulate making it a bitch to get off. rinsing is a very important part of the process... you want to get the kernels as free from starch as possible. once you've rinsed with hot water... rinse with cold. this will cool the kernels down making them easier to handle and also 'tighten' the kernel up making it not so mooshy.
once rinsed, i let the corn sit for a few minutes to drain. Next i lay down a piece of paper towel and lay the corn on top of that in a single kernel layer. then i place another piece of paper towel on top of the corn layer and roll my hands lightly over the corn. If you don't want to hydrate a whole Pressure cooker full of corn, you can just put a couple inches of kernels in the bottom of a quart jar.. then fill the qt jar with water about an inch from the top and PC that (with water in the bottom of the PC of course) for an hour at 15 psi.

Lab Sterile Prints
Mycotopia Web Forums - View Single Post - lab sterile prints/clones/fruits at home, CHEAP (lab sterile prints/clones/fruits at home, CHEAP :) merged) merged

FAHTSACK
http://forums.mycotopia.net/fungi-gr...an-spores.html

Summer drying - drying in the winter is easy cuz there is no or very little RH in the air. but summer sucks for drying... it's a bitch to dry mushies nice and dry in order to grind them up for making choc.'s. but i found that if you put the mushies in a tyvek envelope or something that is breathable like a brown paper bag and stick them in the crisper in your fridge (where the RH is a lot lower) for a day or so they will get cracker dry. which is much easier to grinder up close to a powder.
http://forums.mycotopia.net/showthread.php?t=13129 (Cracker dry in the Summer!)

Easy Ultra-sonic Spore Agitation
*this will break up the small clumps of spores that collect together into single spores, stretching the spore juice even further. this also helps in even germination throughout the innoc. point. **you can skip the bottle cap and foil part if you just fill the entire bottom up with distilled water so that it touches the water-line sensor... that works too. when i say 'suspend', i more mean 'agitate' to the point of declumping
Mycotopia Web Forums - View Single Post - Easy Ultra-sonic spore suspension (Easy Ultra-sonic spore suspension)

Popcorn rez'd tubs AKA Mo' tubs
Faht's Mo' Tubs - Mycotopia Web Forums (Faht's Mo' Tubs)

Super Easy Cleaning
this is something that i just started doing... I think someone said it to me in passing and it may be here in the archives already but all you do is toss the freshly picked mushrooms into your drying device. Once they're dry, just put them into a large ziplock bag and seal the bag with some air still left in the bag. now just push and pull at the bag like mad. the mushies rub against each other knocking off the verm./casing layer of your choice. once you are satisfied that the mushies are clean, just knead the bag a bit so that the dry flakes fall to one corner of the bag. then just remove your clean mushies. surprisingly, most if not all the mushies stay intact. it acts like a rock tumbler basically. for best results, do this a few times. thanks for the idea whoever told it to me. sure cuts back on the cleaning time... what used to take hours, now only takes 15 min.
I must add tho, this doesn't work very well for popcorn UNLESS you clean the 'stuck' kernals off the mushies before you put them in the drier. which i would recommend. at least for certain strains such as tex which for some reason are extremely adhered to their substrate and will definately take a few kernals with them when they are picked.

"Edging" or "Mounding"
*Mounding substrates into 2 inch blocks. then casing mounds to utilize pinning at edges (where myc. and casing material meet) New Tek... "edging" (New Tek... "edging" :)) - Mycotopia Web Forums

Some results
cakes - Mycotopia Web Forums (cakes)
Mycotopia Web Forums - View Single Post - SoMe TeXaS EyE CaNdY [popcorn rez effect] (SoMe TeXaS EyE CaNdY [popcorn rez effect])
a quick tex pic. - Mycotopia Web Forums (a quick tex pic.)
Mycotopia Web Archive: Archive through May 23, 2003
Mycotopia Web Archive: And a MERRY christ-more it was...
PE cake pics... yo - Mycotopia Web Forums (PE cake pics... yo)
GT's ala faht - Mycotopia Web Forums (GT's ala faht)
HillBilly's ala faht - Mycotopia Web Forums (HillBilly's ala faht)
Koh Samui... - Mycotopia Web Forums (Koh Samui...)
http://forums.mycotopia.net/mushroom...-eyecandy.html (EyeCandy)

Bulk Section

My Bulk Write-up

http://forums.mycotopia.net/fungi-growing-edible-medicinal-magic-mushrooms/30940-faht-makes-bulk-tub.html

SA's- http://forums.mycotopia.net/mushroom...-sas-bulk.html
Hillbilly's- http://forums.mycotopia.net/mushroom...-hbs-bulk.html
weak PE grow, but the sectioning is interesting I guess- http://forums.mycotopia.net/compost-...does-bulk.html (Faht does bulk)

Some useful links
PC <--- super sick website... ANY part you need to replace on your PC can be gotten here... just need the serial number of the pc and brand.

Product: Priority Mail Envelope
this is a link to have tyvek mailers sent to you for free... but try not to order a shitload if you only need like 10... you can always order more. lets not abuse our resources. Not sure if this is just a service provided for those that live in the states or not but it's a good chance.

Need sterile, cheap and no hassle syringes over the internet? here you go. no questions asked...

Main site page... www.iMed.com - 20,000+ Discount Health and Medical Products

10ml leur-lok sterile syringes.... Becton-Dickinson - Bd Luer Lok Tip Syringe 10ml/Cc Disposable 1/5ml Graduation Sterile - , 100 Units / 1 unit

18 guage needles for leur-lok syringes 1 1/2 in. long.... Becton-Dickinson - Precision Glide Needle - Only Sterile 18gauge X 1 1/2" Pink, 100 Units / 1 unit

fahtster