Diy breather patch for spawn bags/ Polly fill pouch: take 2

[zodd]

This is my take on an improvised filter patch for home made spawn bags, I started thinking about how to solve the problem of not being able to do grain to grain with a Polly fill stuffed bottle neck. And it has been evolving ever since.

I’m in the proccess of testing this out so no guarantees attached

What you’ll need

1 x Zip lock bagie
1 medium to large zip lock freezer bag
Polly fill
Scalpel
Scissors
And sticky tape
Marker pen (optional)



Start by stuffing your polly fill in the baggie. Packing it in quite tightly. You do want to put allot in because the idea is that it will bounce back once it has been sealed in.

Now you have a bubble with Polly fill inside it. For the sake of this write up I will be marking both sides of the pouch with a 1 and a 2. This is so I can better convey what I’m thinking.

The next step is to cut holes in both sides of this bubble. Side one should be roughly one centimetre squared, and side 2 should be two centimetres squared. That’s the pouch done

It’s now time to cut your breather hole in your spawn bag.

In the freezer bag make a small centimetre squared hole about two inches from the top.

Now roughly working in the best light you can find. line up the hole on the spawn bag with the hole on side 2 of the Polly fill pouch. the pouch is to go on the inside of the spawn bag for greater sterility.

Hold it in place and tape around the edges of the polly fill pouch sealing it to the bag. be liberal with your tape here. No reason why just cant hurt.



That’s it realy. as I said im going to be testing this out more rigorously over the next coming weeks so its not proven but it is looking promesing.

[zodd]

if you don’t have a baggie you can also diy a pouch by sticky taping three edges together until you have an opening then stuff the opening with polyfill and seal in with tape. btw this is not pc suitable. however if you were to use polypropylene then i see no reason why it would have any problems going in the pc as all the materials involved have been proven to do fine in the pc.

at the minuet i have one of these pouch bags going that im using to test how well the gas exchange rate matches up to pollyfill stuffed tubing. both bag are un pasteurized coco coir that have been spawned with oysters on whole rice.

[fungusfarmer]

I like the breathable medical tape. I make a thin square and tape all edges. Holds up in PC, just gets hard.

[zodd]

breather tape is good for jars, but when i have attempted to use it on bags in the past it has this annoying tendency to stick to the opposing side of the bag meaning that every now and then you got to ruffle it about a bit which can cause some major problems if your not lucky.

[BuckarooBanzai]

It's an interesting idea. You can't PC those bags, I don't think.

And...not to be a dick, seriously, but...

You realize breather patch spawn bags are like, fifty cents a piece, right?

Again, seriously - not trying to be an asshole, just kind of...wondering.

[zodd]

your not a dick bro your criticism is appreciated and welcomed. for me in good old england my only source for micropore bags runs me at about £ 1. 25 a bag. it aint much but with my future up and coming plans 1. 25 will soon add up. so im going to need to refine and perfect these more readily available alternatives.

i do have some tests in the pipe line for a pc able cheapo bag which is why im developing this idea to be incorporated into the final product.

[BuckarooBanzai]

Ouch, that is pricey. Any chance for mail order?

You might consider looking at the bags they sell for cooking turkeys/chickens in the oven. In the States, some of those bags are PP5 and will survive the pressure cooker.

You can make a re-usable air vent out of a short length of PVC pipe stuffed with Polyfill. Zip ties are a great way to attach the filter into the bags.

There was a thread on that a few years back. I think it was Fahtster's, but I'm not sure. I'll go look but don't hold your breath - I am severely search impaired.

[BuckarooBanzai]

I can't believe I actually found it. You have no idea how rare it is for me to be able to put my digital hands back on the images I remember in my head.

Here is the thread:
http://forums.mycotopia.net/holding-...an-spores.html (Faht's FAHTSACK (clean spores))

Lots of good pics and documentation. Hope that helps in yer studies!

[zodd]

wow nice! must be my lucky day. ill give that a good reading through soon.

Originally Posted by BuckarooBanzai

You can make a re-usable air vent out of a short length of PVC pipe stuffed with Polyfill. Zip ties are a great way to attach the filter into the bags.

some drinking lids work well too, but it almost completely eliminates the
Possibility of grain to grain. which is something im going to be using more over the coming years.

[zodd]

wOooo! just finished reading that thread and like im shocked. that fahtt was an innovative fella. how did i miss this in the vaults. goes to show you that you can rummage around in there for years then still find gold.

thanks for the link

[Om shanti]

Originally Posted by zodd

if you don’t have a baggie you can also diy a pouch by sticky taping three edges together until you have an opening then stuff the opening with polyfill and seal in with tape. btw this is not pc suitable. however if you were to use polypropylene then i see no reason why it would have any problems going in the pc as all the materials involved have been proven to do fine in the pc.

at the minuet i have one of these pouch bags going that im using to test how well the gas exchange rate matches up to pollyfill stuffed tubing. both bag are un pasteurized coco coir that have been spawned with oysters on whole rice.

Yep, I also used this method - more or less. Spawnbags are also unavailable in my country so I would have to order from abroad for lots of $$.

I use bags which are safe for boiling I get in the supermarket, but they work well for PC'ing too - so far at least. I have mostly PCed the bags without polyfll filter with a bit of foil around the end, and then transferred grain/pf cake to them and finally made the polyfill filter. I just fold the bag around the polyfil. then use lots of tape.

but to make the whole bag PC'able use a rubber band or some regular string instead of tape for fixing the filter.

[zodd]

hay nice. how much does one of them bags cost ya. ive tried pc'ing oven bags in the past and the sides always split on me. im thinking about giving them a second try and taping the sides for extra support, but i might get me some of them boiling bags instead, as they seem to be working well for you man. one question though, you said you fitted the polly fill after sterilisation. Did you sterilise that in any way or did you pop it strait in. just wondering off course as that sounds a bit risky to me. Though your pick speaks for itself.

[Om shanti]

I should say I've placed the bags in either big glass jars or in polypropylene plastic containers while pc'ing - just in case they succumb to the heat. I'm afraid it could happen if the bags touched the sides of the PC.

I think it's 50 bags for 2US$, but they're very small, 8 litres I think, so they're much smaller than the spawnbags you buy. For instance, there is only about 0,7-0,8L pf substrate in the bag on the photo above, if I remember correctly.

On a few occasions I used un-sterilized polyfill for the filter, but only because I had forgot to sterilize any, and I was doing "cake-to-cake" transfers, not inoculating with spores. I didn't get any contams but I don't think there is any good reason not to sterilize the polyfill first (doesn't take up much room in the pc). I did the transfers and attached the filters inside my glovebox.

Anyway, I forgot to say, I like the way you rmake the bags in your post #1. Much nicer than the way I did it so far, I will try to improve my practice this way. I had some problems getting the filters right - some times they allow too much FAE ,other times too little, etc.