Whole Grain Rice Cakes - B+ - Chronic Invitro

I used a combination of different teks to form a method of growing that I am comfortable with in its ease and results. This method isn't for everyone as it is not stealthy in any sense of the word. I have an entire room dedicated to my hobby. I have no doubt that it can be tailored to fit the grow style of just about anyone. It's not really a sophisticated method, as far as technique, it's probably something worthy of low to middle skill level myco-naughts.
I'll try to answer any questions if something is unclear. And I'd love to see some feedback or suggestions to improve my work in progress.
Enjoy!

Materials Used:
12 half-pint sized wide mouth mason jars
12 quart sized wide mouth mason jars
2 pint sized wide mouth mason jar (1 for lc, 1 for Heat Bomb)
1 tube silicon sealant
1 sterile syringe (for airport)
1 little amount of poly-fill (for airport, pulled out of a throw pillow on my couch)
10 cup capacity KRUPS rice cooker
12 quart capacity Presto Pressure Cooker
1 Sterilite transparent storage container (for Glove Box)
1 Igloo style cooler (for incubator)
1 aquarium heater (for Heat Bomb)
3 cups Whole Grain Long Brown Rice (Uncle Ben's)
7.5 cups of distilled water
1 bottle rubbing alcohol (for swab and flame sterilization)
1 roll Paper Towels
1 multi-spore syringe, B+ strain (TGS)
1 baby food jar (for Alcohol flame)
1 space heater w/temp adjustment
1 Acu-Rite digital thermometer w/satellite
12 inch tall pieces of PVC pipe (risers for ChronicTek invitro)
1 wire frame shelf system (for ChronicTek)
1 pair of latex gloves

Preparations:
* Glove Box construction: Simple. Cut two holes for your arms in the side of your transparent Sterilite storage container.
* Make your lc jar per Hippie's Simple LC/Tek
* Construct your Quart sized Invitro jars per Chronic Tek
* Incubator Construction: Depending on the number of jars you want to make, increase the size of the cooler. Use your aquarium heater and a pint sized jar to make a Heat Bomb. I drilled a hole near the bottom of my cooler to run the electrical cord for the bomb.
* Build an alcohol flame out of a baby food jar. I poke a hole in the lid and use a piece of an old sock cut into a long strip to use as a wick. just fill the jar up with rubbing alcohol, push the wick through the hole in the lid. There you go. It's like a lamp.


The Game Plan:
Your multi-spore syringe has arrived.

step 1 - LC Germination: I hate nocc'ing up jars with spores. The germination period pisses me off cause you can't see anything happening for several days to a couple weeks. I prefer to work with lc. The benefit: you can see visible mycellium growth in your lc in less than 1 day, also you can knock up a literally unlimited number jars on one spore syringe. Follow Hipp's plan for liquid culture and you can't go wrong. You should have a healthy amount of LC in a week or so.

step 2 - Substrate Preparation: You've waited patiently for your liquid culture and it is finally ready. It' is now time to get your substrate ready.

If it wasn't for the kick-ass rice cooker, I don't know if I would even have tried growing with whole grain rice. I've had so many poor attempts at cooking rice on a stove-top just while making a meal that I wouldn't have bet on my odds at producing repeatable success of 'rice cooked just right' for myc growth on a regular basis. A rice cooker, in my opinion is just as a integral part of the operation as the pressure cooker.

I use a rice to water ratio of 1 cup rice to 2.5 cups of distilled water. I have used tap water without problems. Just dump the two ingredients into the cooker, press the button, and you're good to go. I fluff the rice a little after it is cooked just to make sure any moisture is evenly distributed.

At this point you should have plenty of rice to fill up 12 1/2 pint jars. Spoon enough rice into the jars to fill them up to the first thread. I give the jars gentle shakes to help settle the rice a bit. You don't want the rice to be packed though, there should be plenty of aeration throughout the cake.

Just like PFtek, you should clean up any grains or slime that may have gotten on the jar near the threads. I put the lids on rubber side up and tighten it down very snug to prevent water from splashing into the jar during the Pressure Cooking. I don't use a verm filter layer in my jars, nor do I poke fae holes in my lids. with the lids rubber side up and the rings loosely screwed down (after innoculation), there seems to be plenty of air exchange.

Pressure cook at 15 psi for 60 minutes and let the jars cool down for 6-8 hours or preferably over night. Be sure to inspect your jars after they've been cooked. If you notice the rice is slimy near the bottom that means it took on a little water during the pressure cooking. My theory is that the jars breath a little during the pressure cook and if they're along the wall of the cooker where water is splashing and bubbling a jar or two can occasionally suck in some of the water. It's best just to discard it.

step 3 - Innoculation. Your jars are room temp cool and you're ready to knock the babies up!

I sterilize the multi-spore syringe to use for my innoculations. You'll want to sterilze the airport syringe also. Using a glove box is important, in my opinion, since the lids will be removed to innoculate and there is no verm filter to catch contams. Before using my Glove Box I wipe the inside down really well with a paper towel/alcohol swab. It is probably not necessary but I wear latex gloves during the innoculation process just to be on the safe side. I keep an alcohol swab in the glove box with me to rest the syringe on between removing and replacing lids and for wiping down the needle after every few jars.

Use about 2 cc of lc per jar. I hit up 4 points around the sides of each jar, keeping the jar tilted at about a 45 degree angle so all the culture doesn't just run to the bottom but has a chance to sink into the sides. I save about a half of a cc to squirt on the top of the cake also before I replace the lid. I figure the faster the top of the cake colonizes the less chance of contaminations.
When replacing the lids, keep them rubber side up and the rings very loose. This should provide adequate fresh air exchange while they incubate.

step 4 - Incubation: The jars are all knocked up and they're ready to colonize.
It's very simple, you place all of your jars in the incubator and wait.

I suggest keeping a thermometer or thermostat device in the incubator to monitor the heat. From my experience, the aquarium heater/heat bomb will do a great job regulating the heat automatically in the beginning, but once the myc starts to colonize the jars they will start radiating their own heat and the temp can easily run out of control and kill your crop. Especially if you're doing a lot of jars.

I recommend using a Acu-Rite monitor with a satellite thermometer. Place the satellite in the incubator and keep the monitor on your desk or in the area of the house you hang out in most.

Try to keep the temp in the incubator as close to 84-86 degrees F. as possible. Occasionally, you may have to prop the lid open to vend hot air if it starts to over heat.

With any luck, in 8 or 9 days your cakes should be nearly fully colonized. At this point, I give them another day or 2 for good measure.

step 5 - Dunk tek: The cakes are fully colonized and are ready to be birthed, but I'm going to dunk them first.

Just use the quart jars for dunking. You can fit 3 cakes in a quart jar and use one of your PVC risers to keep them submerged with the lid on. Tap water worked fine for me. Give the cakes 24 hours in the fridge.

step 6 - Invitro: Your cakes are 100% colonized and have been dunked. It is time to get these babies pinning and fruiting.

If you follow Chronic Tek to the letter you will have great results.

Instead of using PVC pipe for the risers I had extra narrow mouth jar rings lying around and I just used them instead.

Using an electric space heater that has a temp adjustment knob, I was able to keep the room with my grow in it at as close to 76 degrees as possible.

The light cycle has been about 12 hours light and 12 hours of darkness.

I started seeing pins in 10-12 days.

Total time from innoculation with LC to pinning was 20 days. It's been 3 days since pinning to what you see in the pictures below. I am expecting a harvest in 4 to 5 days.

[Hippie3]

makes me proud.

you've put it all together well.

[Crust]

Wow, nice write up. Thanks for taking the time!

[Freaky]

Great example and write up.....very nice setup!

update: Instead of using inch pieces of PVC pipe for the Invitro risers (as detailed in the Chronic tek), I went with narrow 1/2 pint lid rings and used the lids themselves on top of the ring as a platform for the cake to sit on. I used tin snips to cut several wedges from the bottom of the rings so that moisture on the quart jar lids (below the cake) wouldn't create a seal and block FAE to the holes punched on the quart lids.

[D3M0NX]

Well Done

[ccam123]

Good Work!

[Lazlo]

Put a casing on those doggies and they'll really go off!

Nice write up.

yeah, I ended up putting a casing layer under and on top of each cake, in subsequent grows. In total I used this tek 3 or 4 times with success, but in the end I determined it was taking too much work. Imagine 400-500 of these fuckers. At least for a large operation it is too much work.

unscrewing jars for each cake, trying to pull the cake out of the jar to get to the fruits. You really had to man-handle the cakes to get them out sometimes. Washing 2 sets of jars for each cake.

I've moved on to rye grain in quart jars. I birth 8 quart jars of colonized rye into kitty litter trays, putting a casing layer on top. Done. Easy. Much easier than the equivalent 32 1/2 pint jars birthed into 32 quart jars invitro. On top of all that g2g transfer makes it 500x more simple to keep a grow going without having to start from scratch each time.

I look at this rice invitro grow as a valuable learning experience, and I'm sure it would be handy and convenient to do if you're only doing a small recreational grows for your own use.

[weeeeeee]

nice work dude i must say you covered everything pretty well in this write up