Quick step rye prep

[fahtster]

hey everyone,
I just thought I would do a pictorial of how to do some easy rye qts without having to do any soaks or simmering. It's pretty much what the TMC says to do. I thought what the hell. lol here it is:

1. fill clean qt. jar with between 1 1/8- 1 1/4 cups of dry organic rye grain...



Now, adding the measured grain directly to the jar helps keep track of how much grain is in each jar and you don't have to worry about water being absorbed and throwing off the measurement. So all of your jars will be equal when it's all said and done.

2. fill the jar up about half way with warm/hot water..



3. place palm over the opening of the jar, pick up, and with your palm over the opening shake vigorously back and forth and up and down. after this your jars' water should look all dirty..





4. Now take a fine wire mesh "bowl" strainer and put it over the mouth of the jar..



5. flip the whole jar over with strainer into the sink to drain dirty water...



this keeps the grain inside the jar while allowing drainage..

6. Repeat steps 2 - 5 until the water is pretty much clear.. I usually just do it twice. This is washing the grains so that they will come apart easier when you shake them later.

7. Once the grain is clean, knock the rest of the grain down that is sticking to the sides of the qt by hitting the bottom of the jar on your palm and fill the jar until the water line is about an 1/8 inch above the dry grain line like so..



8. Now this is possibly the most important step and I think a lot of peeps totally space this step out. CLEAN THE TOP JAR RIM (i'm not yelling, just making it easy to read.) this is the only thing standing between the inside of your jar and the outside... be sure to wipe it spotless before you put your lid on.

9. Screw lid on tight and back off a 1/4 turn. Place foil over lid and PC at 15-18 psi for 1 hour 10 mins.

10. After PC has cooled (at least 4 hours in rough estimate) to the touch, remove PC lid and immediately tighten the jar lids.

11. Now since the grain was PC'ed dry and sitting in water, the hydration of the grain kernels is going to vary through out the height of the grain column.. see, the grain on the very top is not going to be as hydrated as the grain on the bottom because as the water gets forced into the kernels, the water line drops and kernels get bigger forcing the column to expand upwards. So the kernels that popped out of the water first are the least hydrated kernels, and the very very bottom kernels in the jar will probably burst, but it's a very small amount. So since there is a variance in the hydration all along the column we need to mix all the kernels together to even out the water content in the jar.. we do this by hitting the jar against a knee (in my case) or an old bike tire. Once the kernels are broken up, just shake the jar vigorously as if you were doing a shake mid colonization.
tada, your jar is ready

here's 30 jars of rye done this exact same way..





I also love this method because it's so freakin clean... look at the above process.. no mess.. no transfer of wet grain anywhere. thats nice.

In the last 60+ qts I've made this way, one went south and that was to a breach in the lid. The contam was trich, not bacteria. I could tell that the reason was the lid by where the trich was located and how scattered it was... It was on the very top of the grain below the lid and about three different spots started at once. If you are losing lots of jars to any kind of contam, I think that the PC is the last place you point your finger.. odds are that it's either one of these or a combination of them:

1. A breach in the lid
2. poor inoculation sterility
3. The inoculate itself

if you are seeing entire batches get bacteria, I doubt it's because of endospores not being killed.. I'd say that it's your inoculate.. hatching endospores is worthless imo/ime... if you look at how it works... not all bacteria are endospore producing bacteria.. EACH bacteria that can produce endospores WILL make one endospore when introduced to harsh environments. so, If you soak and hatch those endospores to make them into bacteria, they will just produce another endospore when you try to kill them again. i.e., heat. and only a hatched bacteria can make more bacteria by reproducing, so when you soak and hatch endospores, you are just making bacteria that reproduces exponentially... if you are soaking, you are making more endospores not the other way around. Sometimes an endospore may survive to ruin your jars, but thats not something that would happen to every jar in a batch.. maybe like 1 in 20 jars... at least with the 1+ hour PC'ing.

if you are getting contams on the tops of your grain, your lid needs reworking... the top of the grain is the part of the jar that gets sterilized the most.. as it's right where the steam comes in thru the jar lid.. the bottom center gets the least steam for the least amount of time, so if anything is living thru a PC'ing, then it would most probably start there and in the center, not anywhere on the outside of the grain column.

If you're getting contams mixed in with mycelium at your inoc. points.. then odds are it's your inoculate.

If you are seeing just one jar here or there where theres a contam mixed in with growing myc, then it probably got it when you inoculated i.e., the port wasn't as clean as it could be etc.

These are all just some things to think about.. it's a take it or leave it kind of situation

fahtster

[Sunstar]

Nice write up

[thebaldeagle]

youR theory on endospores differs from what Stamets says in TMC.

[Hippie3]

where are the pix faht ?
plz upload directly into your posts instead of linking.

[Hippie3]

Originally Posted by thebaldeagle

youR theory on endospores differs from what Stamets says in TMC.

so ?
stamets has been wrong on many things.
just some dude, not a godling.

[fahtster]

alright... there we go, sorry.. what I did was after I hit "preview" i hit "back" and it didn't save any of the uploads after I hit the enter post thing, my bad.

TBE- it's not really a theory as much as I've actually done it in a lab.. we put bacteria into various harsh environments.. heat. And did an endospore stain at different temps.. you can see the endospore developing inside each bacteria cell.

I don't see any flaw in the reasoning, but you can do what you want lol just something to think about.

fahtster

[Dr_T]

Originally Posted by Hippie3

so ?
stamets has been wrong on many things.
just some dude, not a godling.

Agreed - 50%

Stamets isn't 'just some dude', he's a smart and knowledgeable dude. He can be wrong of course- and some of his info is outdated. But in general, people would do well to pay attention to him, same as they would to other smart, knowledgeable sources like Roger Rabbit, or yourself. If we see farther than he does- it's because we are standing on other peoples' shoulders.

As to the question at hand- endospores- the Stamets book I have pretty much ignores them. In one part he's talking about adding water and grain to a jar, then PCing right away.

And that's the way I do it now- I read it, tried it, and it worked. I'll pay attention to anybody who know what they are talking about, Stamets, you, anybody. It's results that count, not sources.

[TVCasualty]

Nice work, as usual!

But really, how much fun can it all be without the stink of simmering, the mess on the floor and counters, and all the rinsing? (I'm guessing "a lot more!")

Simplicity good.

About those endospores: Do you think that soaking overnight to sprout them followed by rinsing and then quickly heating up the water to a simmer would kill the bacteria before it had a chance to produce new endospores? I guess I'm really just asking how long it takes a bacterium to form a complete endospore, seeing as how you've studied that firsthand.

Also, how many jars have you had break over the years? I saw where you mentioned using your knee to help with shaking, and immediately thought about a jar I shook very recently that shattered, sending glass and grain everywhere, ugh. I'd hate to hear about you getting a bad cut is all... I wear leather work gloves (my "lab" leather gloves), hold the jar by the lid/neck, and smack it on a thick, folded towel I use to protect the (heavy duty) table I'm smacking them on. I've had three or four break while shaking (over the last decade), and only got one small cut, thankfully.



Dr_T: Did ya have to mention RR?

[tecnikal]

thanks for the write up man. The tyvek you have over those jar lids...is there a lid underneath them? or do you just put the tyvek down, tape, put your jar ring over that, then tighten?

[Hippie3]

there's a lid,
it'd dry out fast if it was all tyvek

[thebaldeagle]

TV,

I pull the donut spare out of my trunk and use it to smack jars on. I've never had one break that way. Prior to that I broke plenty. That hot seed makes a mess and I've been burned by it before too. Now I too use suede welders gloves, hold jars by the neck and bounce off the tire. works great.

HIP,

I'm not implying that Stamets is a godling, but he is a wealth of info. and yes, some of it is outdated but I try to stick pretty close to what he says and it works for me. Hell, I try alot of what you post here and it works well too.
Soaking seed in bleach water overnight, instead of regular tap water has lowered my contam rate by nearly half. On second thought, maybe he is a godling, that would make you his arch angel. In my book anyway.

[Hippie3]

i'd be satan


'Tis better to rule in Hell
than to serve
in Heaven...
- Lucifer

from
The State of Innocence
and the Fall of Man
By John Dryden

[fahtster]

Thanks!

T.V.-- They produce them extremely fast.. it didn't take much at all to get them to start making endospores. Maybe if you "flash" heated them, it would be quick enough.. but really, I don't have problems with bacteria.. like at all. I get trich or mold waaaay before I ever get bacteria. I actually just broke my first qt making the last 30... luckily I did it on the first round of jars, so I wasn't one shy for the bins.

I think that to have consistent good results you need to A. get a clean culture, and B. keep it that way. Thats why a good lid is key. It's the only thing protecting your work... If you don't have a solid lid, then it's a crap shoot. Thats why I stress a good lid design so much. since I started putting a lot of attention into how I make mine I've gotten better sleep at night lol. I think plastic lids are inferrior to tyvek ones. But thats just my opinion. I've tried both and the tyvek ones have more pros.

Hip- Those are actually just tyvek, but I can see how just by looking at that you would think there should definitely be something under there. They are a variation to these 1/4 pint master lids that I use..

http://forums.mycotopia.net/jars-bag...test-time.html (Lids that have stood the test of time.)

These are made with the same layering.. three layers of tyvek.. two postal
(one on bottom and one on top), and one kite tyvek layer in the middle. I do the same thing for these up to putting the tape on the top... you can see that I just put tape on each side and leave a strip down the middle. Then I smear that strip with silicone to embed it in the tyvek, BUT I leave a small spot that I don't put any silicone on at all.. it's about the size of the tip of my finger that is covering the tyvek in this pic..



I leave that little area free of silicone.. thats the FAE.. Then I just put an 1/8 inch layer of silicone on each side and smooth out with a wet finger... I probably over do it with the ports, but I love my space.. I can get about 10 uses out of each lid. The other thing with these is that I don't put the 2nd port underneath on the inside of the lid like I do with those master jars. One probably could but I don't think it's necessary for these grain jars. for the master culture, yes.

The other reason I like tyvek lids is that not only do they create a seal on that upper 1/8 inch rim of the jar, but since there is tyvek between the jar threads and band threads, there is a seal created there also.

fahtster

[TVCasualty]

Wow, that's interesting about the endospores, thanks. Seems like a significant detail to know, since so many (including myself) have often done unnecessary things to fight bacteria based on inaccurate assumptions. But no longer!

Originally Posted by thebaldeagle

I pull the donut spare out of my trunk and use it to smack jars on.

I'd be way too paranoid about bringing in germs with the tire. Only one jar of mine has broken when I first shook it after taking it out of the PC, the others broke after letting the grain get a little too overincubated; it took a lot of smacking to break the grain up enough for spawning in some cases, and mason jar Darwinism took over. It happens, count on it.

[camMyco]

Give Fahtster another 6 months of great write-ups were going to have to make a Faht-vault section. Nice write-up and pictures! Again

[bear]

Yeah, back to read about fahts cloning tek.

[GriffinTree]

nevermind.......sry

[photovoric]

I wonder if this would work with bags too...

[seedlessstinky1]

So i could use this method to do a BRF2GRAIN transfer and have no probs? I know BRF2BRF is fine but willl it work for grains?

[TL7]

I do not soak simmer or rinse rye seed and it always worked for me

[Mushrooms201]

I have tried just about every combination and have had widely varied results with each... Now I do the meathod that I have time for, but prefer the old rinse, soak 24, simmer and pc.

[PINKBUFFLVR]

Nice .......<bump>...

[eatyualive]

Originally Posted by seedlessstinky1

So i could use this method to do a BRF2GRAIN transfer and have no probs? I know BRF2BRF is fine but willl it work for grains?

yes it should. so should any grain method you use. you just scrape your brf jar with a fork into 10 or 12 quart spawn jars. or you can slurry the brf jar and make about 100 or more quart jars of spawn.

[red_lenses]

Works well with WBS, just rinse really good before PC.

[ishkaboo]

Gonna try this in a couple days. First time with rye; wish me luck!

Any tips for a first timer?