Enhance Your Home-Grow! - How to Use Liquid Mushroom Culture
Why Use a Culture Medium?
The best liquid mushroom culture will enhance your home-grow. Liquid culture is a nutrient medium that makes growing mushrooms at home more productive and fun! Plus, you look and feel like a true scientist!
Similar to the agar plates that are used by mycologists to expedite the growth of mushroom spores and clones, liquid mushroom culture is a great alternative to agar for ensuring a successful spore inoculation, and growth of your favorite mushrooms. There are several liquid mushroom culture recipes, and here at Haus, we've experimented with several. Liquid mushroom culture can be made by sterilizing honey or Karo - Light Corn Syrup in the proper ratios of water. Both of these recipes are commonly discussed as good nutrient mediums for liquid mushroom culture in YouTube videos, mycology-grow forums, and blogs.
Nutrient mediums will feed your spores, make mushroom spores stronger, and reduce the time needed to fully colonize your substrate or grain-spawn. Here is what our grain-spawn looks like just two weeks after inoculation using our liquid culture nutrient medium.
Honey vs Corn Syrup - How About Neither!
The problem with using honey or corn syrup is that, through the sterilization process, it's almost impossible to avoid caramelizing the sugar molecules. Caramelized sugar molecules make poor food for your precious mushroom spores, and cause stunted growth of spores in your nutrient medium. The spores will fail to grow, grow too slowly, or fail to fully colonize if sugar molecules are damages by the sterilization process. We've experienced sub-par spore growth first hand when experimenting with honey and corn-syrup culture mediums.
The whole purpose of the culture medium is to provide an environment for your spores to grow fast and strong. This way, when it's time for inoculation of your grain spawn, or substrate your spores are fed, healthy, and ready to grow. Using a mushroom culture medium ensures that your spores survive the substrate inoculation phase - one of the hardest phases for home-growers to accomplish successfully.
Lite Malt Extract - The Gold Standard
Here at Haus, we've found that the best nutrient medium is made with lite malt extract. Lite malt extract is the home-grower's dream come true for making liquid culture. Adding 1g of lite malt extract (1/4 tsp) to 600ml water is a simple ratio to making an effective culture medium.
Remember: You'll need to have a leak-proof and rust resistant culture lid with an injection port on your liquid culture jar prior to sterilization. Making culture lids at home can be a fun project if you've got the right tools. Plastic lids are best because they don't rust, but the downside to plastic lids is that they don't always seal to the jar very well. We've found these wide mouth plastic lids create a true, leak-proof seal. Here at Haus, we've made some of the best leak-proof lids on the market. Get yours here.
Placing a magnetic stir bar into the nutrient solution before sterilization is an optional step. This way, you can use a magnetic stir-plate to break up the spores, and increase colonization as they grow in the nutrient medium. Be sure to place the stir bar into your culture medium prior to the sterilization process, since removing the jar lid after sterilization will introduce contaminants.
You will need a pressure cooker to sterilize your culture medium. For a small home-grow operation, we think the Presto - 16 QT pressure cooker works great.
It's best, although not required, to filter the large malt particles out of the light malt extract (LME). Once you've added the 1g of LME to filtered water in a jar used for sterilizing (such as a 32oz canning jar) heat the jar, LME, and water in a pressure cooker for 20 minutes. Remove the jar from the pressure cooker and let cool for a few minutes, so that you can handle the jar. Pour the solution through a paper coffee filter, and place the filtered solution back in the canning jar for sterilization. Sterilize the solution for 45 minutes at 15 PSI -- and bam! You've got yourself a darn good nutrient medium.
Get the Most From Your Liquid Culture
Once the sterilized solution has sat at room temperature for 12 hours, it's ready to be inoculated with your mushroom spores. Be sure to thoroughly clean your work environment before inoculating the jar with spores, and sterilize your syringe needle with a flame.
Place your liquid culture in a dark space, the back of a cupboard or pantry cabinet works well. You should start seeing growth in the liquid culture within several days, and your jar will be fully colonized (see image above) in 2-3 weeks. Remember to "stir" or gently shake the liquid culture twice daily for two weeks as the spores are colonizing.
When the jar is fully colonized, you can make small extractions from the jar to use as inoculation fluid for your substrate. You won't need much, since the spores are already happy and fed, they are guaranteed to grow very quickly. We typically extract around 5ml of the mushroom culture for a 2.5lb bag of our sterilized grain spawn.
Your liquid culture medium can make your spores go a long way. This is great news since spores are expensive and can be hard to come by, but also, if you have a strain that you absolutely love, you can continue growing and cloning your mushrooms. When you are getting to the end of your liquid culture, simply grab an extra 2-4ml in a syringe to use for an inoculation of a secondary jar. Wait a few weeks, and you will have another batch of your favorite mushroom spores in no time.
Liquid mushroom culture can be kept safely for 6-9 months in the refrigerator, after the two week colonization period. Before inoculating your grain spawn, just take the jar out of the refrigerator for about an hour and let the spores get to room temperature. Stir your spores by gently shaking the jar or placing on the magnetic stir-plate. You will need to extract 1-2ml of solution per pound of sterilized substrate.
Enhance Your Home-Grow
Adapting good sterilization techniques, using liquid culture to enhance spore colonization are a vital for having a successful home-grow.New to growing, or want more information to amp your home-grow? The Psilocybin Mushroom Bible is hands down one of the best and most thorough resources we've found, and reference often. It is a must have book for those looking to create a successful home grow!
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