Liquid Cultures (LC) – Grow Mushrooms on Coffee

Tagged: innoculation, LC, liquid culture

This topic has 11 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 9 years, 4 months ago by Luca Daprà.

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December 25, 2015 at 3:43 am #953

Mateo Milmo
Participant

I was wondering if anyone here has experimented with innoculating with LC’s. I figure it’s much easier to innoculate with a liquid culture than with grain since you can make liters of it at once… That is, if you make i sure beforehand that it’s a clean culture, or else you’d be growing contams and not mushrooms.

Some people use malt, honey, karo or other syrups for the nutrient in the liquid (usually 2%) so for example 100ml would be 2 ml of honey.

I’ve also been adviced to use grainwater from grains used to colonize (reuse/recycle) which seems like a good idea which I’ll be trying soon.

Any tips that any of you fellow shroomers can offer would be appreciated

Questions are welcomed as well

Happy holidays!

December 30, 2015 at 8:40 am #964

Adam
Keymaster

Mateo asked:

I was wondering if anyone here has experimented with innoculating with LC’s. I figure it’s much easier to innoculate with a liquid culture than with grain since you can make liters of it at once… That is, if you make i sure beforehand that it’s a clean culture, or else you’d be growing contams and not mushrooms.

Some people use malt, honey, karo or other syrups for the nutrient in the liquid (usually 2%) so for example 100ml would be 2 ml of honey.

I’ve also been adviced to use grainwater from grains used to colonize (reuse/recycle) which seems like a good idea which I’ll be trying soon.

Any tips that any of you fellow shroomers can offer would be appreciated

Questions are welcomed as well

Happy holidays!

December 30, 2015 at 8:47 am #965

Adam
Keymaster

Hi Mateo,

We only use grain spawn ourselves – mainly because we buy our spawn in, but also when we used to produce it ourselves grain was also our preferred method. I have made liquid cultures in the past but found that unless you had very sterile conditions to produce them in that they would contaminate quite easily.

The other thing to bear in mind when growing on coffee grounds is that moisture content can be an issue if the coffee used is too wet so adding additional water to the mix with liquid cultures could cause further problems.

Always good to experiment though so let us know how you get on!

best wishes,

Adam

December 30, 2015 at 10:07 pm #970

Mateo Milmo
Participant

True all your points are valid Adam, I think people shouldn’t be discouraged from LC’s because of contamination though.

On forums like shroomery.org or mycotopia people have come up with solutions to avoid having these type of issues. The most straightforward solution involves making simple modifications to containers (the lids) from mason jars and the like to make it near impossible for contamination to occur. *given your culture are clean from the start which shouldn’t be too hard if you use agar

Agar is a whole nother story but should be def. talked about on here, I think it’s a very important part of mycology and for anyone wanting to secure good culture specimens. Maybe that will be included in the next courses you guys make.

For anyone interested in these subjects there’s a wealth of information on the forums mentioned above!

I’ll be posting my results from my own experiments using LC’s and I’ll update my findings in this forum.

Have a nice day!!

January 6, 2016 at 5:03 pm #973

Adam
Keymaster

Hi Mateo,

Great that you’re interested to delve deeper into culture work – I’m sure some people here will find it useful. As you said this kind of stuff is covered well elsewhere on forums like the Shroomery, Mykotek and Mycotopia, where there are hundreds of options and different ways of doing things.

Our approach, based on quite a bit of experience of teaching and working with other organisations interested in growing mushrooms on coffee, is that most people just want to have success and grow in the simplest way possible. That means no pressure cookers, a sterile working environment and 3 stages of expanding a culture into spawn before adding it to the coffee. Just add good quality spawn to a balanced coffee-based substrate and focus on growing the mushrooms well.

Fair play to you though for getting into the more skilled side of mycology – let us know how you get on.

All the best,

Adam

January 10, 2016 at 1:54 am #975

Mateo Milmo
Participant

I understand where your coming from and your right there are probably a lot of people just sourcing already made grain spawn for their projects. I still believe that it’s not rocket science and not too complicated given you develop a good sterile technique.

From a cost point of view, how much is a lb of mushroom grain spawn for you guys?

Where I live sourcing readily made spawn is very hard so I’ve gone down the route of building my own little lab/sterile room where I can experiment freely and safely. There’s always the future possibility of distributing grain spawn to other people wanting to get into mushroom growing as well. Another added benefit is that you can experiment with many different species such as shiitake, king oysters, medicinals, etc.

January 19, 2016 at 5:09 pm #982

Adam
Keymaster

Yeah if you’re outside the US or Europe I can imagine it could be difficult to source the spawn easily, so making it yourself is a great way to go.

When we buy grain spawn in bulk it costs £2.5 per kg, so that’s approximately US$2 per lb

Cheers,

Adam

June 6, 2016 at 2:01 am #1440

jennifer kneale
Participant

Yes, in Australia it is quite expensive too.

December 14, 2016 at 9:42 am #2039

Philip Labre
Participant

That’s $4.20 in Australian money. I could get it posted from England for cheaper than what I can buy it here. If you had to pay Australian prices it would be 13.30 pounds per kg

I too am heading down the agar path but I have a microbiology background so its not too difficult. I am used to growing fungal plant pathogens on agar so mushrooms cannot be too far apart.

December 14, 2016 at 3:35 pm #2041

Luca Daprà
Participant

hi there,
i’m playin around with lc. with a sterile environ, contamination it’s not a big problem… moreover if you opt for low nutrients cultures it makes it even better…

anyway i found the biggest problem in inoculate a substrate. the liquid is obviously staying in the lowest part of your bag and there is the contamination problem really arise! i’m trying to figure out how to drain the excess liquid out of it.
i really believe that lc tek could save you a lot of time if work properly. moreover you will have your inoculum more evenly distributed, and hence make the incubation time shorter.

have anybody tried to soak the straw in lc during the pasteurization? do the mycelium survive to the soap?

December 14, 2016 at 6:49 pm #2042

Mateo Milmo
Participant

Hey Luca,

try putting vermiculite or something that can soak up moisture in the grain/substrate bag if your having problems with too much humidity and liquids pooling at the floor.

You can also try less hydration of the grain (cook it on the dry side) and let the extra liquid from the LC balance it out…

I’d test the LC’s before using them on a big batch, I’ve had to throw away lots of grain because I got confident with a Liquid inoculation, never hurts to make sure…

also, I wouldn’t lc to the pasteurization bath. actually now that I think of it, inoculating with LI or LC will never be as good as inoculating with grains (specially if your using straw). I recommend growing out the culture in agar> agar to lc> lc to grains > grains to substrate… much easier and each grain represents a seed of mycelium which will up your chances

hope that helps

December 15, 2016 at 10:30 am #2044

Luca Daprà
Participant

thank you for your answer mateo,
will try it out!
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