80 Bags of Autoclave Sterile Grain Spawn
Here we are at the autoclave in front of the spawn lab, Lab 2. And I have a bunch of spawn in here, grain spawn, that has finished the sterilization process. So it's a full autoclave. Now it's time to get it unloaded, get the spawn worked with, and uh, yeah, get it ready to move out of the lab so we can go to the next process or project. So before opening it up in the lab, I'm just gonna depressurize it.
So I'll just take like a fresh alcohol soaked rag, and I'm going to open up the sterilizer from out here to where I could just depressurize the chamber. So when I go in the lab and open it up, there's no trap pressure in there, and it makes it easier to pull the, push the lid in, push the door in, that is. So I just cover the top with an alcohol soaked rag and just open up the valve. That escapes any built-up pressure, and then in doing so, if there's any chance for anything to escape into the sterilizer, which, yeah, we don't want happening, it's covered with an alcohol soap drag. So I'll go into the lab and basically get prepped and get ready to start unloading.
So I'm in the lab. I've gotten prepped. Everything's been wiped down. The room has been freshly mopped, and the autoclave has been depressurized. Now I'm gonna go ahead and open up the door.
All right, so that's all the spawn. This is an old autoclave too, so it leaves a little bit of residue on the bags that I'll just wipe off. So yeah, these are uh, sterilized spawn bags. So this is how our grain spawn comes out, and it's a composed of milo or sorghum. So this is a my preferred grain, one of them, for making spawn.
So yeah, this is uh, just sterile grain at this point. It hasn't been turned into actual spawn. Um, all it needs is a fresh mushroom culture, either from a petri dish or liquid culture, or you could even use a spores basically to germinate in here and start mycelium. These are bags that are a little different than what we typically use here because this has the injection port. So this is great for people that don't have a laboratory or a flow hood because all you need is a syringe full of a culture or whatever you're growing, and whatever edible species that you're growing, and basically flame sterilize the syringe and just inject through the injection port.
Written protocol
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That way you can grow out your own spawn and see the process from start to finish as much as possible. So since these have gone through the autoclave and they get pretty pressurized in there, I'm basically going to be just redistributing the grain and the moisture. So I'm going to be doing that to all these bags in here. Just take the bag and just kind of shake up the grain, make sure it's nice and evenly distributed. That way, when you go to inoculate with your, it's a much better quality grain in the long run.
You get an even colonization, and it's a better quality spawn. These bags have gone through the autoclave process for sterilization. So they've been sterilized at a high rate of pressure or higher than normal to basically kill off any kind of spores or microorganisms that could most likely survive 212 degree temperatures. So this way, we're able to super sterilize our spawn, and that's super important for this part of the process, being that spa is going to, you know, be a big part of the the cultivation process as far as inoculating multiple times its weight and substrate and producing mushrooms. So yeah, this has been autoclaved for about four to six hours, is what I usually do, depending on how uh, how the autoclave is loaded.
So yeah, this has been sterilized probably closer to six hours since we had 80 bags almost come out of here. Yeah, the autoclave is just a nice thing for me because it kind of just. Found its way to to me in a way. There was a somebody locally that I didn't really know about had started a mushroom business, and I guess it just wasn't what they, uh, anticipated, and they had bought a bunch of, uh, equipment, um, like a bunch of equipment that they didn't need anymore. And I remember just showing up to go get the the mixer, and she had an autoclave there too, and she just was like, if you just take everything, you can have it for everything for a thousand.
So I ended up getting the autoclave, the mixer, and a generator. Um, and then, you know, just trying to get everything over here was, I guess, the harder part because I had to find, uh, people with forklifts and stuff like that to load the autoclave onto a trailer, drove it over here, and then it kind of just sat here for almost a year until I was just ready to, you know, until I knew what to do with it. So eventually I was ready to set up another lab, which is the one we're in, and then I was able to get the autoclave installed and everything hooked up. So it's ended up working out pretty well. We have a bag of freshly sterile spawn, and it's ready to inoculate.
We put the use and turn into some mushrooms. So with the grain spawn bags, we use a different filter patch just because we want it to be a little bit more efficient and filtering out particulates and any kind of potential contamination. So usually in like a production block, you'll see a 0.5 micron filter patch being used, and then in this case, we're using the 0.2 micron filter patch. So it's preferred for spawn development, but I've even had to use a 0.5 micron before with no issues, being so that your, you know, colonization area is kept clean, stuff like that. But for good practice, I like to use the 0.2 micron.
I feel it's, for what I'm doing, it's worked great. So I haven't had any issues. So yeah, I'll just keep doing this until all the spawn bags have been thoroughly mixed, and then after this, they, uh, just get ready for wherever they're gonna go. These ones are just going into our inventory. They just hang out here until, uh, somebody buys them off of our website or somebody will come in and do a local pickup.
Yeah, these are just for our us personally. We had a lot of requests us to start making available sterile grain, so we went ahead and added it, went ahead and got it on the website. So so the baskets just make it to where I can easily load and unload the autoclave. So these ones are just built to withstand the high temperatures in the autoclave, and yeah, I've been using them quite a bit. So I've been through many uses of sterilization, so they are definitely come in handy for doing what I'm doing, because without them, the autoclave is pretty rough inside.
It's a pretty, you know, pretty big like machine in there, heavy duty metal and stuff like that. So if you set the bags directly in there, could, uh, just wouldn't be as efficient as stacking them in there on with the trays and just sliding them on the rack that's in there. Yeah, you know, with growing mushrooms the way that I know I grow them here, it's definitely an intensive, uh, it could be an intensive line of work just because, uh, you know, we do a lot of a lot of bulk projects here. So a lot of it could be, uh, repetitive for for some people, and some of it's not, but for the most part it is, uh, it is a lot. It takes, uh, you know, you gotta really care about it.
Um, but yeah, the ideal, uh, you know, ideal person for this line of work just be somebody that really, uh, loves every part of the process and is just intrigued by every step and just really has. A, honestly, you just have to have to have a good good work ethic, and it's definitely not for a lazy person. Yeah, I mean, it's easy to grow like a couple mushrooms, because when you're just growing as a hobby, you know, you might do, uh, you might inoculate one of these bags, let's say, and then that's it. You're done for the next, you know, few weeks until it's fully colonized. You really don't have much to do except watch the colonization take over.
So it really is fun. All of it's fun for me, but it's just much easier. But if you're really focused on doing this as a line of work, then you're basically doing it every day, and you're doing a lot of them. So you're doing them, yeah, you're just trying to spread these mushrooms, I guess, and, you know, make sure that they're available for everybody. So it's a lot, but at the End of the day, it's pretty rewarding.
Because, you know, I don't, I think it's a great line of work, but, you know, I've seen seen people come in, and it's not what they expected it to be. But I guess they just don't understand. I guess you got to look at the big picture, see what what every every step of the process, you know, adds up to. The big pictures the mushrooms. So, yeah, I really like to take every step of the process with utmost seriousness, even if it's just like mixing substrate or putting it in the bag or putting the label on it.
I mean, I really like to make sure each step is as perfected as I can personally obtain, so and then that always ends up working out really well for me, and I end up getting success, and that's how it's always been. So I feel like that's what works best, you.