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Why Liquid Culture Over Spore Water
Why Liquid Culture Over Spore Water
The substrate (the growing medium - a mixture of vermiculite and brown rice flour) can be inoculated with spore water or liquid culture. Spore water is the cloudy liquid that comes in a purchased spore syringe. There are two compelling reasons to use liquid culture rather than spore water: Time and cost. Liquid culture takes a few weeks longer to create initially but is faster and significantly cheaper in the long run. There is an additional benefit that you can create more liquid culture from liquid culture (more on that here). Unless you are making your own spore water with spore prints, liquid culture is much better.
Time - Faster
Time - Faster
Growing a half pint mycelium cake with 1 mL of spore water will take 4-6 weeks. But it will only take 2-3 weeks to grow a half pint mycelium cake with 20 mL of liquid culture. And if you're willing to wait a week or two longer, you can use 10 mL instead of 20 mL because the mycelium culture will double in concentration, requiring less culture to inoculate, resulting in double your inoculated cakes.
Cost - Cheaper
Cost - Cheaper
If each 10 mL spore syringe costs $20, it will cost $2.00 per half pint mason jar to inoculate with 1 mL of spore water. It takes 1 mL of spore water to inoculate a pint of liquid culture water (475 mL). That is 4.75 liters of liquid culture rather than 10 mL of spore water! To rapidly grow the mycelium cake, use 20 mL of liquid culture to inoculate. 4.75 liters of liquid culture will inoculate about 230 half pint mason jars of substrate, costing around $0.09 cents per jar. That is much better than $2.00 a jar.
Ingredients
Ingredients
1 pint distilled water
1 tablespoon Karo syrup
1/8 teaspoon Peptone
Supplies
Supplies
6" x 6" tin foil
70% isopropyl alcohol
Spore water syringe
ORLiquid culture AND
20 mL empty syringe AND
16 gauge 1.5" needle
Recipe Instructions
Recipe Instructions
Pour 1 pint of room temperature distilled water into pint wide mouth mason jar. Do NOT use tap or filtered water, as it will turn yellow in the pressure cooker.
Add 1/8 teaspoon of Peptone and stir. Add 1 tablespoon Karo syrup and stir.
Mix ingredients well and cover with spore lid then foil.
Place mason jar(s) in pressure cooker and sterilize on high for 20 minutes. Any longer and the Karo syrup will begin to caramelize and inhibit mycelium growth. Immediately sterilize jars or the water will turn cloudy and become unusable.
Let mason jar(s) cool for a couple of hours and with clean hands or latex gloves, move mason jar(s) and spore water syringe to your clear sterilization box. If you are inoculating from your primary or secondary liquid culture, move that jar, 20 mL syringe and 16 gauge needle into the box instead of spore syringe.
Clean spore water syringe, needle and spore lid with 70% isopropyl alcohol soaked paper towel. If you are inoculating from primary or secondary liquid culture, clean that jar's spore lid, empty syringe and needle instead of spore syringe.
Remove foil, shake spore water syringe well and inject 1 mL of spore water in liquid culture water mason jar through the port in the spore lid. If you are inoculating from primary or secondary liquid culture jar, shake twice, draw up 20 mL of liquid culture and inject into new liquid culture water. Reapply foil.
Store in dark area at 80° F and check every couple of days. Use a heating pad to maintain temperature. You will notice a fuzzy, translucent substance at the bottom of each jar after about 5 days. This is the culture. Once the jar is about 3/4 full of culture, it is ready to inoculate the substrate. Full mycelium growth takes between 3-4 weeks from spores and 2-3 weeks from liquid culture. According to PF Tek, liquid cultures are good for about a month and can be extended by storing in a refrigerator.
Liquid Culture incoluated with spore water 5 days old
Liquid Culture inoculated with liquid culture 6 days old
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