Recipes

Liquid culture

Mushroom liquid culture is a sterile mixture of lightly nutritious water made from specific sugars and then inoculated with living mycelium or mushroom spores. The purpose of liquid culture is for the development of mycelium growth.

Simple liquid culture recipe

The most basic liquid culture recipe contains just 2 ingredients:

  1. 600mls water (non-chlorinated water).
  2. 30g corn syrup.

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What You’ll Need

  • Brewers yeast, light malt extract or peptone (optional).
  • Magnetic stirrer or marbles.
  • 1x QUART mason jars.
  • 1x modified lid with injection port and filter for mushroom growing.
  • Pressure Cooker.
  • Aluminium foil.

Instructions:

  • Using digital scales, measure the ingredients.
  • Fill quart jar to 600mls with hot water.
  • Mix together ingredients using a spoon or magnetic stirrer.
  • Once you have mixed together your ingredients in a mason jar, bottle & cover lid with aluminum foil.
  • Using a pressure cooker, sterilize the liquid culture jar for 20 minutes at 15PSI. (Make sure the bottom of the pressure cooker doesn’t run out of water or this will cause the jars to crack and break).
  • Inoculate your liquid culture. This can be done using a colonized liquid culture syringe, injecting it through the injection port or alternatively you can open the LC lid in front of a flow hood or in still air box (SAB), and place a piece of colonized agar into the sterile solution.
  • Agitate.
  • Wait for your mycelium to grow. This can take up to 7 days to see any results.

Liquid culture is best stored in the fridge at 36-40 °F. The liquid culture once colonized can be stored unopened in the fridge for up to 3 months. Liquid culture that contain Pink Oyster or Golden Oyster mycelium should not be stored in the fridge.

Agar

Mushroom growers use agar to observe the growth of their mycelium. Agar can be created by combining water, nutrients, and dried  agar-agar powder. The mixture is dissolved in water, then pressure sterilized and finally poured into petri dishes.

Simple Water Agar Recipe

  1. 2g agar agar powder
  2. 1g
  3. 1/2 cup of water
  4. 3p

For more agar recipes(click here)

How to Prepare Agar Petri Dishes

  1. Mix required amount of nutrient agar powder with room temperature water.
  2. Mix and dissolve.
  3. Bring to a boil while stirring to ensure the agar is completely dissolved.
  4. Sterilize by autoclaving at 121°C for 15 minutes.
  5. Allow agar mixture too cool to 140F & pour into petri dishes. 
  6. Pour 10-12 ml of hot agar into each petri dish, just covering the bottom. Replace the dish lid immediately after pouring to prevent contamination. Wait for the medium to solidify.

For best results pour agar in front of a flow hood.

Don’t have a Flow Hood?

An often used method, some in the mushroom community call “Oven Tek”, can be utilized when doing home mycology for those that don’t have access to a flow hood. This method will produce affective but sometimes questionable results.

Oven Tek is essentially a method to prevent airborne contamination by directing hot airflow, upwards and away from your petri dishes making it harder for contaminants to land on your agar.

  1. Begin by setting your petri dishes facing up on the top oven rack. You can place aluminum foil underneath to help prevent spilling or dropping the petri dishes if you feel you need too. 
  2. Make sure your petri dishes are sterilized prier to this. If your using glass petri dishes you can bake them at 320°f for 30 minutes. This will sufficiently sterilize your glass petri dishes. Otherwise use 70 percent isopropyl alcohol.
  3. Once sterilized, set your oven temp to 190° and wait until the oven cools to temperature.
  4. Allow agar mixture too cool to 140F
  5. Now pour your agar into the sterilized petri dishes and replace the dish top immediately to prevent contamination.
  6. Stack petri dishes to help reduce condensation forming on the lids. Let the your petri dishes cool to room temp and you now have sterilized agar.
  7. Ideally you would wait 4 days before using the agar dishes, to eliminate contamination. If you notice any bacteria growing on your plates in that time, do not use, remove and discard them.