3 ms·

The "uncle ben tek" has been around a decade or more now and that really changed the accessibility of it. It uses shelf stable ready-to-eat (fully cooked, steri

The "uncle ben tek" has been around a decade or more now and that really changed the accessibility of it. It uses shelf stable ready-to-eat (fully cooked, sterilized) rice as the medium for inoculation. It dramatically reduces the difficulty and risk of what used to be the main failure point in the process. Now for $200 of gear and the complexity of a weekend baking project you can just do the whole thing yourself. Anecdotally I've also seen a lot of people pick up this skill/"hobby" the last few years. I really think the accessibility of this technique is what's driving the increased availability.

__MatrixMan__ 3y ago
Huh, I've been using PF tek as a starter for grain beds, never heard of uncle ben. I'll look into that. It's a fun hobby. It motivated me to go back to school and pursue a biology degree. I think there's a lot we can learn from fungus, and not even in some kind of spiritual mumbo jumbo way, they're just better than we are at a lot of tasks (e.g. if you want to talk about 9's of availability, mycorrhizal networks are way ahead of us: they don't tend towards single points of control/failure like we do).
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  If you have the process and technique down you might end up just sticking with what you're using. My understanding is the benefit of uncle ben is its reliability for beginners, not so much yield or quality. I think there are also newer & better variants of it anyway? But yeah look around. So yeah, fungus. Funny enough I pretty much only grow koji and some other food molds. I like to talk shop with mushroom growers though. The techniques are really different but we share a lot of experiences and... mindset. People end up with an almost spiritual admiration for the mold. Which is self-evident for psilocybes of course, but koji growers seem to develop it too.
  - quchen 3y ago
    > My understanding is the benefit of uncle ben is its reliability for beginners, not so much yield or quality. This. - You get sterilized substrate, which requires special equipment to produce on your own (large enough pressure cooker, mainly). - Sterilizing rye is a bit of an art. Not too mushy, not too hard, properly sterilized, get the moisture right. Might take a couple of attempts. - Financial investment is negligible either way. - You’re hedging your contamination bets with 200g packs, because creating lab conditions at home isn’t that easy. (Plenty of tutorials claim it is, and then show you their special mushroom tent, which you won’t recognize as a beginner, and then you wonder why you’ve got orange fluff a month later.)

__MatrixMan__ 3y ago

Huh, I've been using PF tek as a starter for grain beds, never heard of uncle ben. I'll look into that. It's a fun hobby. It motivated me to go back to school and pursue a biology degree. I think there's a lot we can learn from fungus, and not even in some kind of spiritual mumbo jumbo way, they're just better than we are at a lot of tasks (e.g. if you want to talk about 9's of availability, mycorrhizal networks are way ahead of us: they don't tend towards single points of control/failure like we do).

giraffe_lady 3y ago
If you have the process and technique down you might end up just sticking with what you're using. My understanding is the benefit of uncle ben is its reliability for beginners, not so much yield or quality. I think there are also newer & better variants of it anyway? But yeah look around. So yeah, fungus. Funny enough I pretty much only grow koji and some other food molds. I like to talk shop with mushroom growers though. The techniques are really different but we share a lot of experiences and... mindset. People end up with an almost spiritual admiration for the mold. Which is self-evident for psilocybes of course, but koji growers seem to develop it too.
- quchen 3y ago
  > My understanding is the benefit of uncle ben is its reliability for beginners, not so much yield or quality. This. - You get sterilized substrate, which requires special equipment to produce on your own (large enough pressure cooker, mainly). - Sterilizing rye is a bit of an art. Not too mushy, not too hard, properly sterilized, get the moisture right. Might take a couple of attempts. - Financial investment is negligible either way. - You’re hedging your contamination bets with 200g packs, because creating lab conditions at home isn’t that easy. (Plenty of tutorials claim it is, and then show you their special mushroom tent, which you won’t recognize as a beginner, and then you wonder why you’ve got orange fluff a month later.)