ANC
Well-Known Member
Was busy cleaning up an old drive, when I stumbled upon some files that might be usefull to guys here.
This tek is partly developed by my friend Phlux, and its one of the best methods bar none, especialy if you want multiple flushes.... Thought I'd save it here for prosperity.
I'm not gonna bother trying to port the photos and stuff, you know what corn and jars look like....
This tek is partly developed by my friend Phlux, and its one of the best methods bar none, especialy if you want multiple flushes.... Thought I'd save it here for prosperity.
I'm not gonna bother trying to port the photos and stuff, you know what corn and jars look like....
| Disclaimer The information presented herein is for ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY and can be found in ethnobotanical literature. The substances listed in this document may be illegal to ingest and/or possess. The author assumes no responsibility should the information presented here be used, misused, misunderstood, inaccurate or even read. Reading this document constitutes an agreement to these terms. If you are afraid you might attempt to use the substances mentioned here in illegal ways, STOP READING NOW. This document may be reproduced verbatim, in whole or in part, by any means, and distributed freely by whatever means available, provided no charge is made for the copy, this disclaimer is included and credit is given to the author. Introduction Zea Mays otherwise known as Corn or Mealies is a easy grain to start working with. It has quite large kernels that collonise quickly and thus it is quite resistant to contamination. This is not an advanced teq, all supplies are easy to obtain and the success rate is high. This teq is to be used in conjunction with normal sterile procedure, and assumes the user has previous experience with working in a glovebox/cleanroom thus details not particular to this tek will mostly be omitted. Swim did not invent the idea of using popcorn and doesnt know who did. Swim just adopted the tek blended it with others and found it worked so well that he decided to share his findings with others. The info in this tek comes from various teks combined and seems so comtamanation resistant that swim would suggest that people suffering from cakes succumbing to the nasty try it. If you are newish to Home Cultivation of the Magic or still a bit wobbly then PLEASE remember to be as sterile as possible, this is the largest point of possible failure so dont cut any corners with this, after you have grown a few batches you can see where you can ease up a little but until you have that experience just know that contamination is out to get you and is watching your every move. Basically what we will be doing is Making a Liquid Culture to innoculate jars of popcorn in order to get lightning fast mycelial collinisation speeds thus hopefully cutting out contaminations by not giving them the time to even start thinking of attacking the cakes. An uncollonised cake is a cake at risk. |
Supplies A Glove Box with Gloves a face mask and a Clean Room to work in. Illovo Treacle Sugar Yellow Popcorn Pressure cooker (Capable of 15psi) ICU Aerosol Spray and ICU Spray Distilled water Denatured Alcahol 10cc or larger Syringes With the Longest Thickest Needles Possible A Spore Print A few 1 pint Consol Jars (Ball or Kerr) Coir (Coconut husk Fibre) Vermiculite Perlite Hand Mister Tin Foil(Aluminium Foil) A Drill Press or a Nail or Pen-Knife (anything You can make a Hole in the Jar Lid with) A piece of broken glass The form of Corn that we will be working with is yellow Popcorn, it is available in most supermarkets and is very cheap in comparison to most other grains. We will also be working with Treacle Sugar (Thanks for the tip Kocos) for the Liquid Innoculum. This may not be the best Liquid Culture Food Source but it is the most available here (South Africa) and works well. (SWIM has Never had a Contaminated LC using Treacle sugar - Touch Wood) Other simple sugars may be used like Karo (corn syrup) or dextrose if available. The Consol Jars and Pressure Cooker can be purchased at Makro, Game or even at some Shoprite Checkers Stores, shop around its worth the time finding the Consol Jars as you will probably use them for a long time. Note the other species of Consol Jars (The larger ones) the shop sells as these are usefull for innoculating larger batches of substrate(SWIM cant fit the larger Consol Jars in his Pressure Cooker but he found the Large Mayonaise Jars work just fine...) Keep in mind that you will need to fit at least 3 Jars in your Pressure Cooker at a time so make sure it is big enough for them to stand upright without touching each other and it must have a little rack inside to keep things off the bottom of the pot. The Vermiculite, Perlite and Coir can be found at Grovida or a good Plant Nursery. The rest of the items should not be hard to round up. |
Technique Step 1. Creating the Liquid Culture. Take the 1 Pint Consol Jars inner lid disk and puncture 1 small hole in it using nail. Make the hole just slightly bigger than the needle you will be using to innoculate this jar (metallic side down) and put a piece of masking tape over the hole. Now use a syringe to measure out 96cc's of water and add 4 grams(about 1 nice teaspoon) of treacle sugar to your jar. Put a little piece of broken glass into your jar to aid in breaking up the Mycelium later on. Close the jar up (metallic side down) and screw on the ring until it is on but just slightly loose. Cover the top of the jar with tin foil to prevent the steam from altering the water ratio and Pressure cook it for 20-30 Minutes. Let the Jars cool off 100% before moving on to Step 2.(SWIM Usually PC's the Jars the night before he intends to innoculate them and leaves them to cool off overnight in the PC) Step 2. Innoculating the Liquid Culture and making the Mycelial syringe It is now time to innoculate the liquid culture, SWIM finds using 1cc or less from a spore syring to be more than enough without affecting the water/sugar ratio too much. Working inside your Glovebox peel the masking tape back enough to insert the needle into the jar and squirt some spore water into the LC jar. Allow the LC a few days to grow out, with very fresh hydrated spores about 3 days should be good but depending on strain 5-7 or even 10 days would be a good average but results vary so its best to go by eye. What you are looking for is globules or whisps of mycelium floating around in the liquid. SWIM uses them when the clouds are a bit bigger than a pea. Dont leave liquid cultures too long as the mycelium will start to die when it has consumed all available sugars, usually this happens after about a month but mycelium grows slower in colder environments so if u go away for a while or need to keep them a bit longer just stick it in the fridge. SWIM has heard of LC's lasting up to 1 year in the fridge (from Nanook of the North off the old Nan's Nook Archive) but he can not confirm this as he likes his LC's fresh and has never needed to keep them longer than 3 weeks. Once the mycelium is good and ready give the jar a bit of a swirl to break up the mycelium and suck some solution into your syringe through your original innoculation point, Try to get mostly the clouds of Mycelium and as little sugar water as possible. Sometimes it is nessicary to open the lid a bit to get the good stuff - as long as all is sterile and it is done quickly this should be ok. Step 3. Preparing Grain Substrate. Put as much popcorn as you intend to use in a big pot and cover it with warm water and let this soak for at least 24 hours. (This will germinate any endospores as they are easier to kill after they have woken up) At least once or twice during the soak change the water as the starch that comes off the corn is evil. After the soak put the corn in a big pot of water and let it simmer on a low heat(it must not boil). Keep checking it often by picking up a kernel and biting it you will know it is ready when it is easy to split it in half and the inside looks mostly cooked. Change the water while the popcorn is cooking at least a few times but dont add cold water to hot popcorn.(use the kettle) Heating or cooling the popcorn too fast is not a good idea so try to do things gradually, this will decrease unneccicary cracking of the corn. If you notice that the popcorn is starting to split dont panic, SWIM doesnt find it makes much of a difference and lets his crack most of the time anyway. Once the corn is cooked through strain it and if the water is mucky rince it again with some hot water then strain off all the water.(Perhaps use a Collander) Now this is the most important part of this tek so listen closely : The corn must now be dried well so take a large towel and place it somewhere flat and pour the corn out of the pot onto this towel and spread it out flat so that there is a single layer of corn over the towel. Look closely at the corn and pick out any pieces you suspect may be dodgy in some way. Leave the corn out on the towel, perhaps with an open window(Dont worry about contams yet as it is still to be autoclaved in your Pressure Cooker, but still keep things clean) for at least 30-45 Minutes. While its drying is a perfect time to prepare your jars so lets move onto that. Step 4. Preparing your Jars. Take the inner lid disks from as many 1 Pint Consol jars as you intend to use and lay them metallic side down on your work surface. Now with what ever tool you used for step one, bore a hole in the center of the lid disks just about the width of a standard pencil. A few centimeters away from this bore a smaller hole just big enough to fit the needle that contains your LC through comfortably. Now take a bunch of polyfill and squeeze it and twist it tight and jam it into the middle hole on your jar lid. Make sure the polyfill sits comfortably and will not pull out too easy, also make sure that not too much is sticking into the jar, if it is then just trim it with some scissors. Now put the jar lid back on the jar with the metallic side down and screw on the ring. Use masking tape to cover the small hole.(SWIM finds that it is a good idea to roll the masking tape onto its self so it has a lip that will make pulling it off easy.) You can put a piece of tape on the side if you wish to label them with such info as Innoculation date and strain, etc... Step 5. Packing your jars and Sterilizing them. Take a tiny bit of dry Coir or Vermiculite and sprinkle it on the bottom of your jars so that it just barely covers the bottom of the jars, this is just to suck up any excess moisture that may condense in your jars.(This is not neccicary once you have had a bit of experience.) You can now full your jars up with your prepared corn, just be sure to leave a few centimeters above the corn to allow shaking the jars without the grain touching the polyfill. Close the jars up but leave the lids a bit loose as they may crack or explode if you put them in with the rings on tight. Cover the jars lids with tin foil. Put the jars and about 3cm of water in your pressure cooker and autoclave for 45 Minutes to 1 Hour at 15psi. (Watch out that your Pressure Cooker doesnt run dry - you will hear a decrease in steam power if this is happening - this shit is dangerous enough as is - PLEASE READ THE MANUAL FOR THE PRESSURE COOKER) Once the jars are done turn off the heat and let the steam dissapate slowly and let the whole scene cool off a bit. If you are working with more jars than you can fit in your PC then remove them and put them somewhere sterile(Like inside your Incubator or Glovebox) and do the others, If not then let them stay in your PC until you intend to innoculate them. Step 6. Innoculating the Jars and Incubating them. Time to utilize your Mycellial Syringe that you created in Step 2. Whip out your glove box and get scrubbing your clean room. Once everything is nicely prepared put all the jars you intend to innoculate and place them in your glovebox along with your mycellial syringe. Follow the same sterile procedure here as you did in Step 1 & 2. Remove the tin foil hats from your first jar and pull the masking tape back just far enough to expose the innoculation hole. Flame your needle and knock the jar up with approx 1ml/cc of mycellial water, try to spray the innoculum over the whole top surface of the popcorn as this will increase the collinisation time considerably. Once your happy that you have a section of mycellium in there, remove the needle and re-tape the hole, put the tin foil hat back on the jar and move to jar number 2. Once you have completed all your jars you should move them to your incubator as they will grow the fastest if the conditions are kept constant and at the correct temprature. Depending on your climate the incubator may not be neccicary(if it is warm and humid enough where you live) but it will deffinately help out to have one. A simple incubator can be made from a styrofoam cooler box - if you want to snazz it up a notch you can incorporate a fish tank heater too. Check the sites at the bottom of this document for great incubator designs as SWIM doesnt use one at the moment so he wont include photos. Step 7. Casing your Substrate. Casing is a neccicary step when working with grain as SWIM has found they will not fruit well from a cake ala pf tek.(If you want to do cakes SWIM highly suggests pf's brown rice flour (old mill stream brand brown rice - ground up in a blender) and vermiculite cakes). For this Tek we will be casing in a 50/50 mixture of vermiculite and coco-fibre. If you cant find coir it can be omitted as streight verm will work too, SWIM just finds he gets better flushes from mixing the two together. Streight Coir is not such a plan as it dries out way too fast. Get out a big bowl and add your 50% coir, 50% verm and a bunch of water and let it soak for a few hours. You can speed up this soaking time by breaking the coir up quite a bit before adding it to the pot of water. Once you are happy its all wet through take a hand full and squeeze it tight until the water stops dripping out of it, dont try to kill it just a good squeeze will do the trick.(it should be just moist) Place each hand full of casing material into a bowl, loosen it a lot and once its all ready pack it into some jars and pressure cook it for 30-45mins.(SWIM has never cooked my casing material in a PC he just soaks it in boiling water and use it - no contams yet - but dont take any chances here as you are so near completion) Once complete let the jars cool down 100% before moving on. To case your substrate take a foil pie pan or kitty litter box and uniformly lay down a 1 - 2cm layer of sterilized moist casing material. Remove your cakes from their jars and break them into pieces and add a 3 - 4cm layer of this collinised corn down on top of the moist verm.(Having a larger surface area is more important than the thickness of your substrate (to a certain degree) according to SWIM) On top of this lay down another 1 - 1.5cm layer of your casing material and your done. Stick the whole casing in your Terrarium and keep it dark and humid and in a few days you should start to see the mycellium poking through. Step 8. Caring for your casing. If you notice that your mycellium is poking through in little patches and not uniformly then just sprinkle a bit more sterile casing material over the exposed spots to allow it to come through all at the same time as this will increase your yeald substantially. When you start to see a level growth of mycellium on top of the casing you can start exposing it to light as this will induce pinning. You should be fanning your terrarium about 2-3 times per day and using a hand mister to keep the humidity up. Having a 5cm layer of moist perlite at the bottom of your terrarium is a good way to increase humidity or you can place a fish tank bubbler/airstone in a jar in there too. With large casing this is not neccicary as they produce their own humidity. The pins/primordea will become large very quickly so they keep a close eye on them as they can sometimes double their size in as little as 24 hours. Step 9. Harvesting and drying. Mushrooms should be picked as the veil is breaking or just after the veil breaks and before the carpophore is able to sporulate. Fresh mushrooms are the best but you have to eat quite a bit to take off as a 10gram mushroom wet is equal approximately to 1gram dried. Wet mushies also have a slightly diffirent effect as they have psilocin along with the psilocybin in them (psilocin is roughly 1.4 times as potent as psilocybin but diffirent in effect - more colourfull ?) Dried mushies will only contain the psilocybin. A simple dessicator can be made out of a lunchbox or suitable plastic container (ice cream tub, etc...)and some silica gel(used for drying flowers - SWIM finds that the crystal style kitty litter works great) along with a piece of material or paper. Just lay down a few centimeters of the silica gel in the container and place the paper or material on top of that, place your mushies down on that and seal the lid tight. They should be cracker dry in approx 2-3 days. Step 10. Reaping the rewards of your efforts. If you are new to magic SWIM would suggest a dose of 1.5-2grams dried to start and do it at home or somewhere you feel safe and will not be disturbed for at least 6 hours. Perhaps have a sitter(you really must trust this person) to be there for you incase you freak out or someone else to trip with that you have known for a long time. On smaller excursions it is nice to be able to go outside and play with trip toys etc... For mid-range trips of 2-4 grams SWIM finds it is a good idea to load your brain with natural info for at least a few days before you trip, i find walking in nature or going diving/snorkelling, a game drive, etc... is the best. For larger trips, 5 grams and up, a sitter is a very good idea and the environment should be super supportive. Music is very important during the experience so play only your favorite music until you feel you are starting to understand the experience a bit better. Art and Citrus fruits are a must too. SWIM finds it very important to fast before-hand, when SWIM takes a journey he eats very healthy for at least 3 days prior and keep my portion size small(SWIM is vegetarian and very healthy anyway) and then on the day of his trip he eats a small fruit based breakfast and fasts until he takes them usually an hour before sunset - it is not neccicary to fast this long - some people find it uncomfortable a 6 hour fast should be sufficient. But be sure to avoid sugar, caffine, other stimulants or acts of a sexual nature on the day of your experience(preferably 2 days before and after) For very advanced Psychonauts SWIM suggests further reading into MAOI's (Peganum Harmala or Banasteriopsis Caapi) as these can alter and increase mushroom experiences profoundly. For Syrian Rue(Peganum Harmala) a pre-dose of 3 grams(this is the magic weight as more will just increase negative side effects and less will just be less effective) of crushed seeds 45 minutes before consuming the magic flesh will work wonders. Banasteriopsis caapi done similarly will create a slightly diffirent experience (better ?) too because of the diffirent quantities of harmaline, harmine and the amazing THH(tetra-hydro-harmine) (not in syrian rue). If you intend to try this be sure to do a hell of a lot more reading as it can be unsafe.(your diet needs special attention in the days before and after your journey) Do not do this until you have a list of foods that are safe and a list of foods to avoid(Foods Containing Tyrosine) as you could get hektik high pressure headaches, go into a coma or even die if you do not heed the warnings - it is safe if done properly and natural MAOI's have a long tribal usage history, so read as much as you can on them. |
Cloning The LC Discussed above is perfect for cloning your favorite fruit/Biggest Carpophore. Cloning should preferably be done with the Biggest mushroom growing in a Cluster. Take some inner stipe(stem) tissue of your biggest mushroom and macerate it on a sterile surface with a Razor Blade or X-Acto Knife and place a rice grain sized piece of the pulped/abused tissue into your LC and let it grow out. This can be used to Innoculate your Corn Jars. Cloning is rather Tek Specific meaning that you should make sure that you grow the clone out on the the same kind of substrate as the one your cloned tissue was originally grown on.(Eg. If the mushroom that was taken for cloning was growing on corn then be sure to grow out the Cloned LC on corn to ensure the best results as this is allready an advanced Rizomorphic Mycellia that ate corn to get where it is an so has a taste for corn - grown on another substrate it will not necisarily produce the same fruit-body as the selected clone) It is not usually the best idea to Clone a Clone unless you know what you are doing but if you find a clone you like then the best way to go about keeping that clone going is to make a Master Clone LC that you keep in the fridge after it has grown out a bit and innoculate other LC's with that to use on your jars instead of using up your whole Master Clone LC on jars. Out of 1 rice grain sized piece of tissue it is possible to innoculate hundreds or even thousands of jars if this technique is used. |
Hints and Tips If you find that the LC is too thick to be drawn up into the syringe then either try using the syringe without the needle (This is what SWIM does) or find a piece of tubing (copper or plastic) to attach to the syringe where the needle would usually be or use a little pippette or something. If you are having contams that are pitching up in your jars but your LC looks good to go, then perhaps your glovebox is not sterile enough to allow you to open your LC Jar when you are sucking the LC into the syringe or your incubator/incubation area are unclean. Try using a smaller jar or a longer needle so that you can just poke it in through the Innoculation hole to draw up the LC instead of opening the jar up fully, clean up your fungus-farming environment and rethink your sterile procedure. |
Severe Appreciation. Nanook of the North - As far as Swim knows(he may be wrong) Nanook created the original Karo Tek.(Karo = Corn Syrup) On which the Liquid Culture part of this document is based. PF - Psilocybe Fanaticus - PFtek - Need swim say more. |
