Mushroom cultivation / brewing overlapping skills.

[Miganders]

Hello, i am new to brewing and to this forum.

A while ago i began growing mushrooms, and since yeast is a fungi i thought that maybe i could transfer some skills between the two.

Basically, heres what i do when making a jar of mushrooms:
1. I get my medium (popcorn mostly)
2. I prepare my medium
3. The medium is put in a jar with a hole in its lid, the hole is then covered with micro-pore tape and the jar is boiled at a low temperature for 1 and a half hours.
4. the jar is cooled and i proceed to nuke my bathroom with lysol (some prefer injecting the spores with syringes instead)
5. the lid of the jar is removed for half a second i as i dump a few hundred thousand spored into the jar
6. the spores are left to do their
7. depending on the "tek" used the medium is either removed from the jar either spawned to bulk substrate or placed in a fruiting chamber. Or just left to fruit still inside the jar.

I was thinking that maybe i could do the same thing to a small batch of Canadian mead (fermented maple syrup)

I guess the main difference is that i will be using a liquid medium and that yeast doesn't need to fruit.

 

[erikpete18]

Honestly, when I saw the title I wasn't sure what to expect, but it does sound like some stuff will overlap! You've got the right idea at least, and it sounds like you've got sanitation practices down pretty well. Not sure how the mead would work, but if by "boiling at a low temp" you mean pasteurizing, it sounds about the same. Get some mead yeast (or wine/beer yeast?) and pitch it into the pasteurized maple syrup once the temp has fallen. The yeast will produce CO2 so you'll also have to rig up a way to vent your jar (most of us use airlocks). You might want to add some yeast nutrient to the maple syrup, I know regular honey meads don't have enough of some basic nutrients that yeast will need.

Also, if you head back to the main forum page a scroll down, there's a wine and mead subsection that might have more answers (considering I've never made any!). But welcome to the forum, and thanks for making me chuckle!

 

[theredben]

You need to pick up a basic book on brewing practices. It is unbelievably simple compared to mushrooms. Yeast in a liquid medium is 100000000% stronger than anything but oyster mushrooms.

With brewing you will not even need lysol. It is soooooo much easier.

 

[StMarcos]

I wonder what the beer would taste like if you grew mycellium on the surface (like a pellicle) of the wort before pitching the yeast. You'd have to time things right so there was sugar for both processes. Oysters have been the most prolific for me as well.

Alternatively you could use an insane amount of crystal, and pitch the myc later. Wonder if it could use those dextrines - I bet it could... chews up my alder chips pretty well!

 

[EarthBound]

The only overlapping skills I've demonstrated is eating psilocybin mushrooms then chasing it with beer! I had some wild nights back in high school and college!

 

[SpaceJunk]

Preparing a liquid mycelium culture is exactly like making a yeast starter, right down to using DME as the food source.

 

[StMarcos]

Preparing a liquid mycelium culture is exactly like making a yeast starter, right down to using DME as the food source.

Except that it's more important to autoclave the mycellium medium, imo....

 

[StMarcos]

The only overlapping skills I've demonstrated is eating psilocybin mushrooms then chasing it with beer! I had some wild nights back in high school and college!

Boomin Bitter?

 

[SpaceJunk]

Except that it's more important to autoclave the mycellium medium, imo....

True in mushroom cultivation you must sterialize, where in beer brewing you seek to only sanitize.

 

[EarthBound]

Boomin Bitter?

Lol... I like that!



I used to double up on everything... go big or go home!
What can I say, I'm a fungi to be with.

 

[rhys333]

I've been looking into mushroom cultivation, and I'm learning that there are effective low tech methods now that work well at small to medium scale. Cold water high pH sanitizing of straw substrate instead or sterilizing, for example. Or using aggressive low maintenance varieties like pink oyster.

I understand that simplification of the process has made it more accessible to hobbyists and low scale commercial production. Sounds a lot like what happened with home brewing. I may give this a go this year.

 

[MountainGuardian]

I too am a crossover from growing mushrooms as well. In fact I am now brewing so that I can get suitable alcohol for extractions without spending a fortune.

I am used to the "hyper" sterilization we use in the mushroom growing process, then I watch these home brewing videos and just cringe... lol...

All of my fermentation process sterilization has been based on my mushroom operation ie using my heppa filtered flow hood and plastic tented off still room, pressure cooking for sanitizing media etc.

I keep reading these posts about failed fermentations due to a lack of sterilization procedures and I keep thinking these guys need to take a course in mushroom production sterilization and then go back to fermenting.