Before beginning to create a liquid culture recipe, first ensure you have all of the required equipment – such as a laminar flow hood or glove box, pressure cooker, sterile syringes and an airport lid jar.
The airport lid serves as an injection port to inject spore solution directly into substrate.
Honey Water
Honey water first thing in the morning can help keep you hydrated while providing several other health benefits, including soothing indigestion, reducing acidity, balancing bowel movements and aiding weight loss. Plus, raw and Manuka honey contain antibacterial and antioxidant properties which strengthen your immune system against infections while providing weight loss support.
Utilizing high-quality raw honey is crucial, as it provides our bodies with essential vitamins and minerals such as thiamine, riboflavin and pantothenic acid for proper functioning.
Honey can be used not only for its taste and health benefits, but it can also be used as an ingredient to expand mycelium cultures in liquid culture tek. Be wary not to introduce contamination into your jar as this will affect mycelium growth – look out for cloudiness or chunks within it when inspecting it for signs of contamination.
Light Malt Extract
For optimal mushroom cultivation in liquid culture environments, it is necessary to periodically stir or shake your jars so as to introduce oxygen and break up and distribute mycelium for even colonization. Most growers recommend doing this at least once every day.
Liquid culture typically uses a mixture of water, sugar and light malt extract (LME) or brewer’s yeast extract as nutrients to aid mycelial growth. Some growers also add corn syrup but this could turn the solution yellow and slow mycelial development.
As part of the sterilization process, it is important that when placing your media bottle or glass jar under sterilization that the cap does not tighten completely to prevent cracking of its vessel. After sterilization has taken place, simply remove and label your jar after taking care not to overtighten its cap!
Note: Please be aware that certain lactoculture (LC) recipes can darken when pressure cooked too long due to Maillard reactions between sugars and amino acids, affecting its clarity but not harming it directly. To minimize this issue, sterilize your jars at lower temperatures for less time in order to achieve clearer culture results.
Karo
Liquid culture makes mushroom cultivation easy for mycologists, scientists, and hobbyists alike. A mixture of water and one or more sugars stimulates mycelium growth without needing a dedicated lab space; popular ingredients include organic honey, corn syrup and light malt extract (though other alternatives can also be used). Airport or grain spawn jars with modified lids may be available online retailers; standard mason jars can also be modified with self-healing injection ports and filters to enable air exchange.
Make sure that all tools and surfaces are completely sterile by cleaning them with cleaning alcohol or wipes, then adding your nutrient solution to a mason jar or media bottle with an evenly distributed macelium mycelium colony in each mason jar, including magnetic stir bars (or small glass marbles for stirring). Agitation helps distribute mycelium evenly across each mason jar for consistent growth.
Peptone
Peptone is an essential nutritional ingredient made from partially digested proteins. It provides nitrogenous compounds, carbonaceous substances, and amino acids essential to most microorganisms for their growth. Peptone production occurs by controlled enzymatic hydrolysis of natural products like animal tissues, milk products and plant matter or even cultures of microbes.
Spray drying the hydrolysate results in straw-coloured peptone powder, which can then be mixed with dextrose and additional ingredients such as vitamins, minerals, lipids, carbohydrates starches and sugars to create the ideal medium for cultivating specific microorganisms.
Yeast extract, an abundant source of proteins, amino acids and peptides is often included in media mixes to support cell growth. It also provides B vitamins and nucleic acids. When added in small doses to an experimental medium for specific characteristics in culture development such as growth rate or cold temperature tolerance, yeast extract can either be solid or liquid and may include dextrose or ethanol as its carbon source.