If you've puchased one of our fully colonised grain bags you can skip straight to step 6 !

How to use your sterile grain

What's included?
  • 1kg or 1.5kg of sterile grain.
  • A sterilising wipe
  • 70% isopropyl wipe
  • A pair of gloves
  • A mask

What else will I need that's not included?
  • A sterile/clean area to work, ideally in front of a laminar flow hood or in a still air box
  • Liquid culture or colonised agar
  • Sterile/Pasteurised substrate for when your grain is fully colonised and ready to start the next step

What should I be aware of?

Cleanliness and sterility is key!

While all of our grain is fully sterile and contamination free when leaving us, contaminants can enter as soon as you open the bag or even when injecting you liquid culture. This is why we stress you should ideally work in front of a laminar flow hood or at least in a still air box to minimise your risk of contamination, just watch the first video you come across on Youtube when searching this subject.

Given the right conditions, mushrooms grow very easily, but it can be tricky to implement the 'right conditions' so every care should be taken to minimise risk of contamination.

If for any reason your grain is not free of contamination when it arrives, we will replace free of charge!

Step 1

Check your bags for contamination

Only move on to the next step if your happy the bags are good to go

  • No foul smell
  • No sign of mould/contamination

Our grains are produced regularly, normally to order, so contamination is extremely rare and normally only happen when the bags have been sitting in the wrong environment for a long time.

Step 2

Clean everything including yourself and your clothes

This is one of the main causes of contamination. you want to be clean, cleaned clothes and a clean workspace, any germs or bacteria will fight your mycelium to colonise the grain first, you need to give the mycelium as much help as possible.

  • You're clean
  • You're clothes are clean
  • workspace clean

You're ready to start

Step 3

Inoculate the grain

  • Put your gloves and mask on
  • Use the provided sterilising wipe to clean your gloved hands and your workspace
  • Use the supplied 70% isopropyl wipe to clean the injection port on the grain bag
  • Carefully remove the lid to your liquid culture syringe being extra careful not to tough anything with it, speed is important here
  • Inject 2-3ml of liquid culture into the grain via the injection port

Step 4

its time to let your mycelium grow!

  • Place in a warm, dark area (ideally 20-24C)
  • keep your bag upright with the filter unobstructed to allow air flow.
  • Leave it alone, this is the boring bit. You just need to wait for the mycelium to do its thing and grow throughout the grain

How long?

You should start to see growth in around 7-14 days if the conditions are right.

Don't worry if it takes longer.

Even if its been 3-4 weeks, as long as your liquid culture is good and there's no signs of contamination, the mycelium should still grow

Step 5

It's growing lovely

Now the mycelium is growing nicely throughout the grain, the mycelium is white and healthy.

Once the mycelium is roughly 20-25% colonised throughout the grain you can mix up the grain and shake it around a little, this will distribute the mycelium around the uncolonized grain and help speed up the remainder of the process.

Pop it back in the warm area to colonise fully.

Step 6

It's fully colonised!

Is it really fully colonised? How do I know?

the grain should be completely covered by white mycelium, the block will likely be very firm as the mycelium has worked its way through and in between each grain.

Not all species of mushroom has dense white mycelium, some species like Lion Mane has thin wispy mycelium, as long as the mycelium has worked its way through all of the grain its ready!

Now your grain is fully colonised its ready to put into your sterile/pasteurised substrate bags so you can start the fruiting process, check out our substrate 'How To...' guide to find out what to do next...

Skip all of the faff

If you don't like the idea of making your own grain spawn from liquid culture or simply don't have the environment to do it, we can take all of the stress out of the process for you, you'll find fully colonised grain spawn in our shop!

we do make this to order so please allow 2-4 weeks for dispatch