Phase One: (Step 4) Prepare the Rye Berries for the Pressure Cooker

 

 Disclaimer: What are Your Intentions For Growing or Using?

Prepare the Rye Berries for the Pressure Cooker

Now it's time to measure, rinse, soak, simmer, drain, and air dry the rye berries. This is all in preparation for putting them into the pressure cooker to disinfect them.

I didn't know what rye berries were, until I started looking into growing mushrooms. They look like the picture above. 

That is what the dried rye berries look like when you purchase them. They are a light greenish color, and remind me a lot of like what wheat looks and feels like before you grind it up. 

Once they have been cooked, they turn brown. There will be pictures of this below.

Be sure to have ORGANIC rye berries. You need to make sure they are organic to be able to grow with them. If there are fungicides on the rye berries, it could kill off your mycelium and really cause some problems with your grow.

What You Need: 

🟧 10 wide mouth quart jars with lids and bands

🟧 16 quart stainless steel pot

🟧 5 pounds of organic rye berries - they have to be organic or it will kill the mycelium

🟧 1 pound gypsum powder

🟧 2 large colanders that hang inside your sink

Measure the Rye Berries

Rye berries enlarge to about three times their size when they are soaked. 

So to figure out that math, if you are using 10 quart jars, you will need about 3.5 quart jars of grain. 

I just used 4 quarts because I wanted to make sure I had some extra. 

I wanted to make sure I had as much as I wanted if I was going to all this trouble to do this. I'm glad I did. In fact there were a couple of jars I wish I had a little more grain. You really can fill those up until there is only 2-3 inches left open from the very top. 

If you make more than you want... you can throw them on a salad. Rye berries are delicious! 

I've seen others say about one cup of rye berries for 1 quart jar. So 10-11 cups of rye berries for what we are doing. We are making 10 quarts of grain spawn. 

Food Safe Containers for Soaking Rye Berries

I need to write about something that has really bugged me in videos I've watched and articles I've read. So I'm going to step up on a soap box for a minute here.

What are you washing and soaking your rye berries in? 

Does it matter? YES!! It really does. 

I have mostly seen men use 5 gallon buckets to do this. Personally I use a pot to rinse, soak, and cook them. Why dirty a bucket AND a pot? 

You are dealing with food here, so you need to use a food safe container to soak the berries in. Don't just use a 5 gallon bucket you have laying around (unless it's food safe).

These rye berries are going to be grown into more food. The mushrooms will break down the rye berries to grow the mycelium and to grow the fruit body of the mushroom. 

What you soak these berries in matters! You are soaking those rye berries for 24 hours. If the bucket is not made of food safe plastic, those berries are going to be soaking in all sorts of nasty chemicals, and those chemicals will be taken into the rye berries, which will then be inside your mushrooms.💀

If you decide you want to use a bucket to rinse and soak the rye berries, that is totally fine. Just make sure the bucket is a food grade plastic.

One video I saw, a guy used a bucket that used to hold laundry detergent!! 😱😱😱  

Rye berries are food. If you use a bucket that had laundry detergent in it to soak the rye berries, there will still be traces of that laundry detergent in that bucket, which means you will have detergent in your rye berries and then your mushrooms.

Please don't do that!!!

Please be smart. Only use food safe containers when dealing with food. Rye berries and mushrooms are food. 

Okay... I'm stepping down from my soap box now. 😁

Rinse the Rye Berries

1. Get our your 16 quart pot. Some people use a bucket. That is fine, as long as it's food safe or a food grade plastic.
2. Get 1 quart jar out to measure with.
   
3. Open the bag and measure out 3.75 to 4 jars of rye berries grain. 
4. This should come out to about 5 pounds, or 11 cups of grains. You can use a heaping one cup of grain per 1 quart jar. 
5. Put the rye berries in the pot. 

    

6. Fill it with water, three to four inches above the berries.
   
7. Using your hands, mix up the berries through the water. You will see there is a lot of dirt and other particles in there. Getting these out will give you less chances of contamination. 
8. Dump the water and rye berries into one colander. You won't need two of them until they have been cooked. 
9. Dump them back into the pot.  
10. Rinse again. Dump the water. Rinse again. Do it until you have clear water. Different rye berries will be dirtier than others. 
11. I did three rinses personally, but you might need to do it more times. 

Soak the Rye Berries to Hydrate Them

1. After you are done rinsing, fill up the pot with water about 5-6 inches above where the top of the grain is. 
2. Add in gypsum powder. You want to add it at this step so the calcium, sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen in the gypsum, will be soaked up into the rye berries. The mycelium love these nutrients and will help your mycelium be strong.
   
3. You will need 1.5 tablespoons of gypsum for the amount of rye berries we are using. 
4. Mix the gypsum powder into the water.
   
5. Soak the grains for at least 12 hours, but not longer than 24. You don't want the grain to start sprouting or rotting. Here is a picture of sprouting rye berries.You DON'T WANT THAT!!!
   
   
   
   
6. Check on the pot around every 4-8 hours and make sure there is always water over the grain. If the water is getting low, just add more. 
   
7. You don't have to soak them in a fridge, but if you want, it might decrease the chances of contamination. Personally, I just left them out on the counter in my kitchen. I had a 0% contamination with my first grow. 

Simmer the Rye Berries

1. When the grains are fully hydrated, it's now time to cook them so they are also super soft, and ready to be food for our mycelium. 
   
2. Dump the water the grains have been soaking in. 
3. Fill the pot with water again, 2 or 3 inches over the grains. 
   
4. Put them on the stove, and get them up to barley a low boil. You will immediately turn down the temperature to lowish to mediumish and simmer. 
5. This will take approximately 10 to 15 minutes. You are going to be standing by the stove, watching those grains like a hawk! 
6. Do not leave that stove or you might have to start all over again... rinsing... soaking... then simmer. 
7. You know you have got the timing about right when the color of the berries start to change. They will all be a light brown color, and you will also start smelling the cooked grain. It smells delicious! 
8. If you over-cook these, then the outside hull will crack. You don't want that to happen. It will cause contamination.
   
9. When I say "cook" them I mean that VERY loosely. 
10. It's SUPER important to not over cook these! You don't want the grains to crack open. 
11. If you have some of them crack open, it's okay. Just try not to have too many. 
12. Here is a picture with a bunch of grains that have cracked open - too many. They are that white mushy mess you see among the grains. You DON'T want them to look like this!!! If you do, you will have to start over.
    
    
    
    
13. When the grain is cooked, it changes color. It will become a light brown, like you see below. These are beautifully cooked rye berries. Notice how they don't have any of them that have cracked open.

Drain and Air Dry the Rye Berries

Get your two colanders that fit over your sink. You need two of these because of the amount of rye berries we are using. This is for 10 quart jars of grain spawn.

After the rye berries have been cooked, you need to drain the pot. Pour the rye berries into the colanders.

The rye berries are much larger than before they were soaked and cooked. 

Let them sit for 6-8 hours. You want them completely air-dried and completely cooled. Mycelium can die at too high of temperatures.

This step is a huge part of contamination for many growers. If you load up the rye berries into the jars before they are dry, it will cause contamination. You don't want extra water in those jars. The water that is inside the rye berries is all that is needed. 

You can do a paper towel test to make sure they are dry enough. Get a small handful of rye berries, and place them on a paper towel. After 20 seconds, take them off. The paper towel should be completely dry. If it's dry, then you know they are ready to go into the jars.

As you do this stage, realize there are 10 ways to skin a cat. This means there is not one perfect way to do this. So make it your own, and do what makes you comfortable. I'm just sharing with you the way I did it, and it worked really well.

The differences between how I did it and how he does it in the video below: 

• I use my hands to mix up the berries when I'm rinsing them.
• After the rye berries are cooked, I really don't recommend just standing at the sink and trying to get all the water off the grains like the guy in this video does. You REALLY need to just let the rye berries sit in a colander for 6-8 hours so they cool off and all the water drains and evaporates from them. 
• That's what I did. It saves time, and contamination. Which ultimately saves time and money. 

 Next Step: (Step 5) Clean Room - Set up and Cleaning

 

9 Steps of Growing Psilocybin Mushrooms: Making Grain Spawn

1. (Step 1) Planning - Timing and Schedule Breakdown
2. (Step 2) List of Items You Need
3. (Step 3) Making the Lids
4. (Step 4) Prepare the Rye Berries for the Pressure Cooker
5. (Step 5) Clean Room - Set up and Cleaning 
6. (Step 6) Using the Pressure Cooker for the Grain Jars
7. (Step 7) Last Prep for Clean Room
8. (Step 8) Inoculation of Grain Jars
9. (Step 9) Let it GROW!! Growing Mycelium into Grain Spawn