Coffee filters don't do much (Roger Rabbit has some funny rants on the mat shroomery) but...

Polyfill above your tyvek would mean that when your tyvek got wet from shaking the jar, the polyfil would have stayed dry, keeping sterile contaminant barrier between the inside and outside of the jar. As I had no polyfil, with the tyvek inside, shaking the jar got it wet, thus ending my contaminant-barrier's effectiveness.

As already mentioned, I find self-sealing RTV-silicone on the innoculation ports is awesome and works great in conjunction with tyvek barriers (as long as they're assembled properly ).

Hey brother, After innoculating your jars, after 5-7 days if they are in correct temperatures, you should see growth starting. You mentioned you saw growth but it was dense slow and in 1 isolated patch. Makes me think maybe there is no air exchange in your jars?? some say while incubating, they need no air, but i find they colonize very slow with dense growth, if there is not somewhere to push the CO2 out. I just poke holes in the top of the jar with a nail, and leave the hole open, it rarely contaminates. Bacterial contamination is another possibility. Are your jars to wet? Growth is very slow and dense if the jars are too wet....

Your other problem i think is your using the PF tech. IMO the pf tech is a poor way to grow mushrooms, even for a first timer, and often yields very little and colonizes slow. For me it is EASIER and more rewarding to inooculate BIRD SEED. This way once you get a solid patch of growth, you can shake your jars to spread the myc evenly and it WILL colonize alot faster.
You can also do grain to grain transfers with WBS, allowing to EXPONENTIALLY increase your available amount of spawn.

You can then innoculate horse or cow manure, or you can lay your colonized wbs out on trays, case with verm and fruit!

Download "the mushroom cultivator" if you dont already have it, great source of info.

Feel free to pm me if you have any questions at all about growing the little helpers, I have grown a great many piles in my day, even though my first 2 grows failed, its a matter of getting the parameters correct then its easy. The main paramaters to watch are air exchange (or lack of) and moisture content. Id say 99% of stalls are because it is too wet, or there is too much co2 and not enuf fresh air.

Good luck brother, growing mushrooms is the most rewarding hobby there is.

You MUST have a pressure cooker if you plan to try grains, though..

I am sorry your first attempt failed, but don't be disheartened, all will be OK. I have had great success with BRF cakes without a pressure cooker. You just have to be careful with sterilisation. Another thing that could help is using a glove box to cut down on the amount of contams in the air when you inoculate. My greatest advice though is to sterilise your needle between inoculations. Get a lighter and flame it until it's red. Do this first, before you inoculate, and every time after. It will eliminate 'dirty needle' contamination.

Good luck!

I got a pressure cooker from my dad so I am going to try again this week. Thanks for the help everyone

If you are not able to work completely sterile (like enoon attempts to do), then it is a numbers game. You can increase your chances though. The pressure cooker will help greatly, i am sure. Get a ton of jars and innoculate them with different spore syringes you made. Flame sterilisation and alcohol wiping after every third jar is recommended. Spray the air with lysol before performing delicate operations such as making syringes, or innoculating jars. Something god WILL grow.

Use a lot of jars! PF tek is quite some work, i know. But limiting yourself to 4 jars is just ...well, time wasted. Do not expect to get more than 2-3g dried from each jar.

I suck at it as well. I haven't had any succes with it yet. Shrooms are realy complicated to grow. One tiny misstep and the whole project fails.

Sorry I don't have time to read through the thread, so I'll just respond to OP:




Did you put it in the fruiting chamber? or the innoculation chamber? Difference is: innoc- 78-82F, fruiting- 69-76F. If you put the jars directly into the growing chamber, nothing will happen. Also, you only need to do 1 cook at 1:30 with those 8oz BRFs. Any more cooking could dry up the substrate. Also, make sure you only add 1-2cc PER JAR of spores, as to much will offset the balance of humidity. Do you have pets in your house? Just keeping your hands clean isn't enough. Try not to breathe on open jars. After you cook, remove the foil to give it fresh air exchange. Did you leave a layer of verm on the top? If you could give me your exact steps I could help you pin point where it went wrong.