hey everyone,
I just thought I would do a pictorial of how to do some easy rye qts without having to do any soaks or simmering. It's pretty much what the TMC says to do. I thought what the hell. lol here it is:
1. fill clean qt. jar with between 1 1/8- 1 1/4 cups of dry organic rye grain...
Now, adding the measured grain directly to the jar helps keep track of how much grain is in each jar and you don't have to worry about water being absorbed and throwing off the measurement. So all of your jars will be equal when it's all said and done.
2. fill the jar up about half way with warm/hot water..
3. place palm over the opening of the jar, pick up, and with your palm over the opening shake vigorously back and forth and up and down. after this your jars' water should look all dirty..
4. Now take a fine wire mesh "bowl" strainer and put it over the mouth of the jar..
5. flip the whole jar over with strainer into the sink to drain dirty water...
this keeps the grain inside the jar while allowing drainage..
6. Repeat steps 2 - 5 until the water is pretty much clear.. I usually just do it twice. This is washing the grains so that they will come apart easier when you shake them later.
7. Once the grain is clean, knock the rest of the grain down that is sticking to the sides of the qt by hitting the bottom of the jar on your palm and fill the jar until the water line is about an 1/8 inch above the dry grain line like so..
8. Now this is possibly the most important step and I think a lot of peeps totally space this step out. CLEAN THE TOP JAR RIM (i'm not yelling, just making it easy to read.) this is the only thing standing between the inside of your jar and the outside... be sure to wipe it spotless before you put your lid on.
9. Screw lid on tight and back off a 1/4 turn. Place foil over lid and PC at 15-18 psi for 1 hour 10 mins.
10. After PC has cooled (at least 4 hours in rough estimate) to the touch, remove PC lid and immediately tighten the jar lids.
11. Now since the grain was PC'ed dry and sitting in water, the hydration of the grain kernels is going to vary through out the height of the grain column.. see, the grain on the very top is not going to be as hydrated as the grain on the bottom because as the water gets forced into the kernels, the water line drops and kernels get bigger forcing the column to expand upwards. So the kernels that popped out of the water first are the least hydrated kernels, and the very very bottom kernels in the jar will probably burst, but it's a very small amount. So since there is a variance in the hydration all along the column we need to mix all the kernels together to even out the water content in the jar.. we do this by hitting the jar against a knee (in my case) or an old bike tire. Once the kernels are broken up, just shake the jar vigorously as if you were doing a shake mid colonization.
tada, your jar is ready :)
here's 30 jars of rye done this exact same way..
I also love this method because it's so freakin clean... look at the above process.. no mess.. no transfer of wet grain anywhere. thats nice. :thumbup:
In the last 60+ qts I've made this way, one went south and that was to a breach in the lid. The contam was trich, not bacteria. I could tell that the reason was the lid by where the trich was located and how scattered it was... It was on the very top of the grain below the lid and about three different spots started at once. If you are losing lots of jars to any kind of contam, I think that the PC is the last place you point your finger.. odds are that it's either one of these or a combination of them:
1. A breach in the lid
2. poor inoculation sterility
3. The inoculate itself
if you are seeing entire batches get bacteria, I doubt it's because of endospores not being killed.. I'd say that it's your inoculate.. hatching endospores is worthless imo/ime... if you look at how it works... not all bacteria are endospore producing bacteria.. EACH bacteria that can produce endospores WILL make one endospore when introduced to harsh environments. so, If you soak and hatch those endospores to make them into bacteria, they will just produce another endospore when you try to kill them again. i.e., heat. and only a hatched bacteria can make more bacteria by reproducing, so when you soak and hatch endospores, you are just making bacteria that reproduces exponentially... if you are soaking, you are making more endospores not the other way around. Sometimes an endospore may survive to ruin your jars, but thats not something that would happen to every jar in a batch.. maybe like 1 in 20 jars... at least with the 1+ hour PC'ing.
if you are getting contams on the tops of your grain, your lid needs reworking... the top of the grain is the part of the jar that gets sterilized the most.. as it's right where the steam comes in thru the jar lid.. the bottom center gets the least steam for the least amount of time, so if anything is living thru a PC'ing, then it would most probably start there and in the center, not anywhere on the outside of the grain column.
If you're getting contams mixed in with mycelium at your inoc. points.. then odds are it's your inoculate.
If you are seeing just one jar here or there where theres a contam mixed in with growing myc, then it probably got it when you inoculated i.e., the port wasn't as clean as it could be etc.
These are all just some things to think about.. it's a take it or leave it kind of situation ;)
fahtster
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Edited by hyphaenation, 04 September 2014 - 07:43 PM.
