Erik Drews

SOSComAlt week 4

Mushrooms

The third mushroom substrate is made up of spent grains from my vanilla stout. While I was preparing to make this beer and doing research on how to use the grains to their fullest potential. I learned that including a teaspoon of gypsum in the mash water can lower the water’s ph in a way that allows for the enzymes to work more effectively at converting the starches into fermentable sugars. This seemed like an excellent idea considering the information that I have read about in regards to supplementing mushroom spawn with gypsum. So instead of supplementing the grain with gypsum after the grain had been used to make beer, I chose to add the gypsum during the brewing process. The spent grain was used to fill 6 jars that were sterilized and inoculated with both oyster and shiitake mycelium. Each jar has approximately:

.33 lbs of 2-row malted barley

.33 lbs of maris otter malted barley

.16 lbs of Cara-pils malted barley

.08 lbs of Black Patent malted barley

.08 lbs of chocolate malted barley

.08 lbs of flaked oats

Each of these jars were pasteurized at 15 psi for 45 minutes. Three were inoculated with shiitake mycelium and three were inoculated with oyster mycelium. These jars were inoculated on February 3rd, 2017. Colonization has taken place by February 8th, 2017.

Inoculating wheat/straw