Wednesday 18 February 2009

Cheap alternative - Rice + Straw cakes - RS Tek


By now you should be familiar with my sterilization techniques so I wont go into them in detail. If you unsure check my other posts for a refresher. This method costs about a quater of the PF tek and gives the spores more energy per pint.


For 9 pint glasses of substrate use 1 kilo of rice and about 10 large handfuls of straw and 2 cups of verm .


Put your rice into a large pan and fill the pan with water, then swill the rice around to wash as much starch of as you can, this will help keep it fluffy. Once the water is cloudy drain it off and repeat until the water stays relativly clear. Drain of the clearish water.


Put enough fresh water into the pan to just cover the rice, boil for 10 minutes then leave the lid on and leave it for 2o minutes with the lid on, this will let the rice absorb all the extra water and make it fluffier.


You will also want to wash cut and wash your straw. Drop it into the sink and chop it up into 1 inch pieces, fill the sink with warm water and squirt on some washing up liquid, give it a good wash then rinse. Stuff this into a pillow case and submerge this in the largest pan you can find, you only need to pasturize this I've found boiling it isn't so great. Keep it between 60-70C for around 2 hrs. This will stink.


Once the rice has stood for 20 mins, take a fork and fluff it all up. I use a large brewers pan for this next part, its a huge metal basin with handles. Put the pasturized straw into your mixing vessel and drop in a couple of cups of verm, this will soak up any excess water and help keep the water content right during sterilization. Mix in the fluffy rice. I continue to mix this until the rice no longer steams, this stops the rice clagging up into lumps.


You will then fill up your pint glasses with the mix, cleaning the lip and topping the top half inch with verm. Put a double folded piece of foil over this, I tie this on with string, then put a slightly looser single ply of foil.


Sterilize in your preferred method for 90 mins. I slpit them between big pans and a veg steamer. If you use a pan remember to keep the glasses off the bottom or it will fuck your substrate.

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