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Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

Usually when you grow mushrooms you do it in two steps. First you grow out the mycelium on a growth medium such as grains, then you spread out the mycelium and cover it with some casing material, say peat moss, and fruit it under different environmental conditions. A typical mushroom lab has two areas built out (say with plastic sheets) to maintain the conditions for these two phases.

Looks like their machine creates conditions to fruit mycelium blocks that they send to you in the mail.

It's a big plus that it works with mycelium blocks you make yourself.

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Seems so. From step 1 on the website: "Choose from our precolonized mushroom blocks and press start"

No no no.. for Lion's Mane, you want only the mycelium. How do you grow it in liquid such that 100% of the mycelium is available? Growing on grain ruins the cost-efficiency of the product.

There's a reason Ben's Original (Uncle Ben's) is big in the mushroom community.

- Pre sterilized

- Cost effective

- Easy to monitor

https://old.reddit.com/r/unclebens

Such genius simplicity. I've grown once in mason jars with rice flour, and once in uncle Ben's. Ben was such an improvement

I am only familiar with eating of the fruiting body.

Are you saying that the fruiting body is useless, or am I misunderstanding you?

The eating of the fruiting body has a very long history and some literature.

Do you have any more information.?

The fruiting body of hericium mushrooms like lion's mane do not contain Erinacine A, which is generally recognized to be the most beneficial component of lions mane. That compound is present only in the mycelium. The fruiting body does contain Hericenones, which are also thought to have some health benefits, just not the nervous system repair benefits that Erinacine A provides.

Thanks!

No problem - the post you were replying to also left out some information, though- almost all hericium liquid culture mycelium also fail to produce the compound in question. It can be produced with certain specific liquid cultures, but for the home grower the highest erinacine A yields can be achieved by growing on small-ground corn kernel ( <2 mm ).

you could be forgiven for thinking consumption of the fruiting body is what provides benefits - almost all lions mane 'supplement' companies are selling dried, ground fruit bodies because that also 'supplements' their income stream - sell the fruiting bodies for a premium, grind up the trim pieces and leftovers for a secondary income stream. They fail to mention that the product they are selling is essentially worthless, outside of what could be better achieved by eating fruiting bodies anyhow.

There are a few reputable companies out there that validate the amount of erinacine A in a typical batch, those are the ones you want to buy from.

> There are a few reputable companies out there that validate the amount of erinacine A in a typical batch, those are the ones you want to buy from.

Which company?

The thing that confuses me about this is that Hericium has a long history of medicinal use. My understanding is the peoples and cultures that ate it consumed the frit body, not the mycelium.

I had been considering setting up my own small lab to grow and do experiments for ... reasons. I think that this is a great way to get started and should greatly simplify the process.

Back when we did it we had a fruiting tent that was maybe 20 times the volume of that thing. Of course the project took up a whole room in the house.

You've just demystified a large potential demand source for this thing to me.

Pleasure to help.

With this device, all one needs is some grains (I have an uncle who has a relevant subreddit), and spores, which are legally obtainable!

I don't think it makes sense to spend $300 on a tiny tub given how easy it is to do this stuff with jars or Ikea tubs. You'll probably want a lot of tubs anyway.

Plastic storage tubs from IKEA or similar works out cheaper, and higher volume.

Its pretty hard to fuck up as well.

Perhaps, but then I will also need instruments to measure humidity, airflow, temperature and so on and a means of controlling parameters.

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