How To Make Honey Liquid Culture

Honey liquid culture tek is probably the most accessible liquid culture recipe out there, due to the fact that everyone has a jar of this ingredient in there kitchen somewhere.

The sugars contained in honey can be mixed with water and used to expand mycelium for growing mushrooms.

Although it isn't the best nutrient for culture broth, its cheap, widely available and easy to work with.

This post will details how to make a mushroom liquid culture recipe using honey.

How To Make Honey Liquid Culture?

The recipe for a honey liquid culture tek generally consists of a 4% honey-to-water mixture. The mixture is sterilised and inoculated with mycelium. 

You must use CLEAR HONEY as it is important to be able to observe the mixture remains clear once innoculated.

A basic outline of the steps are as follows:

1. Mix 4% honey/water mixture.
2. Sterilize the mixture in jar.
3. Inoculate jars with mycelium.
4. Wait for mycelium growth. Shaking the Jar regularly.

I have created a table which outlines what 4% honey-to-water looks like in practice.

Honey	Water	Percentage
24g	600ml	4%
16g	400ml	4%
12g	300ml	4%
4g	100ml	4%

Requirements

• Pressure Cooker (top pressure cookers for mushroom cultivation).
• Micro-pore tape/polyfill (here is a discussion on gas exchange lids, however for this tutorial micropore tape will do).
• Liquid Culture Syringe
• Butane Torch (seriously get one of these it makes flame sterilizing needles very very easy, the needle will glow red in seconds).
• Jars
• Alcohol

Step 1 Create Honey/Water Mixture.

• Find a Glass jar and put a hole in the lid using a screwdriver or scissors
• Fill the Jar with 400ml of warm water (distilled water preferably).
• Add 4 tsp of honey to the water (Approximately 16g).
• Stir the mixture until the honey dissolves into the water.
• Place micro-pore tape over the hole in the lid.
• Screw the lid on the jar.
• Wrap the lid in tinfoil then secure with rubber band.

Step 2 Sterilize Jars

• Place the Jars into your pressure cooker and sterilize for 30-40mins at 15psi.
• Allow the pressure cooker to cool down for a few hours before moving to the next step.

Step 3 Inoculate Honey/Water mixture

• Remove jars from the pressure cooker.
• Wipe the lid of the jar with alcohol wipes.
• Shake the needle to spread out the current mycelium.
• Flame sterilize the needle until it is glowing red.
• Insert syringe and inject 1cc of liquid culture.
• Remove the syringe and flip down the micropore tape.
• Place the jar into incubation temperatures(18-20c or 64-68f).

Step 4 Wait.

Stir the jar daily to prevent clumpy solid mycelium masses (without opening the jar). 

Alternatively you can use a stir bar to speed up the process.

Alternatives to Honey Liquid Culture?

• Light Malt Extract Liquid Culture.
• Karo LC.
• Grain water LC. 

Additional Reading.

How to make liquid culture using Agar.

How to make a still air box.