Alright so in the Pf tek for simple minds you need to use a pressure cooker to sterilize the jars of vermiculite and brown rice flour. I tried to find one in my house, and what I found was a crock pot, pretty sure its this exact model: http://www.bizrate.com/crockpots_slowcookers/oid743752011.html Would this do the job?
a crock pot it definatley not a pressure cooker. But all you really need is for it to be really really hot, so i would sooner use a normal pot of boling water on the stove, a crock pot doesn't get hot enough. hope this helps and good luck my friend
I figured thats all it needed. So following the tek, filling up a pot 1 inch and letting it boil for an hour or so will do the trick?
all you need is a big kettle thing you can boil water in. and if you do it that way do it for at least 2 hours
OK, I've actually got some experience here. I feel special. You don't need a PC for the PF-Tek. For whole grains, you can't do without it, but BRF is pretty clean and vermiculite doesn't have nutrients. You're going to want to get a rack for the bottom of the pot. Put your jars on the rack (don't let them touch the sides or you risk cracking them) and fill it up to about an inch up the jar. Not an inch in the bottom, this will run dry and you'll burn your substrate. You do not want burnt substrate, it's a bitch and a half to clean out of jars. Boil them with a lid on the pot for about 90 minutes, checking them maybe every 30 minutes. Start your timer once the water is boiling, not when you put them in there. Once the time is up, just leave them in the pot till they're cool enough to pick up with your bare hands (wash your hands first! No half-assing ANYTHING in this step, you will fail if you do. I even go so far as to put on gloves every time I touch my jars till they get about 1/3 colonized.) Let them cool down the rest of the way in your incubator while you steam the next batch. I always liked to fill my PF jars the day before I boiled them, and let them sit somewhere warm overnight. This will let all the endospores that wouldn't be killed by the heat germinate so that 212 F, which is as hot as you're gonna get this way, will be enough to kill them. I still reccomend finding a PC and moving up to whole grains, though. A PC isn't exactly cheap, but the money can be made back in quadruple if not more if you do it right.
Not really, I do it in my bedrooms bathroom with a hotplate. than put the pot in my shower floor too cool until morning.
