Agar poured agar dishes, ready to be sealed. Look pro in front of the DIY sterile flow hood – but will never solidify and thus go back into the microwave.

Agar poured agar dishes, ready to be sealed. Look pro in front of the DIY sterile flow hood – but will never solidify and thus go back into the microwave.

And again I failed pouring proper nutrient dishes. Today I started over with pouring a fresh batch of agar dishes, this time without any colorants, just to be safe. I left out the activated charcoal and upped the amount of agar to 20g/L. Also I adjusted the batch to 300ml total. Below is the new recipe. Also, I never ordered any peptone. So both recipes where cooked up without the peptone.

Recipe: Agar Malt Extract Dextrose Medium (AMED)

Here the adjusted recipe for 300ml yield:

Lab-grade malt extract agar (MEA), sufficient for 300 ml final volume of medium.

Unfortunately I had failed again. I decided to nuke the agar liquid in the microwave and give it a good shake instead of stirring it thoroughly and sterilising it 45min in the pressure cooker as recommended in many places such as my lab handbook. This might have fucked up the result in two ways. The powders had not fully dissolved, there where still grainy lumps floating on the poured plates. Then the 85 degree Celsius needed to fully liquefy agar and activate it to settle around 30 degree Celsius might never have been reached throughout the Erlenmeyer flask.

Late in the evening I gave it another shot and just nuked the poured and sealed plates again. The medium did fully liquefy at around 85 degree, however I am still waiting to see if it fully sets until tomorrow. Also note to myself: on the second attempt I shall never forget that Parafilm definitely is not temperature resistant and should never be put in autoclave. It leaves a horrible sticky gooey mess as it disgracefully dissolves.

On a lighter note I was able to acquire another species today. I brought home some fresh P. eryngii, King Oyster mushrooms from the supermarket. I will cook Tagliatelle ai Funghi tomorrow evening, pairing them with my home made egg noodles. Of course I severed a couple caps to take prints and will clone one or two specimen on agar tomorrow.

Spore prints of Pleurotus Eryngii being taken.

Spore prints of Pleurotus Eryngii being taken.

My home made tagliatelle on display on the beech wood rolling pin I had made myself earlier.

My home made tagliatelle on display on the beech wood rolling pin I had made myself earlier.

As I am typing it seems the top dish has reasonably set, let's see...