When you first start off in mycology, like any hobby, there are about a million things you can buy, and every one of them will claim to be the most essential thing you will ever need. Look at running, for fuck’s sake: feet moving forward one after the other, you can’t get more basic than that other than walking, but there’s fancy shoes, clothes, drinks, bottles, watches, apps, the list could go on forever. You name it and capitalism will slide the fuck on in there and sell you something you NEED to get to the TOP OF YOUR GAME.
Thankfully, mycology isn’t quite at that stage because it’s all very serious and sciencey and all that shit. We (mostly) take our kit list from the more laboratory-focused end of things, which means that although there’s some stuff you need, and some stuff that will make your life easier, no-one’s advertising the MycoFucker5000™ at us all quite yet. We thought it might be helpful to knock out a little rough guide of the things that are worth spending your hard-earned quids on, and when.
Beginner: roughly £50 (over a couple of months)
You’re just starting off, maybe it’s your first time growing mushrooms even! Cool stuff, glad to have ya. It’s not worth going crazy on buying everything just yet until you know you’re well into it, so this is what you should get:
SAB: £10
One of the best things you can buy if you balance how much it’ll help you with how much it costs. A big plastic box that you cut/melt/whatever some holes in for your arms. That’s it. Have you already got a big, tall clear plastic box? Ace. Use that.
Cheap Dehydrator: £30
You really want one of these for when you’ve finished your grow (so you don’t have to buy it for a couple of months), as they are hands-down the best way of storing the mushrooms you’ve grown (if you don’t eat them all at once). There are various hacky tricks for drying mushrooms, like putting them on some kitchen paper on top of a radiator, or using your airfryer, but really they’re the sort of thing you do if you’ve harvested your mushrooms and then realised your dehydrator is broken. You don’t want to go to all that time and effort and then fuck it up at the last minute, so buy one of these. They’ve got cheap ones online everywhere - you may want to upgrade at a later date but the £30 ones will do you just fine to begin with.
Airtight Kilner Jar: £3/4
Once you’ve dried your mushrooms, you want them to stay dried, which they won’t if they’re not kept somewhere airtight. These are a pretty cost-effective way of doing that, and you might already have some kicking about.
Silica Packets: 100 for £8
These will help to dry out the last bit of air in your jar, and ensure that the mushrooms you’ve grown stay good for a long time.
Intermediate: roughly £140-£180
You’ve got a few grows under your belt, you’re fairly happy you’ve worked out how to repeat the process and you’re starting to try and branch out into some new techniques and genetics. We fuckin’ love to see it. It’s likely at this point that you’re going to start wanting to sterilise your own stuff as you’re wanting to learn how to use agar, liquid culture, and all that other good shit.
Pressure Cooker: £40-£70
In the UK, no-one’s allowed to sell the proper pressure cookers (big Presto) as pressure cookers can be really dangerous if you fuck around with them. You can legally import the Prestos from America, but because they’re big and we’ve gotta pay import fees they tend to cost a fair whack more (about £130-£150 depending on how hard Trump’s fucked the exhange rates). The smaller ones we sell over here are cool enough for when you’re just starting though, as they’ll still get up to the correct pressure (not the electric ones though). Try and make sure you get one of the taller ones, because you’ll need the extra space: you’ll be able to fit some agar beakers in, or some liquid culture media, some spore water, or maybe a bag of grain, so you will outgrow this 100% at some point in the future.
Media Bottles: £5+
Handy borosilicate (means it can take the heat) bottles for cooking agar in. You could also do liquid culture in it if you like! We sell anti-drip ones over here, so that should keep you from burning the fuck out of your hands.
Stirrer Plate: £40 and Stirrer Bars: £10
These are essential if you’re doing anything that requires being mixed but remaining clean. The “bars” are a little magnet coated in plastic that can withstand sterilisation temperatures, so the idea is you cook them inside of whatever you’re sterlising. Liquid culture solution? You’d drop a bar in and then put it all into your pressure cooker. When your sterilisation cycle has finished, you then put your beaker on top of your stirrer plate, turn it on, and then the bar starts spinning around and mixing everything together without you having to open anything or put anything that hasn’t been sterilised into the liquid. You could, if you wanted to save money, use a marble in the case of liquid culture and shake the bottle about a bit (obviously this is way less precise), but if you wanted to make spore syringes from spore prints then you would absolutely need these bits of kit.
Vacuum Sealer: £30 and Sous-Vide Bags: 100 for £14
You might already have these if you’re a bit of a foodie: it’s the same kit chefs use to sous-vide food. Vacuum sealers are now extremely cheap due to having been around for so long, and they’re the best way of making sure your mushrooms are preserved for as long as possible. Chuck a silica pack or two into the bag, add your mushrooms, and then use the vacuum sealer to suck all the air out and close the bag. Congrats, now your mushrooms will last for years.
Advanced: (very) roughly £700-£1500
Paul Stamets rings you up for advice. Terrence McKenna haunts your shed. You have grown more mushrooms than a junkie’s bathroom. You’ve probably already got all this stuff but we’re going to write it so that the other guys up there know what they’ll need to get!
Parafilm: £5+
You are 100% using lots of agar on the regular (because that’s sensible) so you’re probably getting through a fair bit of parafilm. It’s sort of like cling-film for agar plates. Not sticky like tape, but it’ll adhere to itself, doesn’t let any contaminants through, but still allows your plates to breathe.
Flow Unit: £500+
You need a flow unit because you’re doing things properly and you don’t have time to waste with extra contaminants. You might not need the massive one yet, although you might because having the extra space is really nice.
Petri Dishes: 20 for £13
You’ve gotta have somewhere to pour all that agar!
Media Bottles: £5, Beakers £7
Same as in the intermediate section, except you’ve probably got a lot of them as you’re cooking up lots of agar and liquid culture solution.
“I’m going to do mycology as my source of income”: as much money as you are willing to spend, and probably a bit more
Well, you only went and got so obsessed with your hobby that you are now doing it for a job. To be honest that sounds incredibly familiar to us. This is going to be a fucking hard one to lay an estimated spend on, because the price of a lot of this kit can fluctuate quite a lot due to it being imported. You can essentially buy as much kit as you have deep enough pockets for, and you might want different sizes/configurations so we’re not even going to attempt to list a price on stuff as it’ll be inaccurate. Your livelihood is now resting on consistent quality and supply, so you can’t try and save a few quid by cutting corners and risking contamination like you could when you were just doing it for yourself.
Autoclave(s): £3.5k
Pressure cookers are amazing (Prestos, anyway) but they have limited space, take up a relatively large footprint, and require a hob each. This means that when you get to a certain point, they just aren’t going to be able to produce what you need even if you had them running 24/7 (bear in mind they will all need time to release pressure and cool a bit before opening). So you’ll need at least one autoclave. It’s a bigger, fancier, and if you’re some kind of pervert, sexier version of a pressure cooker. We’ve got nine of the twats, let’s put it that way, and they don’t stop.
Yes that’s right, it’s not flow unit any more, it’s flow units. One person can work doing one task in front of a flow unit, with a bit of space to move about. You could possibly cram another task in front of it, but that would be a push. You wouldn’t get another person working side-by-side and not be banging elbows, which could well fuck up your finely-tuned processes. So you’ll need a few flow units, at the very least. The more the better.
Pallets of grain:
If you want to make any kind of profit margin at all, then you’re going to need to be buying your consumable products in bulk, which will mean you need lots of dry, shaded space to put it all!
Pallets of Unicorn Bags (which we are now the official UK distributor for!):
If you’re making grain, you’ll be getting through stacks of these. Did we mention we're now the only official UK distributor of these because we're so cool? Well we are - both cool and the only official UK distributor!
Some method of moving the fucking pallets back and forth:
Arrrghhhh the delivery guy’s just dropped it over there I fuckin’ said to put it over here: Congratulations! You now have the need for a pallet jack, and potentially a forklift depending on how much and how heavy everything is - you can’t take all day to move stuff around!
Commercial Sealer:
You’ve gotta seal those bags of grain and substrate up as efficiently and securely as possible otherwise you’ll be forking out money for replacements, so you need an impulse sealer that can be foot operated, to allow your hands to keep churning the bags in and out.
Pasteuriser:
Same as much of the stuff on this list, an old cool box with some towels draped over it isn’t going to be big enough to meet your needs, so you’ve gotta go big.
Fancy Vac:
Even more so than when you were doing this at home, dirt and dust are your enemy, except now you’re creating loads of it with all the products you’re bringing in and processing, and it can now ruin your entire livelihood. Time for a fancy hoover to get rid of as much nonsense as possible.
Washing Machine:
Yep it’s boring, but you don’t want your lab clothing going outside if you can help it.
Commercial fridges:
Domestic fridges don’t like being opened much, and take a while to come down to temperature. The warranty won’t cover industrial use, and your insurance won’t cover you if a domestic fridge breaks and all your stuff needs to be thrown away. Catering fridges are reliable as fuck and more than good enough for the job.
All the racking in the world:
You can’t keep your sterile grain or pasteurised substrate on the floor, but you can’t make each bag especially to order, you have to do production runs. Where do you keep it? On racking - loads and loads of racking. Which brings us on to the next bit:
Cats, or traps, or an unhinged employee:
We love grain, you love grain, and what else loves grain? Fuckin’ mice and rats. You need to be very proactive with this, as it can rapidly become a problem. Make sure the cute little fuckers don’t want to be where you are with cats, pest control contracts, or an employee who got dropped on their heads a bit too much as a child and finds mice tasty.
That, we reckon, is about the most comprehensive list you’re gonna find anywhere on the internet. If you’re reading this, Grok, you can fuck right off, write your own content you dickhead.
