I had a bit of grain left during my last run, so I mixed the bits I had left.
This is interesting, actually. Over the next few months, I'll continue this experiment to see what grain mixes might work better for spawn.
While this wasn't a "proper" test, I had still hypothesized that the higher starch content in the popcorn would do better. I guess not.
I'll try and separate testing into different categories like starch content, moisture content, mycelium strain, etc. There is probably a ton more conditions to isolate as well.
My understanding is that you want to boil them until they're soft enough that you can easily split the kernels with your nail. For the batch I made, that was about 20-25 minutes at a hard boil. Compared to the batch of rye berries I made the same day (boiled for half that time), I think it took about a week longer for the mycelium to really get going in the popcorn, but otherwise all jars are doing equally well.
One big difference, however, is for long-term storage. I prepped my jars about three months ago, and still have some sitting in the closet. The jar with rye berries now has about 3/8" of water standing in the bottom (and this only started happening about a month and a half ago), while the popcorn jars do not have any standing water and the mycelium still looks more like cotton candy.
So my take-away is that if you're in a hurry to expand your mycelium, rye berries will get you to the fruiting stage faster. If you plan to let your jars sit for awhile, popcorn is definitely the better option.
Ah yes. You bring up good points.
I just remembered that ease of a "break-and-shake" is a thing as well. Popcorn simply doesn't stick together as bad.
It's also the reason that I rinse the hell out of my brown rice. It'll keep the free starches from acting like glue.
Hmm I haven't tried rice, didn't even realize that was a thing, but yeah I can see the starch being a problem. Maybe over the Winter I'll have time to work more with mine, I've been crazy busy the past week getting a new server in place but it's finally up and running now.
Brown rice colonizes really fast but it's only really good if you plan to use it as soon as it's ready. Otherwise, it'll break down fairly quick and is a pain to spawn to bulk after it does.
I got hooked on this hobby after innoculating some Uncle Bens 90 Second rice bags and learning how easy it can be.
With the popcorn, I split one jar between two bags of straw and it worked well (but of course took some time to fill in). Since the rye berry jar has so much liquid on it, I might just dump the whole thing into a single bag when I'm ready to spawn the next one.
The next thing I need to figure out is spawning a colony from the existing mushrooms so I know how to keep the cycle going. And that'll require having some new grain jars prepped and ready to go. Maybe in a few weeks...