Welcome To Our Lab
Our Lab is located in a purpose built heated and fully electrical powered wooden outbuilding. We built the lab back in 2017 before we moved into mushrooms commercially and it was part of our ever-growing hobby of mycology.
The lab is a substantial building measuring more than 8m by 4m and was built using specially treated anti fungal / Anti Bacterial chemically treated wood. The inside is sheeted with thick plastic as an additional barrier. The lab houses our top of the range laminar flow hood. The laminar flow hood consist of a pre-filter (The blue cartridge filter which protects the main HEPA filter from larger debris) a industrial centrifugal fan (Pictured 2nd below) and the main high grade HEPA filter.
Our laminar flow hood main high grade HEPA filter is
H14 rated which is specified to top of industry standard:
HEPA H14 - EN 1822 (> 99.995% MPPS, 99.999% @ 0.3µm)
So what does that mean? Basically in simple terms the filter will scrub out or remove 99.999% of particulates (solids) down to a size of 0.3 microns in size.
Why is 0.3 microns important? Well, Mould spores, bacteria and pollen IE. The biological contaminants we are very interested in removing when cultivating mushrooms and carrying out our lab work are all larger than 0.3 micron in size, therefore you can see a filter of this high a specification basically removes them all. In essence making the area where we work in-front of the super clean stream of air - Almost completely contamination free.
Our filter is one of the largest you can buy at 48 inches x 24 inches, giving the active mycologist plenty room to work.
Our Testing Protocols
It is vital to us that we are supply you with 100% viable and clean cultures and mycology supplies. This is why we we decided that when we set up we would try our hardest to take all the precautions possible to ensure all our cultures leaving the lab are tested and proven prior to being sent out to you.
Clean looking liquid culture is impossible to see contamination by eye alone, we therefore took the decision to batch produce our cultures, and test all prior to them leaving the Lab, so as we could all but guarantee that on leaving here they are free from contamination for you. Once we cultivate a batch of liquid culture, we take a a single cc from that culture and grow it ourselves on an Agar plate. This assures us that everything is all good prior to marketing. This process does take us additional time however we hope you agree, is completely worth it to ensure everyone is happy including the mycelium!
Below is an example of our Grey Oyster culture colonising a test agar plate. This picture was taken 2 days after inoculation using a single cc from one of our liquid culture jars, we liked the vigour so much that we took a couple samples to save the genetics from this strain.
