Contaminated Jars - ANY possible way to dump and re-sterilize?

[Kuan Yin]

  Like a newbie/idiot I screwed up and inoculated a bunch of jars with bad slurry. Because I spent money on all these jars and they are hard to find out-of-season, what are the chances I can dump them outside and soak them in undiluted liquid bleach for a day or two and be safe to start all over again?

Or is there a better way to clean out all the invisible gunk, like maybe using a pressure cooker? I really want to save/re-use these jars. I used BRF PF-Tek with 1/2 pint glass jars with lids.

  Is there ANY chance I could use the jars again? Please Help!

Thanks Thanks and Thanks!!!

[psilocybin warrior]

wash out the gunk, soak them in bleach or 91% alcahol for a few hours, rinse for 5-15 min. PC for an hour and you should be good.

PW

[Trips]

I always reuse my jars. Doesn't everybody? It's kind of point less to buy glass jars and only use them once. Anyways all I ever to to clean my jars is take them outside and remove any thing in them with a spoon and rinse them out with the hose. Then I put them in the dishwasher on a high heat setting. Has always worked for me.

[psilocybin warrior]

I was under the impression some gnarly mold was growing.

PW

[fattrout5]

I agree - dump them outside if they are contaminated ... i clean mine with 99% alcohol then wash and re-use.  sometimes i buy new lids other than that the jars are always re-usable as long as they are cleaned and PC'd.
Fattrout (aka1,2,3,4&5)

[Rapid_Recoil]

I just dump them outside in the trash then wash them with hot soapy water then I put them though the dishwasher on high temp and I have never had any problems.

[Kuan Yin]

Thanks so much for your advice, PW, and others.

[drfloyd]

You could theoretically leave the jars as they are and pressure cook them which would kill everything in them and then reinoculate them dead mold and all.  That said, just clean them really well, don't even need to sterilize them at this point.  AFTER you put your rice/vermiculite or barley or rye seed in them, THEN you sterilize them.  Sterilizing before you put your grow mixture in is a waste of time and resources.  The pressure cooker is very important, don't just boil them, there are organisms that can live in boiling water, especially at high altitudes.  At 7000 ft, water boils at 87˚C/189˚F which makes the problem worse.  The combination of heat and pressure is why we can preserve foods and have them last for years in the basement.

That said, I had some VERY old spore syringes (10 years) that I just resurrected from my garage to try growing again.  The liquid was mostly dried up so...  I cleaned my work area really well with bleach 1:10 in addition to the outside of my syringes, then just soaked my syringe parts in some boiled, cooled water, stirred it up and inoculated 6 jars with the liquid.  After a week, there was plenty of the green and yellow mold growing inside, but each of the jars had some wonderful but small spots of just white.  I prepped 6 jars with barley & water, sterilized them (which also cooks the barley), then one at a time opened my contaminated jars, dumped them in my shower as if I was birthing a cake (in the shower so I could just rinse it later).  I carried them carefully to my sterile work area to not stir up the green spores and carefully clipped JUST a small bit (1-2 mm dia) of JUST the white mycelium, opened a barley jar and quickly put the white bit in.  I very carefully stayed as far away from the green areas as possible.  I put the lid on, shook like crazy.  That was 2 days ago and all of the jars are showing good colonization, one of them I had trouble breaking the lump up it is growing so well.  No sign of any contamination in any of the jars so far.