I've tried to scale down a single fruiting medium to 100-200g, and it keeps failing time after time: at best, I get small needle-sized fruiting bodies (hypsizygus tessulatus, post picture) or primordia and then small malformed underdeveloped fruiting bodies (pleurotus eryngii, inline picture). Then development just stops. Medium is enriched (sugar) alder chips, contamination starts developing long after growth is stalled. Is it really scale problem? What's the reasonably smallest batch size?
Thanks; I'm thinking about overcolonization indeed - Stamets mentions that growing in jars works, but mine here are just too small. Colony was supposed to hit the bottom and feel constrained, not grow up. Another thing is heat balance, which is not so obvious; the best results I've got were when I left the house for 2 days in the middle of the winter and temperature dropped by 2C. I mean, I expected small jars to radiate heat better, but then fruiting is surface process, maybe it's the opposite too.
I'm also trying to come up with something that does not use disposable plastics. I know bags are quite versatile, I just hate them, not so much because of ecological issues, but like I can't really make them myself, that's disturbing.
Plastic buckets drilled holes are good reusable option. If you want to avoid plastics all together you could use some of this spawn to plug a small alder log.
I had troubles with logs - I have lots of trees, but apparently most are already badly inoculated. Or I need to choose really really healthy looking ones. Or dry them first maybe.
I haven't tried myself but my understanding from reading Stamets is that you're supposed to cut the log and move it to a wood shed or something right away without letting it sit on the ground for an extended period. Alder is supposed to decay much quicker than other hardwoods as well so it's not used as often.