dry or fresh

[mushhunter]

hi ther is it important to allways dry actives if one is to consume them? is ther any difference in effect.potency ,is it safer? cheers

[MORG]

Depends what species you're talking about.

There is a loss of potency in dried Psilocybes compared to fresh.

Regardless of activity, any mushroom should be dried if one intends to store them.

I wouldn't go eating them though. That's illegal.

Edited October 27, 2006 by MORG

[mushhunter]

Depends what species you're talking about.

There is a loss of potency in dried Psilocybes compared to fresh.

Regardless of activity, any mushroom should be dried if one intends to store them.

I wouldn't go eating them though. That's illegal.

oh no i never would eat one discusting psilocybe mushroom wouldent ever wanna break the law now would we

[spiders]

fresh is best but they can taste pretty ordinary - although i wouldnt know personally ;)

[ballzac]

Yeah, fresh is best. But they can be dried successfully. Theoretically, if you roughly chop them (throw out the stems first if you wish) and then put them in front of a fan until they're dry (and find some way to prevent them all blowing away as they lose moisture), they will not lose much potency. You can then store them in the fridge or freezer if you wish them to last for more than a few months. Still, some would argue that mushrooms are seasonal for a reason, and besides, I've heard that tripping on mushies is better in the cold and wet...seems more fungal.

[apothecary]

The stems are just as illegal as the rest of the mushroom.

[Hyphal]

In my friends experience, chopping them up reduces a lot of potency. Each cut you make, in theory, exposes more of the actives to the air and oxideses them into useless 'blue' compunds (i would actually like to see the specific chemical data on this to put my mind at ease once and for all....).

Therefore, in my firends experience, leaving them whole when you dry them results in a much better final product.

[Μορφέας]

freezing them in air tight bags that have been filled with nitrogen will maintian their potency with no oxygen available to oxidise them

[ballzac]

In my friends experience, chopping them up reduces a lot of potency. Each cut you make, in theory, exposes more of the actives to the air and oxideses them into useless 'blue' compunds (i would actually like to see the specific chemical data on this to put my mind at ease once and for all....).

Therefore, in my firends experience, leaving them whole when you dry them results in a much better final product.

It's just that if you want to dry them, you need them to dry fairly quickly before they are eaten to nothing by the grubs and whatnot inside them, therefore you either need to add heat, or expose more surface area to the air. It's a bit of a trade off, but the latter seems to work better IM(FOAFs)E.

[marsha]

hmmm im pretty sure that some mushrooms like to come out in the sunniest part of the year ;) rainbows and sunshines hmmmm yummo

Edited November 1, 2006 by YoWiE

[ballzac]

Good point.

Edited November 1, 2006 by ballzac

[Hyphal]

It's just that if you want to dry them, you need them to dry fairly quickly before they are eaten to nothing by the grubs and whatnot inside them, therefore you either need to add heat, or expose more surface area to the air. It's a bit of a trade off, but the latter seems to work better IM(FOAFs)E.

Next time, tell your friend to lay them on some newspaper iwith a fan blowing over them. It will take anywhere from 2 tyo 3 days to dry em completely, but the addition of a little heat wont hurt the potency at all, and helps right at the end to get em 'cracker' dry. After they are dry, you can break em up, grind em up - whatever tickles your fancy - as their is no moisture left - the actives wont oxidize.

freezing them in air tight bags that have been filled with nitrogen will maintian their potency with no oxygen available to oxidise them

Never ever freeze fresh mushrooms - water expands when it freezes, so when you freeze the srooms and the water in them expands - it breaks all the cellular structures within the fungus. Upon defrosting, ALL of the actives are exposed to oxygen and you end up with a gooey black mess that wont do anything at all.

If you eat em before they defrost you may get away with it, but in general, just stear clear of the freezer with fresh mushrooms.

[PD.]

If you eat em before they defrost you may get away with it, but in general, just stear clear of the freezer with fresh mushrooms.

Just chuck the frozen mass into the blender along with some fruit/topping and milk, blend it all and enjoy, mushie smoothie.

but yeah, fresh is best always. and if you cant handle the taste there is a plethora of ways to hide it, just use your imagination.

[ballzac]

Next time, tell your friend to lay them on some newspaper iwith a fan blowing over them. It will take anywhere from 2 tyo 3 days to dry em completely, but the addition of a little heat wont hurt the potency at all, and helps right at the end to get em 'cracker' dry. After they are dry, you can break em up, grind em up - whatever tickles your fancy - as their is no moisture left - the actives wont oxidize.

IM(FOAFs limited)E, three days can be enough to turn good mushrooms into maggot powder. If they're chopped up roughly and then set in front of a fan, it can take as little as a couple of hours to be dry. My FOAF has found that adding even a small amount of heat will affect the potency as they age. That is, they will be potent initially, but after storing for months the ones that were dried using heat will have lost more potency than the ones dried solely with a fan. He has also found that the actual effects seem to change with the age of the mushrooms. He puts this down to possibly some alkaloids deteriorating faster than others, and therefore the less degraded ones being in higher concentration when he uses a larger amount to compensate for said deterioration. Can anyone comment on this? BTW, he finds the effects of the fresh ones to be well and truly more enjoyable, more visual and spiritual, and less dark, empty, and psychiatric.

[Hyphal]

IM(FOAFs limited)E, three days can be enough to turn good mushrooms into maggot powder. If they're chopped up roughly and then set in front of a fan, it can take as little as a couple of hours to be dry. My FOAF has found that adding even a small amount of heat will affect the potency as they age. That is, they will be potent initially, but after storing for months the ones that were dried using heat will have lost more potency than the ones dried solely with a fan. He has also found that the actual effects seem to change with the age of the mushrooms. He puts this down to possibly some alkaloids deteriorating faster than others, and therefore the less degraded ones being in higher concentration when he uses a larger amount to compensate for said deterioration. Can anyone comment on this? BTW, he finds the effects of the fresh ones to be well and truly more enjoyable, more visual and spiritual, and less dark, empty, and psychiatric.

Your obviously referring to picked fungus, not cultivated....

Even still, just the fan is enough and if you get any wild harvest mushrooms cleaned, laid out on paper and a fan blowing DIRECTLY over them, the little worms dont stand a chance. You'll actually find a pile of the dead and dried little worms leftover on the paper afterwards... (have the vacuum cleaner handy!)

Tell your friend to try this and he will see it far superior to chopping em up.

The heat debate is one that for ages my friend thought made a big difference as well, so my friend even liked to make sure the room they were drying in was cold too... bBut my friend and many others can testify that a little heat towards the end of the drying process (like 30C or so blowing from a heater, or just in a warmed room) makes no difference to the potency whatsoever and really dries em crispy dry which is beneficial in the long term for storage.

A food dehydrator runs at 35C and dries em crispy overnight (depending on the size) with no potency loss of drying in a cooler environment.

Tell your friend that once they are 'crispy' dry, to grind them to a fine powder in a coffee grinder, pour this powder into an air tight jar and compress it down. Put a silica dry pak from a medicine bottle on top, tighten the lid and keep this jar in the fridge and it should last for many moons with no potency loss.

[ballzac]

I'm sure my FOAF will take some of this advice on board, but he will probably continue to experiment and find what works best for him.

[PD.]

here is a simple setup that dries mushies in a few hours without excess heat

It has a door, a lid to control temp a bit and a gap down the bottom so a fan or small fan heater can be directed inside. Inside it has five cake cooling racks that slide in and out. The temp inside the unit is measured using a digital thermometer used for aquariums. most of the time i can get away with just using a small fan in the lounge where it is reasonably warm but other times a heater is needed. This dries the mushies out fast enough to get rid of the maggots or at least dries the mushies before they devour it.

[Hyphal]

Awesome box, my friend was planning a similar design but hes lazy and not too good with woodwork so he gave up and resorted to investing in one of these -

http://www.ezidridehydrators.com.au/

The 'Snackmaker' has three temp settings and on the lowest temp it runs at 35C. The best thing is you can make oodles of tasty dried snacks on its 'days off'...

[watertrade]

I had to make a dehydrater on the spot the other day without any chance to buy materials. I managed to find a tiny computer fan (9v .19A ) - I fitted this to a piece of cardboard with a hole in it. which sits over a clean plant pot, blowing air down into the pot and out of the drain holes. inside the plant pot the mushies are suspended on a chicken tire rack. it works pretty well, I switch it on before work then come home to dry mushrooms which go into a big plastic tub which has a damp rid container. I luckily had a 'batery replacer' from jay car that could power the fan

I will probably build something more perminant but I'm pretty happy with my '20 minute' dehydrator.

Never throw anything away!

[Green Osiris]

I'll admit I'm a myc illiterate, but have observed & read much over 12 months, and will soon be growing culinary exotics for myself.

I read often about worms, maggots etc. This surely isn't a concern with clinically-cultivated cube-forests, right ? I mean, how could anything get in ? Drying stage might be sus if one was doing 'sun-dried' without a protective screen.....

[foolsbreath]

get some damp rid or calcium carbonate, put them in a container with some damprid/calcium carbonate in a jar, they become bone dry.

IMO much better than using a dehydrator or heat. Then store in the same way as they will take moisture back up if you don't have a desicant.

Of course I only use this technique with edibles

[marsha]

air drying on window sill works nice even for fresh field for me so far then i just chop em up into lil pieces and let em dry out further they resemble little coals hehe the major advantage with dry you can get more in your tummy