the mushroom goddess blessed SWIM and some friends over the weekend. SWIM went out to a patch and found more mushrooms than could be picked... SWIM was astounded... never seen so many shrooms!

...it makes SWIM very happy to be smiled upon by the mushroom spirit as SWIM only found a few handfull's last season

anyway

As SWIM currently has more mushrooms than he knows what to do with (actually SWIM can probably think of many things to do with them) he was wondering if anyone can recommend the best procedure for drying and storing our beloved mushrooms.

SWIM doesnt have a food dehydrator but would consider getting one...

time is not an issue as SWIM is happy to wait for as long as needed.

would also be good to know the best way to preserve them in honey or similar

cheers

First step is to pre-dry with a fan.. start this quick, before they start getting rotten... Put them in some sort of basket or metal-grid kind of thing where there are wholes for air to pass through and any water to fall away. Then attach a fan so that the air is blowing full-power on the shrooms.. Leave this for a couple of days, the shrooms will get quite dry.

But what you want is to get it cracker dry.. So one can try to put it on a plate open in the fridge (but be careful, some fridges dont make things dry but wet them instead! make sure your dries stuff). Or finalize the drying by putting in a closed container with some Calcium Chloride (not touching the shrooms) or silica gel.

When its dry, you can just vacuum seal in a plastic bag and in your drawer (with little silica gel packet inside is always good) and it keeps very well. If you dont have vacuum seal, put in a plastic and carefully burn the opened part and press so that it seals. Or you can put the dry mushrooms in honey.. Or you can grind them, melt some chocolate bars, mix, put in a form and into the fridge, and have some nice shroom chocolates.

Try to weigh the shrooms before putting them in honey or chocolate so that you have an idea of the dosages.

When SWIM had enough shrooms, he used to make a little bit of all these methods above and have different mushroom products to enjoy and share

enjoy

Be aware that if you preserve your mushrooms in an acidic solution, such as honey, the Psilocybin will dephosphorylate to Psilocin. This will make the come-up a bit faster, the peak some higher, and the overall duration shorter. Some people, including me, likes the body effects of Psilocybin - if you are one of them, you should not store your mushrooms in an acidic environment.

2 words SODIUM SILCATE..The little packs that say "Do Not Eat!!" They come in your new sneakers, jerky...alot of other things too..
Just dont lett it touch the shrooms, seperate them with a screen, store in tupper ware. Takes lil bit but very efficient!

swim air dryes his first - then places them on some mesh in the oven - set to like 50 degrees c - with a power supply fan directly on them - leaves this for a good period of time - a number of hours - with fat solid ones - this should be done very slowly - at the end when they are all nice and dry - stick em in a box with some silica gel - thatl get em cracker dry in a few hours.

we all know that heat damages mu - so keep the temp low low.
no drop in potency at all has been noticed usig this tek

if you dont wana use the oven - air dry - followed by silica jel works well but ur silica will get wet fast - this is how swim used to do it but after trying the oven method theres no going back.

silica jel is available as a kitty litter tray substrate.

Yes, you can air dry them first if you want to, but it's not required. Get yourself some good dessicant (drying agent) from a chem supply or someplace like that. I personally like the DryRight brand, it's color indicative when it's saturated and it can be reused by re-drying it in the oven. Lay the little space critters (mushrooms) on a screen of some sort above the dessicant (just and inch or two above) and store inside a closed plastic bag like a garbage bag, and zip tie the top closed. NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO, DO NOT USE ANY AMOUNT OF HEAT TO DRY THEM OR YOU WILL MOST CERTAINLY LOSE POTENCY!!

Make sure you dry them until they are hard and brittle. You should not be able to squeeze the stems, they should be nearly rock hard. If they are very wet you might need to change out the dessicant to get them completely dry, hence why folks suggest to air dry first.

To store them just put them in bags (I like to use cellophane bags that are just folded over and stapled or taped shut (the cellophane is just prettier, and a bit structurally tougher than plastic). The bag doesn't need to be air tight. Then you want to put some fresh dessicant (an inch or two) in the bottom of large canning (mason) jar (quart size or bigger), add your bags of shrooms (not too tightly packed). Screw the lid of the jar on tight and store your dried mushrooms & dessicant jar in the freezer.

If you use this method I have described you're mushrooms will lose zero potency, and you can literally store them like this for YEARS. I forgot about a stash I had that was stored in my basement freezer and found it 3 years later. The shrooms were as potent as the day I harvested them when I partook in their magic.

It's a bit more work this way, but it is sooooooo worth it! You wont regret spending the extra time.

Enjoy them! They gots ta be one of my faves, that's for sure!!

Peace
-idt

"NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO, DO NOT USE ANY AMOUNT OF HEAT TO DRY THEM OR YOU WILL MOST CERTAINLY LOSE POTENCY!!"

thats flatout not true at all - swim had always thought this too and proved himself 100% wrong
air drying is also not required - but it knocks a lot of time off the drying and a lot of stress off ur dessicant

i guess if ppl are drying small amounts - like less than 50g wet going streight with dessicant is fine but if ur harvesting from a standard small casing (100-200g wet) air drying is required.
swim tested this - 200g wet fungus over 1kg of dessicant - after 2 days it was still moist - the others that had been air dryed then went to dessican were allready bone bone dry.

keeping a lil dessicant pouch in the bankie with the mu is a good idea.
if there is no pouch and the bag is left open they will go soft within 30mins where swim stays.

Perhaps your are right on the heat. It's just a rule that I always use.

And yes. Air drying first is definitely preferable as far as dessicant saturation goes. I was just stating that it's not absolutely required.

Thanks for calling me out Phlux!

excellent to see that u took it well - swims just had a few larger loads of late that has changed his tek for drying mu - all teks that work beg to be shared - for a long time i harboured the belief that the minimal amount of heat would damage the mu - swim still keeps the oven cooler than most others and keeps the fan directly on them at all times - they are never warm to the touch.
swim has a cat so after things get dried on dessicant the silica jel goes in the cats tray - he's never needed to dry the dessicant - if he wanted to dry it - what is the best way to do so ? bake in the oven ? at what temp for how long ?

Well, not all dessicant is dryable, or reusable (i.e. I don't think silica gel is) The stuff I use is called Dry Right, ir Dry Rite or something. I'd go look at the jar, but I'm too lazy. It turns pink when it's saturated and blue when it's dry. To dry it you just put it in a 200 - 300 degree (F) oven, in a single layer, on a tray, and it becomes dry (blue again) after about 40min to an hour. The instruction come right with the jar. It's great suff.

I've done hundreds of drying phases with the the same jar. I have this nifty little drying chamber that I made out of the trays from one of those modular food dehydrators. I just layer the trays. The bottom one with dessicant, next with MUs, next with dessicant, etc. I obviously line the ones for dessicant with foil or something, so the rocks don't fall through the slits, but you get the idea. I can usually get several dried ounces with one "drying stack". Wrapping it in a plastic garbage bag makes sure that your dessicant doesn't pull water from the air in the room, so there is much more dessicant avail. for the little buddies.

Sorry for the typos, I'm falling asleep!

Peace
-idt

SWIM drys them with fan/metal screen til they are 90%+ dry, then swiches over to his homemade desicant chamber to dry the remainder. They are stored in a sealed/light proof container that has this dessicant box that SWIM bought from his local hardware store. SWIM then stores them in his basement where its cool.

Cracker dry, and VERY potent

SWIM just leaves them on a plate, folded between paper towels, on top of a high cabinet for less than a week, and they dry nicely.

if one has a food dehydrator..
how would one go about utilization of said instrumentation...
on screen at 90-115F?...

I always drie my Lib caps on a radiator, probably at around 50-60°C. I can't explain better how I do it without taking photos of my radiator but it has always worked perfect for me, does not affect potency and takes only few hours. (But I usually leave them over night.) I used other methods back in the days but since I discovered the method I used today, I haven't done it differently. For me the perfect way And I've dried probably over a kilo of dried Lib caps using this methood.

Liberty caps are small so they dry fast.

yes it is, depending on the mushroom.

heat degrades psilocin, the more visual compound. there exists a paper, by Gartz I believe, which quantitatively shows the % psilocin in pan.cyanescens significantly decreasing at 2, 3, and 10 deg. above room temp (25C).
swim knows this first hand, having picked a bunch of panaeolus cyanescens a few years back and drying them in the oven on lowest heat. he ate 3g (it should've kicked his @$$) and got nothing more than a body buzz.

one may get away with heat drying libs, because they're high in psilocybin and negligible in psilocin.

swim fan dries mostly, then vac desiccates with calcium sulfate (drierite) @ 100 torr.

same way swims deal with acetone - Magnesium Sulphate. Epsom Salts dehydrated in the oven. Then let sit on the bottom of a container with mushies on top of it but not touching the salts, all in a closed container.

Always have put them in a box with a fan clipped on and blowing in, never any real losses. Takes a few days. If there are lots in there then shake em around every several hours. The trick is to have patience until they make a snap sound when you break it.

hmm it would seem psilocin loss to some extent is inevitable..

this is slightly off topic but what if rather then dry the mushrooms one were to blend fresh shrooms in orange juice (maybe with added ascorbic acid) would this preserve the psilocin at its peak level? would this orange juice have a chance of going bad? like molding? would one want to add an amount of alcohol to prevent this? ... im just thinking of what id like to do as it would be for personal use.. and i want the most out of em.

If you wanted you could leave an 1/8th of cubes under your bed for a year and they would still work just perfect. The losses of potency that are always talked about would be interesting to someone studying the contents in a lab but it would have no meaning to someone who was consuming them. Loss from drying is really negligible. Mckenna suggested powdering weighed amounts and packing them tight into bags and packing those tight into a mason jar and freezing it and this way they would keep until doomsday.

the idea of a jug of super potent shroom juice fills me with excitement...and an odd taste in my mouth