Drying mushrooms with desiccant, at least 30% potency loss

[Anonymous2]

You are right although we might be talking about two cases.

When you put the seemingly dried mushroom into closed jars without desiccant, and they evaporate water from the inside and become softer, the RH should go a bit higher than how much it was when you closed the jar. Or, at least, it should stay about the same.

When the above happens, the mushrooms may rot.

The amount of water they release should be much less than it is with desiccant due to the balance of the humidity levels (air vs. mushroom).

Some pages wrote that one should not put the fresh mushrooms into the freezer, otherwise the cells get damaged.

They didn’t write it but it’s obvious the cells get damaged due to the ice crystals. It’s also one of the main problems with human hibernation and organ preservation. The ice crystals cut the cell membrane. Hello, oxidation.

On the other hand, when you put dried mushrooms into the freezer, first of all, it has much less water. It’s also possible no ice crystals will grow at all. The remaining water isn’t there alone. Most of it is inside the cells, which means, it’s a concentrated solution. It might not turn into ice crystals just like how salted water won’t get frozen at 0C degrees or even lower temperatures.

However, if instead of putting regular-dried mushroom into the freezer, you remove more water from it, then crystals may grow. They won’t be ice crystals. They will be the chemicals from the concentrated solution inside the cells.

It’s like how the salt crystals grow when you let the water evaporate from salted water.

Oh, wait, wrong forum.

It’s like how the DMT crystals grow when you let the nonpolar-solvent evaporate.

We know the psychoactive components are still inside the cells in non-extremely-dried mushrooms since the ultrasonic extraction recommends using dried mushrooms.

"Ultrasonic extraction of dried magic mushroom material works very well with ethanol or methanol as solvent. [...] Before ultrasonication, the dried mushroom material should be ground to provide a large surface area for the mass transfer between the mushroom and solvent. The ultrasonic treatment breaks the cell walls of the mushroom so that the psilocybin and psilocin molecules are released into the solvent."

https://www.hielscher.com/ultrasonic-psilocybin-extraction-from-mushrooms.htm

Back to the extreme drying, once the cells get broken, all the psilocybin and psilocin (and who knows what else) get exposed to air. Should be the cell membranes intact, it would take the oxygen many months to do its dirty evil job.

In the "extreme-drying" scenario, the initial softening happens due to the damaged cell structure as well as additional liquid released from the damaged cells. It seems like re-hydration but it is releasing water (and maybe fats) from inside the cells after the membrane gets damaged by the solid crystals. And the crystals grew because, inside the cells, the solution lost too much water.

 

[doubledog]

Yes, good points, this could be also a reason.

Structure of mushroom fruit is very airy as is and even better destruction of cell walls caused by very low humidity could create something totally not suitable for psilocybin storage.

That was always the reason we powdered well dried shrooms and store it freezed tightly packed in small glass container.

 

[Anonymous2]

I will only break the fruits into small pieces by hand instead of grinding. I’m unsure about the freezer vs. fridge.

 

[Anonymous2]

I love how this thread has gone from potential train wreck to really fascinating!

A few of you saved both the thread and my Nexus account.

 

[doubledog]

I would say that any possible reaction will be much slower in freezing temperature.

Interesting and maybe worth to try could be to freeze some fresh shrooms. I never did this but could be suitable for someone who trips at home.

 

[Anonymous2]

So either, dried shrooms are harder to fully digest, and not all the goodies are being released at once.

That’s the main reason for making mushroom tea.

The tea kicks in faster, and the trip is shorter. I’m not sure about the intensity. The peaks might have similar intensity considering my optimal doses are about the same (tea vs. dry fruits).

There was no significant difference between tea and tea plus the soaked fruits.

Maybe I’ll switch back to eating dry mushrooms. The tea trips are a bit too short.

 

[Anonymous2]

I would say that any possible reaction will be much slower in freezing temperature.

The problem isn’t what happens in the freezer but what happens when you remove the jar.

I bought 230ml jars to store the powder. One jar can hold about 50g mushroom powder when it’s about 90% full. That’s about 20 trips for me.

If I remove it from the freezer for every trip and put it back, it will get wet. The idea was to keep them in the freezer, remove one, and keep it in the fridge.

If the cells are damaged, every time one opens the jar, the psilocybin gets exposed to more oxygen.

If the cells are fine, maybe the fridge isn’t the best idea since it will also cause condensation.

 

[Anonymous2]

I ordered it:

I was wondering what if this specific model can dehydrate even non-psychoactive food? Maybe I could use it in the kitchen too. Who knows.

 

[Anonymous2]

Another thing, has your diet remained similar throughout? Were there any seasonal variations in your food intake? If this is the case, metabolic factors could certainly have played a role.

You have an excellent point here. It may be part of the answer.

For years, I ate no dairy as I was on the paleo diet. Recently, I started eating more and more cheese. In the last few weeks, I ate it every day.

I was wondering about the following:

1. One should not eat cheese on MAOI because their body might have difficulties with digesting tyramine.
2. MAOI extends the length and the intensity of the mushroom trips.

What if after I start eating more and more cheese (without MAOI), my body starts producing more and more monoamine oxidase enzymes?

The funny fact is I started eating cheese when I started tripping because every time I took MAOI (for pharma), I desired cheese. I ate it a few hours a trip ended. Slowly, eating cheese became part of my daily life. Earlier, I didn’t touch dairy for years.

It doesn’t make sense that I can trip every second day for months, taking the same amount of mushrooms, and after 60-70 trips, it changes out of the blue.

As for testing, I haven’t taken "normal" B+ mushrooms for a while since I ruined most of my dried mushrooms with the desiccant. I will do it soon. Meanwhile, I suspect eating cheese every day might have played a role.

 

[Anonymous2]

The dehydrator is amazing. I mean, it can do it in four hours that used to take me a week.

The result still must be tested.

Lately, I exceeded my every other day method. Patience isn’t one of my best virtues. Five of seven days were mushroom days.

So, the test tonight won’t be scientific. I’ll do it only for the sake of the Nexus and to practice altruism.

 

[Anonymous2]

I’m alive. I haven’t finished opening my moving boxes.

It seems the "naturally dried" (N) mushrooms are more potent than the other methods I’ve tried so far. (Naturally dried means room temperature, room humidity, weeks.)

Although I’m not yet sure since it requires a lot of testing and the same interval between the trips, I’m getting more confident.

I labeled a lot of jars with the name of the variety and the method (dehydrator, desiccant, natural). I couldn’t trip every second day due to the move but I took mushrooms every time when I ran out of storage space. What else could I do?

If I also consider that a high percentage of the weight of the N mushrooms is water, then I’m 99% sure they are more potent. But even without the math, I need a smaller amount (less weight) of the N mushrooms for a more intense trip.

It may explain why I could have intense trips with 1.5 - 2 grams of mushrooms. So far, I couldn’t achieve the same intensity with a similar amount of dehydrated or desiccant-dried mushrooms. However, yesterday, 2.5G mushroom with the label "B+0 N" put me on a trip that started with an intense vaped DMT-like experience.

It doesn’t mean I’ll use the N method in the future. Reasons:

1. Storage space
2. Drying space

Since I can’t grind or smash them, they can take up 3-5 times more space than the dehydrated mushrooms. Maybe I could solve that with a blender, but the mushrooms fill up the room during the drying process as soon as I have more than one or two monotubs.

Even if there is a loss of potency, I can pile up a lot of mushrooms as soon as I use the dehydrator. It boils down to two weeks vs. six hours drying.

Who needs a grinder? Return to the source.

 

[downwardsfromzero]

So, you've tested the mushrooms as dried in the food dehydrator? Did you explicitly state this and I'm being clueless again?

I see this:

It seems the "naturally dried" (N) mushrooms are more potent than the other methods I’ve tried so far. (Naturally dried means room temperature, room humidity, weeks.)

But in the preceding post, this:

The dehydrator is amazing. I mean, it can do it in four hours that used to take me a week.

The result still must be tested.

The sum of these statements I cannot definitively interpret to mean that you've tested mushrooms dried in the dehydrator.

Hope you're settling in nicely in your new home.

 

[Anonymous2]

So, you've tested the mushrooms as dried in the food dehydrator? Did you explicitly state this and I'm being clueless again?
Hope you're settling in nicely in your new home.

Thank you for the wish. I’ll post about the new home as soon as I finished opening the boxes.

As for the drying, maybe it was confusing what I wrote.

For many months, I used to dry mushrooms on room temperature. They were super potent. I used to have a trip every second day.

Later, I tried to use the desiccant on the already dried mushrooms, and I opened this thread.

Following advice from here and from shroomery, I bought a dehydrator too.

After the discussion, I labeled my mushrooms with N ("natural", dried on air), E (dEsiccant used on mushrooms dried with N first), and D (dehydrator right after the harvest).

Now I have about a dozen jars with a few mushroom varieties and different drying methods.

At the moment, I believe that the N method leads to the most potent yield. However, it doesn’t mean it’s the best method.

When I moved to the new apartment, it took me more than an hour only to collect the mushrooms I was drying on the air. They took all the space in the mushroom room. If I put them closer to each other, they could get rotten.

If we consider only the potency of the result, then the N method might be the best.

As soon as you want to store them, the dehydrator might be better, because you can produce a larger amount of dried mushrooms in a shorter time, and you can store them in fewer jars.

In other words, if I would grow mushrooms only on a few PF cakes, I would go for the N. If it’s only a few mushrooms, potency matters a lot. Since I want to pile up enough mushrooms for a year, it’s better to produce a bit more mushrooms (method D) than I would need with method N since I can do it faster.

What’s left is a few more comparisons between method N and D, and a lot of comparison between various temperatures of the dehydrator.

I should use a single strain for all the comparisons. Also, it’s not always easy to compare the intensity of the trip because a scary trip might seem more intense than an easy one. Also, metabolism, vitamins, and who knows what can affect the trip.

I try to compare the closed-eyed visuals, the open-eyed visuals, and the amount of the "content" of the trip.

So far, I used the dehydrator about 65-70 C degrees. Someone wrote it on shroomery that the high temperature destroys an enzyme that would damage the psilocybin.

 

[Roboto]

So far, I used the dehydrator about 65-70 C degrees. Someone wrote it on shroomery that the high temperature destroys an enzyme that would damage the psilocybin.

The dehydrator I use has no heat setting but runs at around 71c and have detected no drop in potency. I've heard the same about potency, but in my experience it really doesn't effect it at all... As far as i can tell anyway.