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Preservation of mushrooms

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paperjack

paperjack

Rising Star
Hi all,

This stems from a discussion in the chat - everyone used different methods of preserving their mushrooms, what do you guys think is best?

Methods so far:
1) Drying and placing in a jar
2) Drying and freezing
3) Direct freezing
4) Pickling (untested, my idea :D)
5) Drying, vacuuming and freezing
6) Placing in various solutions (ex. honey, alcohol)
7) Encasing in gelatine

Protips: After drying, make sure to add dessicant bag together with the mushrooms.

Any better ideas? Which one is best?
 
I like to:

Make cracker dry, vacuum seal, and freeze. I use one of those small, handheld vacuum sealers with the bags that you can open and then reseal over and over! It has always worked very well for preservation!
 
Best in terms of lasting the longest ? Store with desiccant in an airtight container, as cold and dark as possible.

Jelly should work too, and it's real easy to get down big globs of the stuff. You could just make a simple hot tea, filter and mix that with your jelly cubes . Probably not the best idea for long term storage though.
 
I have kept shrooms over a year(s) room temps from 60-80, in a ziplock, in a dark spot with a bag of dessicant from like shoes,and only had to eat a half gram more at one time.

I wouldn't suggest this though,a better way would be to vac seal and freezer. Prepare individual doses so you don't thaw out whole bag from dipping in every once in a while.

Mushrooms are not meant to be stored for long enough that you should worry to much. Kept at any from moisture and heat the shrooms may get stale but should not rot or lose to much potency over five years or so. More than that, learn to grow...haha
 
Simply drying until crispy and then sealing is not enough. You must seal in a dessicant bag together with the mushrooms or else they might still go soft and spoil in storage. When mushrooms are first dried to a crisp, they can still contain appreciable amounts of moisture inside the cells, enough to activate the enzymes that catalyze decay.

A glass jar seals much better than a ziplock baggy, both in terms of oxygen and moisture.

Cold temperatures are more important for preservation than darkness, but don't put them in sunlight nevertheless.
 
I've had some philosophers stones that are good after 2.5 years vac sealed and kept inside a moisture barrier bag with dessicant at an avg temp of 75F.

If you have a bunch get an ammo box from an army surplus store. They are built to keep out light and moisture. People use them often as humidors for cigars :p
 
Did anyone mention drying, powdering, encapsulating, loading into dark glass bottle, and storing in the freezer? That's what I was planning on doing, as soon as I actually get something to work with. :)

Should be pretty safe, and allow easy dosing straight from the freezer. (Dosage having been standardized in the powdering stage.)
 
(For cubes) Dry, then steam briefly to inactivate enzymes, then dry again before vacuum sealing or whatever of the other methods one might choose.

When simply dried, P. cubensis lose potency worse than P. cyanescens, P.semilanceata keeps very well; P. ovoideocystidiata also appears to keep well.
 
downwardsfromzero said:
(For cubes) Dry, then steam briefly to inactivate enzymes, then dry again before vacuum sealing or whatever of the other methods one might choose.

When simply dried, P. cubensis lose potency worse than P. cyanescens, P.semilanceata keeps very well; P. ovoideocystidiata also appears to keep well.
Click to expand...

Nevermind, I misread. Do you have anyway to demonstrate steaming being beneficial to alkaloid preservation, and it's advantages over vacuum sealing?

Vac sealing seems to do a well enough job by itself with negligible potency loss.
 
1ce said:
downwardsfromzero said:
(For cubes) Dry, then steam briefly to inactivate enzymes, then dry again before vacuum sealing or whatever of the other methods one might choose.

When simply dried, P. cubensis lose potency worse than P. cyanescens, P.semilanceata keeps very well; P. ovoideocystidiata also appears to keep well.
Click to expand...

Nevermind, I misread. Do you have anyway to demonstrate steaming being beneficial to alkaloid preservation, and it's advantages over vacuum sealing?
Click to expand...
It's part of the 69ron lore. See this thread.

He doesn't state what psilocybe species he steam-preserved. This may be relevant though. In my experience, semilanceatas quickly lose half their potency if not well-preserved. Semilanceatas contain half psilocybin, half psilocin. Cubensis on the other hand generally contains very little psilocybin and spoils almost completely if not preserved cautiously.

Sadly, 69ron doesn't come here anymore to detail his methods, so anyone interested will have to experiment from scratch.
 
Powdered and mixed with honey is one way.
It lasts Indefinitely. I made some over 5 years ago that's still effective to this day.
But cracker dry is the key no matter what you do with them .
 
1ce said:
[...] Do you have anyway to demonstrate steaming being beneficial to alkaloid preservation, and its advantages over vacuum sealing?
Click to expand...
If one is willing to sacrifice a few mushrooms, it would be relatively easy to steam some and not others. I'm thinking cubensis here, as they do degrade quickly and significantly if not stored properly.

Obviously, to overcome possible variance in alkaloid content one could split each and every mushroom in half and steam only one half. There would have to be a working assumption of a reasonably even radial distribution of alkaloid throughout any given carpophore.

Vac sealing seems to do a well enough job by itself with negligible potency loss.
Click to expand...
It's more for people who don't have access to vacuum sealing, for whatever reason.

...what Felnik said ^
 
Up to this point I have never taken that much care in storing my dried mushrooms.
I have dried the mushrooms gradually over two or three days by laying them out on a shelf on absorbent paper. After they are properly dried I have simply stored them in a big ziploc bag and stored that at room temperature in a box. A sealed jar with some dessicant would already be far better, I imagine.
I find that even when drying/storing the mushrooms this crudely, they are still good after over a year, but after that year I have noticed a definite loss of potency (3.2g being more like 2.5 or so).
I usually do one grow per year, and my mushrooms last me yearlong inbetween grows no problem.

That said, I am going to invest in a cheap food dehydrator soon, which should work much faster, resulting in less potency loss during the drying process. I would also like to get a vacuum sealer, as I really like the idea of storing vacuum sealed premeasured doses in the freezer.

Have thought of grinding them up when cracker-dry and encapsulating the powder as well, seems like a great way to save some space in the freezer, and also to allow for easy dose measuring. I might try this somewhere down the road, but for the time I'm going with vacpacking whole dried mushrooms.

Another way would be to grind them up to powder and making chocolates, if that is your thing :)

I think regardless of drying/storage methods, properly dried mushrooms last a mighty long time without too much potency loss. Of course, taking great care will preserve potency far longer than a year, which is fantastic :thumb_up:
 
I cracker dried mine, then put them into a very tightly packed small mason jar. I did not put a dessicant packet because I found that when I tried that with one jar, it was almsot like the moisture pulled by the packet softened my dried mushrooms, so I threw them back on the dehydrator for a bit to redry them at low temp and then restored them without the packet.

Im a little timid to try a packet again, theyve since remained perfect for about 6 months now.

Anyone else experience that?
 
Straight after picking the mushrooms i dry them with a food dehydrator on the lowest temperature setting, although a simple fan blowing on them will also work. Then i store the mushrooms in airtight glass jars with a caclium chloride based/foodgrade desiccant sachet, checking the sachets once every few weeks to see if they need replacing (they turn to a gel).
It's very important to use desiccant to get them cracker dry or you risk losing them in the long run.

After drying i think using desiccant, vacuum sealing, then storing in the freezer would be ideal as you get all the oxygen out and also keep the temperature nice and low, i did this for years until i switched to glass jars as a preference, this always worked great as even after 5+ years the mushrooms were as potent as ever.

pitubo said:
In my experience, semilanceatas quickly lose half their potency if not well-preserved. Semilanceatas contain half psilocybin, half psilocin. Cubensis on the other hand generally contains very little psilocybin and spoils almost completely if not preserved cautiously.
Click to expand...

Semilanceata actually contain very little psilocin and most cubensis are around half psilocybin half psilocin. I've also noticed very little potency loss with liberty caps left at room temp in an open container/in a cupboard for ~3 years, although i wouldn't recommend that method of storage of course.

Average Psilocybin/Psilocin content of various Psilocybe mushrooms
 
Along with Swarupa and HumbleTraveler, I have been keeping my medicine by immediately putting the fruits in a food dehydrator for a while, then transferring to plastic container which holds them above a bed of CaCl, and from there they go in glass jars.
They have always kept very well, although my friends or I tend to eat them before they get years old or anything.

Also it seems somewhat important to get them dry as soon as they're picked, don't let them sit around for a few hours. They become somewhat desiccated and sad looking, like they're losing potency, and I think they are... you want to catch them in their prime 😉

I like the idea of having a CaCl pack in with the jar, after siting in the desiccant box for a few days. At that point they're as dry as they're going to get, and the extra pack is just picking up moisture from the introduced air when you're opening the jars.

HumbleTraveler, I have seen my CaCl in my desiccant box turning to a mooshy salt puddle, it's because CaCl is so hygroscopic it can continue pulling water out of the air until it's completely saturated and dissolves in it. Although on the other hand I've had no potency problem with simply food dehydrating and jarring them.
One thing... When they're really cracker dry and just crumble into dust in your mouth I feel it's a lot easier for your digestive tract than when you have slightly moist ones, it's more like ripping apart fungus fiber with your molars, which results in bigger pieces.
 
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