be careful while drying your mushrooms, get them cracking because the extra moist left in those fruits can lead to dangerous molds.

you should get your dehydrator at 95 f for 24h straight and check if they are cracker-dry. that means, if it "cracks" when you bend it.

Ok thank you!! Ill put my first batch back in later then into the dehydrator.

Putting them back into the dehydrator wont be bad for them right? Is it possible to "overdry" them? Like lets say I keep them in the dehydrator for 24 hours but they end up fully drying at hour 10. Will they be weakened at 90 degrees of drying?

I believe a part of the actives oxidize during the drying process. For long term storage at room tepm, getting them cracker dry is highly advisable. I have lost batches to weird mold before. I personally would not overdry them, but have no hard data to back that advice up. But the less exposure to heat and air the better i would assume.

Oh crisp mushrooms also have the advantages of beeing very easy to process with your favourite weed grinder. Quick & easy powder to use for lemon tekking

actives may start to decompose/break down at some point because of the heat. i think that drying with a fan at room temperature is a good way to make sure this doesn't happen. however it may lack a proper "cracker" dehydration and leave moist in the fruits that could lead to serious, nasty molds.
anyway, from what i know, if you don't push your heat up the 250-300 f's (which your dehydrator won't probably even reach) there should be no major losses regarding potency.

Ok it was only 90 degrees and I only had my first batch in for 24 hours on low and the third batch has been in there for maybe 12 hours. So Ill see if the third batch is cracker dry after only 12

I have a question also on storage.

I DEFINITELY let all of them get cracker dry out of the dehydrator. They were so brittle that if I tried bending a stem it would just crack off, I put them into a glass mason jar with a dessicant pack I found in a luggage bag, I took the silica gel packet and suspended it in a coffee filter that I cut slits into to let the pack hang above the dried shrooms.

After a few hours in the glass jar, theyre still dry...but theyre not AS brittle as they were when they came out of the dehydrator. Its like theyre a little bendy, but still dry.

Is this normal for stored shrooms to get a little bendy/flexy after theyre stored even if they were 100% cracker dry at first?

Is it possible that the dessicant pack from the luggage case is actually hydrating the air in the jar causing the shrooms to get soft? Should I remove the dessicant pack?

if they're cracker dry then they're good. no need for desiccant after that point.

i also use a dehydrator, 105 degrees for 6-8 hrs.

Awesome, I took the dessicant out. I found that some of my really big ones needed a pretty significant time longer than the smaller ones.


Let me ask this, something I was curious about.

Lets say 1 mushroom grows big and when dried weighs 2g by itself.
Would 10 smaller shrooms totalling to 2g dried be more potent than the one big shroom of equal weight? Or is every situation far too variable to quantify a measurement like that?

Yea you answered your own question. It's often noticed that 2 grams of dried smaller shrooms is a bit stronger than a 2 gram single shroom, but it's also often noticed the complete opposite of that.

The differences are negligible and variable enough that i usually just consider them equal.

Just figured I would post an update! Everything is going very well so far, flush two was just completed and the cakes are all blank again and I am awaiting flush 3. One cake in particular had some spores drop onto it and it seems to be struggling a little, it doesnt look like its pinning at all but the spores only hit an area of the cake taking up no more than Id say 3-5% of the surface area of it.

Temps, humidity and FAE are all good. I wonder why the spore'd cake is not pinning any more. Do spores do something to the cakes?

the cake is just running out, keep it for a few more days and maybe a couple of those mushies will pop up. the spores have nothing to do with that, the worst they can do is when they cover other already grown fruits below, leaving them really bitter taste wise.

Yes, it has nothing to do with the spores...

Congratulations, isn't it always wonderful to watch them grow!

About long term preservation: first, I dry them in air (often using my computer's exhaust as a fan), and then they go into jars with calcium chloride. Inside that jar it's drier than in the Atacama desert, which is very helpful in this moist climate - they always go from slightly bendy to cracker-dry. Total mummification

Maybe your silica gel was already saturated with moisture?? I never experienced this softening of the mushroom tissue with fresh CaCl2.

Anyway, good luck with them!

Ya thats what Im thinking, I jsut find it odd because they really are a little soft. Not cracker dry any longer. Still dry, but not bone dry.

Superb, great to see your project from start to finish.

Enjoy

Thank you infinity! Im very greatful for your and everyones help along the way.

I have a question, how is it that the most towering and large shrooms get spores on top of their caps?? I could understand spores dropping to the caps under them, but my tallest guys also have some dense spores on the top of their caps

i'd say the spores just floated up those caps.i mean, you have an enviornment built to allow currents of air to come in and out, these spores are microscopic beings, would be easy for them to catch a small breeze and do their purpouse - to spread around

Thats what I thought, figured it was really the only way. Its just...really dense on some of them hahah. Crazy!

do not wash those mushrooms with water, if you want to clean them just wipe it up the best you can. water breaks potency

I did not know that, but I did just lightly brush them off best I could with a paper towel.

Aside from bitterness, is there any reason I shouldnt just leave them be?

i would say its only worth purchasing the grow packs if you cant get hold of a pressure cooker as you will need one and there quite expensive, also the boxes will give you enough to play around with if its not something you want to do more of in the future, but you will

i prefer wbs tek(WBS = wild bird seed)
its easy enough and a few super simple steps will guarantee good clean colonization near on every time without need for hepa filters or glove boxes

as for buying supplies there's only a couple things you need spores are easy to find all over the web everything it totally legal things like wild bird seed, straw like animal bedding, coffee filters and some decent silicone all costs near nothing though spores can run between 2 and 20 pounds depending on who has them in and how many are about at the time

i dont want to say to much as i am unsure on the rules for talking about mushrooms on this forum but if you search WBS tek im sure a shroomery link will appear.