Hello fellow seekers!

This may be kind of a silly question but:

Do mushrooms hold their potency better when dried quickly with a dehydrator, or more gradually by air dry on a rack or something?

I am aware that when drying herbs, you don't want to use a dehydrator because the herb loses it's potency and much of its fragrance. Drying vegetables such as hot peppers with a dehydrator doesn't seem to effect the level of heat much. Does the same apply to mushrooms?

Thanks,

-SM

Hey SM,

When I first started growing mushrooms, I always dried them with a screen and fan setup until cracker dry. No problems there. I eventually moved on to using a dehydrator, and while it may be anecdotal, I haven't noticed any loss in potency while using it.

My lowest setting on the dehydrator is 95F. I usually dry my mushrooms between 95-105F and it takes a couple days to dry fully depending on how many mushrooms I'm trying to do at once. You could probably get away with using more heat, but I try to play it safe. In fact, my first cheap dehydrator didn't have any temperature controls, so I have no idea how hot that operated. Still, the mushrooms came out fine.

As I mentioned a few minutes ago in a truffle thread, after dehydrating, I place my cubes into a vacuum sealed bag with a food safe oxygen absorber, then into the freezer. This may be a bit of overkill, but I never understood why that is a bad thing, you know? We spend a couple months cultivating to receive a wonderful gift from mother nature so it only makes sense to protect that gift as much as possible until consumption, IMHO.

I wish there was a way to keep fresh mushrooms fresh though...I love a solid dose of some fresh mush!

Awesome, thanks for the reply TGO! I've only eaten a couple fresh ones but I can only imagine how it must impact the experience. I just love the little guys

Dehydrator at 35-40 C (95-105 F) and no problems with potency loss. The only case when I encountered potency loss was when I cut shrooms too finely - but cannot say for sure.

One person in my country does a research on potency loss in mushrooms depending on drying method. They test plain air drying, warm air drying (food dehydrator) and lyophilization (freeze drying).

The state-of-the-art method is probably to deep freeze the freshly picked shrooms (e.g. in a dry ice - this will freeze the water without making crystals / breaking cell structure and stops enzymatic reactions), then freeze-dry them. Unfortunately, freeze dryers are still an expensive option for a home cultivator unless you can build your own (using vacuum pump, vacuum chamber and a cold trap).

OMG what, you can freeze em without bursting cells ? This turns me on a bit / lot.

30+ degrees is good in a small insulated box or bag (food/picnic box for day trips), heat mat and fan inside too. EDIT: Mat is connected to a thermostat also! Works very well. Then to the box of oven dehydrated Epsom salt. A net bag from some tangerines or a split open dish cloth will keep them from touching it. They were nice and potent

I think drying them rapidly is very important because they'll otherwise begin to rot. Dehydrators should be fine so long as the setting is low. I only split big monstrous fatties that will take too long.

Yeah, some damage is always done by freezing water but at least the flash freeze does not allow large water crystals to form - these are sharp and pinch the cell walls.



Good idea about the heat mat + fan.

I use 35 C for 11 hours but sometimes 40 C and over 12 hours is needed when the weather is cold and humid.

When dried, I put them in a vacuum sealed box with a bed of silicagel (crystal cat litter). It can suck a few extra grams of water.

The only problem I have are that the stems are never cracker dry until I pre-cut them in half. They bend like a piece of rubber and micro-droplets of water appear when squeezed very hard even after several hours of drying.