SWIM is putting together a soxhlet system and is very excited by the possibilities. One potential extraction he'd like to try is the extraction of psilocybin from the mycelium of psilocybe cubensis. SWIM's FOAF is growing them and would gladly donate old mycelium cakes after about their third flush. SWIM has a few questions.

How potent is the mycelium? Of course much of the weight would be the growing media, but would this have a reasonable yield?

How long (or how many soxhlet cycles / siphons) would it take to get the great majority of psilocybin into the ethanol? SWIM is using a 1000mL soxhlet and a 1200W hotplate if that makes a difference.

Would the next step be to basify and extract with a non-polar solvent? Or upon cooling would pure psilocybin fall out of solution, to be decanted and filtered?

Would it be reasonable to then make a salt of the psilcybin? Fumarate or HCl would be most easily accomplishable for SWIM. Or is this unnecessary because psilocybin is fairly stable?

Is there any thing else SWIM should be aware of? Or any bright ideas that could be added?

SWIM's heard of people pulling tea from the PF-cakes so that should be feasable.

Wow was it really July when I first started thinking about this? Well anyway I've begun. I've taken some pics and will take more and share them.

All I'll say right now is that it is a very simple task to produce crystals. How pure they are remains to be seen. Separating them from the ethanol is somewhat difficult. Despite trying to very slowly reduce the temp the crystals are still tiny. I plan to dissolve them in water evaporate because most of the crystals I have are stuck to the inside of a flask right now.

Now some questions that hopefully the wonderful nexus crew can help sort out for me.

Would it be advisable to use the water step as an opportunity to convert them to HCl, or should I leave them as they come from the fungi? My thought is that if they are HCl they could easily be washed with dry acetone, no? Or, would the HCl convert the psilocybin to psilocin HCl?

SWIM has actually done this same experiment a couple times.

word of advice: use ground fruits.
myc cakes are not particularly high in alkaloid content, it would require quite a bit to get anything useful, more than the soxhlet can hold.

Well I have a larger soxhlet. I can easily get two or three cakes in there at a time. And, yeah the yields would be better with the fruit, but I'm getting cakes for free from a friend. If i had the shrooms, I'd just eat them. My only expense is the everclear and i'm reclaiming most of that. So the way I see it is it's free psilocybin .

get a spore syringe, and a couple jars come on...

Don't risk your ass "manufacturing" microdoses of psilocyban.

Remember if you get caught with a cake they weigh the whole cake and charge you for X grams of "psilocyban".

SWIY will likely be disappointed with yields from myc cakes
ethanolic extractions are not selective for alkaloids, they will also pull proteins and carbohydrates.

If you're lucky it would end up a possession charge for that amount. More likely it would be prosecuted as cultivation or in this case manufacturing, which is quite a big deal.

As much as i dont understand it this website which has the simple tek on extracting from mushrooms has an example of some one extracting from cakes as well.

http://deoxy.org/wiki/Mu...ooms/Alkaloid_Extraction

It makes no sense to me really but i don't see why some one would just all out lie about it? But then again maybe they would! I still need to try this but would be very disappointed to get nothing... but if really want to go without the hassle of growing actual mushrooms grow truffles.

sclerotia can be grown completley in a jar, with very little worry about contams in comparison and extracting AND growing them would be very effort free.

If I were you, I would think about doing liquid mycelial cultures and extracting those.

one would need to separate the sugars from the alkaloids

does LC have significant alkaloidal content?
i know it's a great method of culture expansion

You guys are way too negative, anyone can grow shrooms but how many people have successfully extracted alkaloids from the mycelium? Very few, so I'd love to hear more of shakti's results and a bit more detail on yields and purification steps. There has to be a good use for spent cakes psilocybin is very potent so even a small yield would be worth while.

I made tea from a cake that had been sitting for a while without fruiting . All I can say is wow they can be very potent.