If you don’t store magic mushrooms correctly, they become susceptible to bacteria and mold. And even if they don’t perish, their active components break down over time. Consequently, your shroom’s potency will decline as well.
Protecting your mushrooms long-term and maintaining their potency are tricky tasks. It’d help if you learned how to do it right, and we’re here to help you do just that. Here’s a complete guide on storing both fresh and dried magic mushrooms and truffles.
Storing Fresh Mushrooms
If they’re not treated right, shrooms and truffles are bound to lose their properties, including potency. Every mushroom lover can agree that there’s nothing worse than that. Suppose that you’re getting ready to blast off on a psychedelic journey.
But you realize the spacecraft (shroom) has some unappetizing mold sprouting all over it. We plan to help you prevent this by telling you how to store magic mushrooms and truffles.
Shrooms; What Are They?
“Magic mushrooms,” sometimes called “hallucinogenic mushrooms” or “shrooms,” contain the psychedelic, psychoactive compound psilocybin. After ingestion, the body converts the psychedelic compound (psilocybin) into the active form of psilocin.
Many people wrongly assume that any random mushroom grown in the woods can have psychedelic effects. However, that’s far from the truth. Avoid picking mushrooms in the wild if you don’t have experience. It’s risky, and there have been cases of poisoning where people ate toxic mushrooms by mistake. You can also confuse toxic ones with edibles.
How To Recognize Shrooms
Fresh magic mushrooms look like dried ordinary ones. They have long, slender, whitish-gray stems and dark brown caps that are light brown or white in the center. Dried magic mushrooms have a rusty brown color with scattered whitish areas.
You can eat shrooms, mix them with food, or brew them like tea for drinking. You can also combine them with cannabis or tobacco and smoke them.
Storing Shrooms, Medicinal Fungi, & Culinary Fungi
If you’re an experienced myco-geek, you should be aware that shrooms are most potent when they’re fresh. But fresh shrooms are very difficult to store. And, regardless of the type, they don’t last long.
Therefore, it’s advisable to dry magic mushrooms as fast as possible after purchasing or picking them.
Magic mushroom storage isn’t complicated or expensive. You can store your shrooms for a long time with everyday household items. You need a simple mason jar, a ziplock bag, or a vacuum-sealed bag.
Magic Mushrooms & Molds
Moist mushrooms are prone to mold; hence they’re best stored bone-dry. You may sometimes purchase dried mushrooms to forgo the trouble of drying them yourself. However, if you grow them yourself, you need to dry them as soon as possible. To do that, you should place them on a cooling rack and then under a slow-moving fan. Your shrooms should be dry in less than three days.
Please place the shrooms in an airtight container like a mason jar, plastic bag, or vacuum-sealed bag once the shrooms are crunchy. Also, you can grind your shrooms if you need to fit more of them into one container.
Grinding mainly works if you plan to stash your ground-up shrooms in gel caps. By the way, this is another sneaky storage trick: ground shrooms look just like supplements or vitamins.
Causes of Rotting
There are four main reasons shrooms rot, break down, or lose potency. If you keep them from all or some of the below-mentioned elements, you’ll have shrooms with a very long shelf-life:
- Oxygen
- Heat
- UV light
- Mold & bacteria
If you want to make sure the mushrooms do not mold, you can add a desiccant packet to the container. Then, store mushrooms in a cool, dark place, like a drawer or cupboard. They’ll stay tip-top for up to a year, but they’ll be less potent and susceptible to mold and rot after that.
Shrooms and truffles can bring you so much joy. These humble fungi can help you enjoy uncontrolled giggling or spiritual insight. Remember that you’re only improving your future experience by learning how to store these mushrooms.
Stages of Drying Magic Mushrooms
Here, we break down the drying process in a stepwise manner:
- Take the shroom out of its original packaging.
- Lay the shroom on a sheet of clean absorbent paper or newsprint. Leave spaces between each shroom piece. It would help if you eased the airflow between the components.
- If you’re working with larger pieces, you can break them into smaller ones. It facilitates drying.
- If it’s available, try running a box fan. Moving air can speed up the drying.
- Silica gel can absorb the moisture coming off the shrooms. Use it if you can.
- Allow your magic mushrooms to be in this condition for 48-72 hours. But for larger pieces, it can take up to seven days to dry.
Once your magic mushrooms are hard, you can be sure they’re dry. They become like small stones, and you can’t break them by hand. They’re dry when they lose their flexibility and become slightly brittle to the touch too.
Dried mushrooms and truffles can last the longest (a year or more), and you don’t need to refrigerate them.
Issues With Drying
There are several issues concerning drying magic mushrooms. One is oxidation. If you want to keep magic mushrooms in their original packaging, place them in the refrigerator. They’ll perform well. Or, if you don’t have the original packaging, a vacuum-sealed bag can be a great alternative.
Mushroom Drying Methods
There are several drying methods you can use, including:
Air-Drying Magic Mushrooms
You can dry shrooms and store them in a cool, dry, and dark space for up to three years. The only risks are insects or loss of potency. It’d be helpful to protect your shrooms from excessive light, humidity, and heat. This type of preservation works well because it removes the excess internal moisture. It also interrupts the decomposition procedure of shrooms.
Any drying process– that you do in standard fashion– requires a “pre-drying” stage. The aim is to preserve the psilocybin content at this stage. To start the pre-drying procedure, put your magic mushrooms on a plate and place them in front of a fan set in a dark place.
Or, you can use a dark cloth covering your plate on a sunny windowsill. You should keep the temperature at 30°C (86°F), enabling the moisture to leave the mushroom within a few hours. Once your shrooms are rubbery, the pre-drying is complete.
Magic truffles and mushrooms lose some of their active ingredients during the harvest. Harvesters can amplify the loss if they expose the shrooms to high temperatures. High intensities of light can also ruin your harvest. Remember that fungi give off their moisture fast, becoming rubbery and shriveled in a few hours.
Freezing
The drying procedure should be more than enough. But if it doesn’t meet your needs or standards, you can proceed with freezing the shrooms. To undertake this preservation method, dry the product before freezing. Once dried, place the mushrooms in a plastic ziplock bag and put them in the freezer.
You can store frozen magic mushrooms and truffles as much as possible. Freezing methods will help you store your mushrooms without the risk of damaging them. Though it’s unusual for someone to store shrooms for over a year, it’s not a problem and they’ll be as good as fresh once unfrozen.
However, before you freeze them, it’s vital to make sure they’re ‘cracker-dry’– don’t freeze fresh mushrooms! Once cracker-dry, you can put your magic mushrooms in a ziplock bag in the freezer. If you do it right, the psychedelic effects should last indefinitely.
Freezing dried mushrooms in vacuum-sealed bags is the best way to protect against potency loss. You can store cracker-dry mushrooms inside mason jars in a cool, dark place. Use O2 absorbers and desiccant packs. That way, your shrooms would likely last 2+ years without any noticeable loss of potency.
Storing In A Jar
The easiest, most common, and recommended way to store dried mushrooms is in a simple jar! Ideally, use a pot you can seal– a mason jar is easy to get your hands on. Store the jar in a dark location or away from direct sunlight, such as in a cupboard.
For best results, you may add food-grade silica packets to your jar of shrooms. They’re ideal for keeping any potential moisture from affecting your shrooms. Also, they’re easy and cheap to buy online. They’re a must if you want your dried shrooms to last up to one year!
Apart from a jar, there are other tastier ways to store dried shrooms– like in honey! They’re sometimes called “blue honey” or “shroom honey.” You can make them by adding shrooms into honey for relatively long-term storage. What you need is enough liquid honey to cover your dried shrooms.
Storing mushrooms in a jar full of honey is easy. Drop some dried shrooms into a sealable container. Pour liquid honey over it and store your tasty mixture in an excellent dark spot for up to four months.
Vacuum Sealing
If you have a vacuum sealer, it’s time to put it to good use. Your package would take up less space if you vacuum seal them. Just make sure that your shrooms are “cracker-dry” if you plan to do this.
You don’t want them damp again once sealed. If you undertake this method correctly and keep it out of direct sunlight, your vacuum-packed mushrooms should last a year!
Storing Magic Mushrooms Fresh
Fresh mushrooms are pretty sensitive. Although they’re fungi themselves, They’re prone to mold, oxidation, and contamination over time. Rotten mushrooms can quickly make a safe experience toxic.
Storage protocols for fresh shrooms start right after picking. If possible, it’s advisable to wear disposable gloves before harvesting. It reduces the risk of contamination.
And if gloves aren’t an option, wash or sterilize your hands before handling fresh mushrooms. Next, use a brush to remove dirt or debris that might still be clinging to your shroom.
After processing and collecting, put the shrooms in a paper bag or a light woven basket. If the shrooms are still covered in a noticeable layer of dirt, run them under a smooth stream of cold water.
Then, lay them out on a flat kitchen towel before storage. And don’t forget to allow the shrooms to airdry for 20-30 minutes. Then, gently dry them with a towel. When the residual water has been whisked away, it’s time to move them to the fridge.
How Long Can I Store My Shrooms?
Fresh magic mushrooms begin to rot after a few days when not correctly preserved. If you keep them in a fridge, you might be able to store your fresh shrooms for up to 10 days. In the refrigerator, you can store shrooms and truffles for longer, i.e., between 2-3 months.
But dried truffles and mushrooms can last for quite some time– a year or even more. When dried, they don’t need to be refrigerated either.
How To Store Shrooms In The Fridge
If you cannot dry the shrooms for some reason, you can place them on an unbleached paper towel in a paper bag in the refrigerator. It would be best if you wrapped the bag snugly around the shrooms to reduce decay. You can store entire fresh mushrooms in the fridge like this for 5-10 days.
Correct Microdose From Dried Magic Truffles
When people microdose magic truffles or mushrooms, they take a fraction of the regular product. The amount is often 1/20th the dose they consume to achieve a whole psychedelic experience. When the magic mushrooms or truffles go through the drying, your dosage ratios may change.
A total dosage of psilocybin is roughly 0.2 mg per two pounds of body weight. For example, if you weigh around 150 pounds (68 kilograms), your microdose would be 0.7 mg. Some individuals need to take a 1/10th amount to achieve focus or creativity. That would lead to a microdose of 1.4 mg.
So you would have to create a powder dosing based on that ratio. When you process shrooms into powder, the drying process results in a significant imbalance in psilocybin distribution. However, the content varies in different parts of the mushroom. Therefore, you should keep the stems and tops separately.
The only way to precisely measure the concentration of each microdose is laboratory analysis. Magic truffles have more consistency because they are the “root” of the mushroom. You’ll see better long-term results with fewer psilocybin concentration variations.
How To Store Magic Truffles
Magic truffles are the below-ground masses of fungi mycelium instead of the above-ground fruiting bodies. A few species of shrooms will even form truffles milder than the fruiting bodies.
Regardless of how they’re created, some generally prefer the milder effects of truffles. Others use truffles since they live in parts of the world where truffles are the only legal form of psilocybin available. Storing truffles follow the same methods as outlined for shrooms.
However, the main difference with truffles is that they have a longer shelf-life while fresh. If you keep them in an airtight pot, you can keep them in the fridge for 2 or 3 months without significant issues. If you plan to keep your truffles in storage for an extended period, you need to dry them out and store shrooms in a mason jar, ziplock, or vacuum-sealed bag.
Common Side Effects Of Mushrooms
Hallucinogens carry the risk of triggering emotional issues that may cause accidents while under the influence. Adolescents commonly take shrooms in combination with alcohol and other drugs, exacerbating physical and psychological risks.
The level of psilocybin and psilocin in any shroom is unknown, and mushrooms differ significantly in psychoactive levels. Hence, it’s tough to tell the intensity, length, and type of “trip” an individual will experience.
Consuming magic mushrooms can result in a mild trip accompanied by relaxation or drowsiness to an exciting experience marked by hallucinations and spiritual episodes.
Side effects of shrooms can be both physical and mental.
Physical Effects:
- Dilated pupils
- Drowsiness
- Headaches
- Increased heart rate, blood pressure, and temperature
- Lack of coordination
- Muscle weakness
- Nausea
- Yawning
Mental Effects:
- Distorted sense of time, place & reality
- Euphoria
- Hallucinations (visual or auditory)
- Having introspective (spiritual) experiences
- Nervousness
- Panic reactions
- Paranoia
Where to Find Mushroom Edibles in Vancouver
We offer psilocybin and magic mushrooms based in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Only the best mushrooms are grown for each strain’s best potency and consistency. Our products have the highest quality on the market, inducing amazing “trips” and “highs.”
Bottom Line
Storing shrooms doesn’t need to be complicated. Humans have preserved medicine and food for centuries by simply drying it and keeping it in the dark. Modern technology makes doing this even more straightforward.
If you want to store shrooms longer than this, you should use a vacuum sealer with some oxygen absorbent packs. You can preserve them with honey or store them in a sealed bag in the freezer too.
Store them for about a week in the fridge, unless you’re going to use them right away. It would be best to dry them ASAP, or else they may rot. Now that you know how to store your shrooms, give our excellent shrooms a try, and don’t forget to check out our other psychedelics.