Storing - Psilocybin Mushroom Storage: Freezing

[novas]

Might be a stupid question, but can you freeze shrooms?

[roisianna]

You're not meant to freeze fresh shrooms, but i'm not sure about dry ones...

[Alfa]

No.

[novas]

Thankoo. *hugglez shrooms* Thats another near death experiance you guys have escaped.

[OneDiaDem]

Dried mushrooms can be frozen. In fact, vaccum sealed with a dessicant pack is the best way to keep the potency. Fresh mushrooms are 90% water. When the fresh mushroom freezes, the water expands the cells of the flesh. When thawed, the cell structures are fractured, leaving the thawed mushrooms basically a mushy mess.

[el bandito]

I was wondering if putting dryed shrooms in a freezer might help it keep potentcy, or do they last for a long time as long as they are completely dryed and kept in a cool dark space.

[Alfa]

Freezing shrooms is not a good idea. Fresh shrooms will turn to snot, dried mushrooms can get dark. Doesn't seem good to me. You can store properly dried mushrooms for 6 - 12 months.

[graffixak]

There are people who have reported that properly dried stuff stored in a sealable plastic bag can stay perfectly good in the fridge for better than a year. In that report, the person was rather shocked to find perfectly preserved power after more than a year and half - expecting the stash had been reduced to unusable after 6 months. Like finding money you stashed a year ago.


Freezing is definitely not a good idea, and storing at room temperature is probably not a good idea. In theory, 35-45 degrees fahrenheit would probably be best.

[stoneinfocus]

Why is freezing not a good idea?
Swim put his fresh shrooms in the freezer two day ago...

will they lose potency or will they taste worse or cause stomach problems or nausea, or will all be the same, just that they don´t look pretty anymore?

[JustAnotherNoob]

As Alfa noted above, the shrooms will "turn to snot" aka melt. It'll be
pretty messy when SWIY thaws em out.

Seems like the goop would still have the psilocybin/psilocin in it to SWIM,
but whether or not consuming the goop would harm SWIY, no idea.
Be careful

[stoneinfocus]

Originally Posted by JustAnotherNoob

As Alfa noted above, the shrooms will "turn to snot" aka melt. It'll be
pretty messy when SWIY thaws em out.

Seems like the goop would still have the psilocybin/psilocin in it to SWIM,
but whether or not consuming the goop would harm SWIY, no idea.
Be careful

So if someone who isn´t Just Another Noob has tried it and tasted fresh frezed shrooms after thawing I´m convinced that ir he says it works it´ll work for swim.)

I´m just concerned about contamination and loss of potency not so much about consistency which will of course, too, find its way into my annals, to teaching swim.

[fatmanstan]

SWIM has kept thoroughly dried and packed shrooms (cubes) in a freezer for a number of years with no problems and little or no noticable loss of potency. As far as fresh shrooms in the freezer, they're likely goners, unless you want to eat them through a straw. Would the active ingredients be destroyed though?

[Mammon]

O.K. SWIM has tried the search engine and found that most DF members say that freezing shrooms is a bad idea. However, SWIM knows that drying them (these are liberty caps, by the way) loses potency. If he was prepared to deal with a defrosted slime of mushroom, would freezing them fresh from the field save the good stuff, or is the only way to dry them in the open air and accept the loss?

What are the real downsides of freezing them?

Reputation Comments on this post:

Thoroughly decent bloke. :)

[robin_himself]

If one dries the mushrooms properly, the loss of potency wouldn't be a big deal. Swiy might try to dry the shrooms and then keep them in a jar with honey. This will give him shrooms that will last for as long as swiy needs. When you dry and put in honey swiy doesn't even have to dry them to the max. Also try to use good soft/liquid honey.... will make the whole thing alot easier.

As for the freezing.... don't expose swiy his shrooms to to much extrime temps, its not neccessary.

[Routemaster Flash]

Hmm, personally I wouldn't freeze shrooms that hadn't been completely, or almost completely, dried out first (or cooked, in the case of regular edible ones). Reason being, mushrooms are 90% or more water by weight, and when you freeze plant or fungus matter containing that much water the expanding ice crystals destroy the cell walls, meaning the whole thing turns into a pile of mush when you defrost it. For the same reason there are certain vegetables you're not meant to freeze.

So probably better to dry them, or dry and then freeze, rather than freeze them fresh. The reason you lose potency when drying is that the psilocin degrades whereas the psilocybin (which gets turned into psilocin when you ingest it) is much more stable and can stand the drying. But most kinds of shrooms have more psilocybin in them than psilocin, and it sounds like SWIJ got a good haul anyway, so I wouldn't worry too much.

Reputation Comments on this post:

very well explained

[Evil GIR]

I would of though it depends on ya freezer, swim has a frost free one that removes moisture from the air. So when swim freezes cubes, they come out cold dryed even when thawed. All the water from em is gone.

[Routemaster Flash]

Originally Posted by Evil GIR

I would of though it depends on ya freezer, swim has a frost free one that removes moisture from the air. So when swim freezes cubes, they come out cold dryed even when thawed. All the water from em is gone.

Cool, I want one of those!

[Panthers007]

If one has access to a freeze-drying apparatus - the mushrooms will not lose potency and will be perfectly preserved end-to-end. Alas, freeze-drying gear is very expensive. But they can be found at universities and other research facilities.

[Nargyle]

What about tossing them in a frost-free freezer and putting a container with damp-rid next to them, then closing the fridge, would that freeze dry them? or is SWIM speaking nonsense? He has noticed that when he puts meat in his freezer and doesn't cover it well it comes out really dry.

[Evil GIR]

The freezer should just extract the moisture on its own.
Well thats swims experience.

I think your frost free freezer may have to be the ones with fans in side em as these helps to remove the moisture.

[gandyling]

SWIM has dried and frozen mushrooms. SWIM is a little unsure on what to do next. Should they leave them out to defrost for an hour or so or soak them in water. Any advis ples

[Richi]

Hypothetically speaking, either or would work. If mushrooms are dried, it's likely freezing them won't do too much anyway since there is not much water left.