Ancient tree in Northern Germany
Greeting Hiveans!
This will be part one of a series of posts I am going to do in regard to the preparation of Amanita Muscaria Tea. This is in my opinion the easiest, most cost-effective, and safest way to consume the mushroom. My plan after I am finished with these posts is to make a short how-to that can be easily referenced. For now, I want to show you all my first Harvest of the year and what I have done so far with the mushroom.
A small warning before we continue... Anamita Muscaria is considered a poisonous mushroom. You must be careful with the mushroom as it contains a neurotoxin called Ibotenic Acid. This sounds pretty scary, but ibotenic acid is used in many modern food products and the only study I could find proving harm is where the scientist applied Ibotenic Acid directly to the brains of mice, and it caused some lesions. The truth is Humans have been consuming these mushrooms for millennia and if you prepare them the right way they can be safely enjoyable.
Also, you may want to check your local laws before harvesting and ingesting this mushroom; although there are few countries that have banned it.
And Lastly, IF YOU LIVE IN THE UNITED STATES.... You have a different species of Anamita. Check with your local expert before consuming this mushroom.
Short Backround
Amanita Muscaria has been used by all cultures that have access to it as a communicator mushroom. This mushroom also has various medicinal purposes, heal scars, treat depression, calm a racing mind, even treat covid19. I used it for the presence of mind and clarity it gives me. If anyone has used it you will know what I mean when I say "I can hear its music".
Anyway, the way to fully access this mushrooms power is by converting the Ibotenic Acid into Muscimol the feel good substances that we are all looking for. In this blog post, I will share the first steps (in my experience and research) to best achieve this.
Date of Harvest: 21.9.22
Location: Northern Region of Schleswig-Holstein, Deu
Weather: After several days of constant rains, dry, sunny, 15-19 degrees Centigrade.
A decent amount of Amanita Muscaria has begun to grow in our region.
If you read my post The Search Continues, I returned to this area of Birch trees and as predicted the sacrament of the forest has begun to offer itself to its long-lived partners' mankind, to exchange information. You can tell in the photo above that the rains of the past several days have discolored these mushrooms and removed the signature white spots that are very important in identification. Never pick mushrooms unless you are 100% certain. From my experience, I can identify Amanita Muscaria with its gills, skirt, bulb, etc. so the color isn't the only way (maybe I should make a post on that as well).
Once home, I began the preparation process. I remove as much of the grass, sticks, and dirt from the mushroom as possible. As you can see, from the above photo, I have only harvested the caps of these mushrooms. There are tons of information online about ratios of caps to stems and muscimol conversions based on this etc, but in my experience caps work the best so that's what I choose to do.
Drying is best done in a well-ventilated dryer with heat.
When Amanita Muscaria is dried at temperatures of 70-80 degrees Celsius up to 30% of Ibotenic Acid can be converted into Muscimol. This is the first step of conversion. This was my first batch in my new oven. I paid roughly 160 Euros for a dryer that has a fan centered in the rear for proper circulation. After around 9 hours of drying the caps were "potato chip dry" and this is exactly how you want them to be.
Once dried they are ready for storage or can be made into a tea or ground up and smoked.
This concludes the first steps of Muscimol conversion. Once the mushrooms are dried they can easily be stored for later use. In my next post, I will share the next step in muscimol conversion which I make a tea to drink. Thank you for reading and if you have any questions feel free to ask!
