Good Wednesday to you all!

If you saw my last post then you already know about my recent discovery of the mushroom Amanita muscaria.

Since making that discovery, I have become obsessed with this amazing mushroom. I went straight out yesterday and harvested my first batch.

Several days of rain has removed much of the white specks and red coloring.

After reading countless reports, studies, and watching YouTube videos I felt confident in my abilities to safely consume this mushroom for microdosing purposes.

Microdosing is where you follow a strict schedule and ingest a minuscule amount of a mushroom to achieve medicinal benefits without hindering your ability to function normally.

Unlike the magic mushrooms you normally hear of, Amanita muscaria are not illegal to possess, ingest, or purchase. That being said, consuming this mushroom can be very dangerous if not prepared properly, like many foods we eat on a daily basis.

There are many reported benefits to ingesting this mushroom but mainly reduced anxiety, antidepressant, better sleep, eliminates nightmares, among others. Like many of my comrades, I suffer from crippling anxiety, depression, and nightmares. This is what I am looking for with this mushroom.

Preparation

15 grams dried mushrooms (3/4 caps 1/4 stems)
1 cup filtered water
Boil for 20 minutes (low boil)

First, I washed them to remove all the dirt and selected only the ones I felt safe consuming. I know without a doubt that all the mushrooms I picked were Amanita muscaria, but being my first time I wanted to use only the best ones.

Next, I sliced up a few of them to dry them in the oven.
This turned out to be a big mistake and I will never do it again. The mushrooms did not dry well at all am I am pretty sure I destroyed the medicinal characteristics by doing this (will be discussed in my next post).

Normally, you first dry your mushrooms either by air drying them or with a food dehydrator and then you can store them or use them to make a tea. Once I realized my failure of oven drying I did some quick research and found out you can boil them raw but you lose about 30% of the “good stuff”that you would have if you dried them first.

So that's what I did! I dumped them all in and boiled them for 30 minutes on a low rolling boil. When it was done I used a strainer and poured the tea into a jar for immediate consumption and a jar to freeze for later.

The redness of the caps is leached away in the boiling process and you are left with some bleached out looking mushrooms and this very beautiful amber colored tea. I sampled a nibble of the leftover mushroom and it tasted okay, but not the best so I threw them in the bio trash.

Conclusions

This was an extremely beneficial learning process. I am heading out today to find some more, which I will take the time to air dry them properly for storage to use when this tea runs out. There seems to be plenty of them growing by us and I would like to accumulate as much as possible before the season ends.

By not drying the mushrooms I lost a lot of the “good stuff” so when taking my little dose, I will add some lemon juice to convert some of the acids (though I think at these small amounts it is rather pointless). In a future post, I will talk in more depth about the science at play here.

I also made the mistake of freezing the bulk of it in one container so I am afraid once I defrost it the bulk of it will be lost.

The good thing is that I knew going into it I would not master this process my first time around. I am one who learns by experience and I know my next batch will be much better! Hopefully, there are some mushrooms left out there!

I have begun my first microdose and will post about that next.

Thank you for your attention and am looking forward to your input!