Mycodemus said:

I was picturing like rock candy crystals, but made with mushroom tea instead of plain water… Kind of a next gen play on the gummies concept. Now that I think of it, I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. You oversaturate liquid with sugar, put a nucleation point (stick or string) in, and dehydrate. No high temp boiling required, same as that science project kids can do. You could grind it up and use it as instant tea if you want, or put into caps, or eat like candy.

I think I might be onto something here… DIBS ON TM YOU GUYS, DO NOT STEAL!11

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SevR said:

Mycodemus said:

I was picturing like rock candy crystals, but made with mushroom tea instead of plain water… Kind of a next gen play on the gummies concept. Now that I think of it, I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. You oversaturate liquid with sugar, put a nucleation point (stick or string) in, and dehydrate. No high temp boiling required, same as that science project kids can do. You could grind it up and use it as instant tea if you want, or put into caps, or eat like candy.

I think I might be onto something here… DIBS ON TM YOU GUYS, DO NOT STEAL!11

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I've been meaning to post a tek about this, but I've just got my grow set up again and don't have access to any mush for another month or so-

But you can absolutely turn tea into sugar/syrup and retain the actives-  The benefit of doing so is that you can then take that syrup and add it to chocolate and make legit tempered chocolate bars without any pieces of mushroom in there. They're epic. The trick is heating the sugar/tea to the exact right temperature to avoid having the sugar go too hard into hard-crack phase- You want somewhere in the vicinity of soft-ball inorder to still have the syrup mix into the chocolate-mix without adding too much moisture to the tempering to sieze. If anyone wants more info, DM me and I'll pull out my notebook somewhere- it's been about a year since I made them last so I'm fuzzy on the exact details.

But it does work.

And,  it's also a great way to store tea at room temp for a while with minimal loss of potency* (I only have a few tests under my belt here with out the greatest controls as I was doing it as proof of concept at the time so take that claim with a grain of salt)- Can basically make psilocybin syrup and put it in a dropper bottle- great way to dose and it tastes delicious.

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ReverendMyc said:

Mycodemus said:

I don’t think I understand why the steeped tea would be significantly more active than the simmered, when both teas are simmered to reduce to the same amount in the end anyway. Do the dregs reabsorb the actives somehow during the simmer? Or the actives disappear that quickly over the simmer? Also were there 3 decoctions for both, or just the simmered batch?
...

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I really don’t understand why the steep ended up more potent. Both the simmer and steep were treated exactly the same with three decoctions. The increase in mush mass and water volume should have reduced any variance. In fact, one step that I didn’t mention was that I measured out the powder for each in alternating two gram piles. I figured that would eliminate any chance of one sample being more potent than the other.

It seems weird that no potency is lost in the simmer to reduce the tea, but some seems to be lost in the simmer for extraction. It doesn’t appear to be reabsorbed by the dregs or that would have shown on the dregs results. The simmer dregs were more active, but not enough to account for the difference in tea potency.

So I cannot answer the why, only what the results are.

...

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So I have come up with a possible explanation for the higher potency in the steep tea versus the simmer tea. It goes back to the question about the volume of water. My thinking is that the simmer is losing water to evaporation much more quickly than the steep. The reduced water in the simmer tea reaches the saturation point sooner than the steep because of this reduced volume and becomes less efficient as a solvent. So less of the soluble actives are extracted in the simmer due to less water.

Looking at the chart again:

In the first columns under 1 and 3 for the first and third extractions the steep is a little lower in potency than the simmer. But what I did not take into account is that the volume in each case is about double for the steep in both of these results. So when halving the simmer results or doubling the steep results it clearly indicates that more actives were extracted in the steep. If my theory about the reduced volume of water during extraction causing the tea to reach saturation sooner is correct, then the results do make sense for both this test and the ones in the previous experiment. The tiny volumes of water in the cryovials will have reached saturation very quickly in the previous tests which explains those dubiously inconclusive results.

So I do not believe that the simmer harms or reduces the actives in the tea extraction, however, the reduction in volume of the solvent does reduce the efficiency of the extraction. This actually does align with many of the results that I have had with tea extractions. Lower ratios of water to mushroom or mycelium always results in weaker gummies. So either keep adding water during the extraction or do multiple steeps. Multiple steeps will be more efficient for extraction but will require additional reduction for the greater volume of resulting tea.

I have not thought of how I will confirm the theory, but the results remain unchanged whether this is the correct reason or not. So if you see holes, poke away. I will continue to work with teas in search of improvements in potency and welcome any contributions.

ReverendMyc said:

ReverendMyc said:

Mycodemus said:

I don’t think I understand why the steeped tea would be significantly more active than the simmered, when both teas are simmered to reduce to the same amount in the end anyway. Do the dregs reabsorb the actives somehow during the simmer? Or the actives disappear that quickly over the simmer? Also were there 3 decoctions for both, or just the simmered batch?
...

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I really don’t understand why the steep ended up more potent. Both the simmer and steep were treated exactly the same with three decoctions. The increase in mush mass and water volume should have reduced any variance. In fact, one step that I didn’t mention was that I measured out the powder for each in alternating two gram piles. I figured that would eliminate any chance of one sample being more potent than the other.

It seems weird that no potency is lost in the simmer to reduce the tea, but some seems to be lost in the simmer for extraction. It doesn’t appear to be reabsorbed by the dregs or that would have shown on the dregs results. The simmer dregs were more active, but not enough to account for the difference in tea potency.

So I cannot answer the why, only what the results are.

...

---

So I have come up with a possible explanation for the higher potency in the steep tea versus the simmer tea. It goes back to the question about the volume of water. My thinking is that the simmer is losing water to evaporation much more quickly than the steep. The reduced water in the simmer tea reaches the saturation point sooner than the steep because of this reduced volume and becomes less efficient as a solvent. So less of the soluble actives are extracted in the simmer due to less water.

Looking at the chart again:

In the first columns under 1 and 3 for the first and third extractions the steep is a little lower in potency than the simmer. But what I did not take into account is that the volume in each case is about double for the steep in both of these results. So when halving the simmer results or doubling the steep results it clearly indicates that more actives were extracted in the steep. If my theory about the reduced volume of water during extraction causing the tea to reach saturation sooner is correct, then the results do make sense for both this test and the ones in the previous experiment. The tiny volumes of water in the cryovials will have reached saturation very quickly in the previous tests which explains those dubiously inconclusive results.

So I do not believe that the simmer harms or reduces the actives in the tea extraction, however, the reduction in volume of the solvent does reduce the efficiency of the extraction. This actually does align with many of the results that I have had with tea extractions. Lower ratios of water to mushroom or mycelium always results in weaker gummies. So either keep adding water during the extraction or do multiple steeps. Multiple steeps will be more efficient for extraction but will require additional reduction for the greater volume of resulting tea.

I have not thought of how I will confirm the theory, but the results remain unchanged whether this is the correct reason or not. So if you see holes, poke away. I will continue to work with teas in search of improvements in potency and welcome any contributions.

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Mycodemus said:

...

Very interesting hypothesis. Does this mean that possibly, the extraction process needs enough solvent to extract (like dissolving sugar in water before it becomes supersaturated), and then once the extraction is complete, it’s fine to simmer to reduce water volume? (Like simmering syrup to concentrate the sugar in it)? What does “keep adding water” mean in practice exactly? I wonder what ratio of water to mushrooms is “safe” for best efficiency?

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tree frog said:

Some thoughts on saturation.

The simmer could be pulling other stuff out, which would saturate the water faster.

One way to test would be to use very potent mushrooms like cyans, as they would have less other substances potentially interfering with extracting.

If cyans simmered produces the same potency as steeped (once evaporation is accounted for), it might give us a clue as to why previous runs showed variance.

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