i have limited ressources, need help drying(also some questions)

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kowabunga1312
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i have limited ressources, need help drying(also some questions)

Post by kowabunga1312 » Sun Nov 28, 2021 6:18 pm

i live somewhere off the grid, no electricity, i only have a wood burner stove. i'd love to use a dehydrator but its just not possible, haha

right now my method for drying is putting flat stones on the stove, making a fire(ofc), and placing the AM on the hot stones until they're dry, usually some hours.
now, sometimes theres liquid coming out of the AM, is that good or bad? does it mean that the temperature of the stones might be too hot or too cold? should i open the windows maybe? all advice is welcome :D
also sometimes i put the AM on strings next to the oven pipe, takes a lot longer, but no liquid. do you think this method is better?

in addition to all of this, can somebody tell me the maximum temperature for drying AM? when does the ibu/musc get destroyed?

im a newbie to this, thanks in advance if you can help me out :)

Garden gnome
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Re: i have limited ressources, need help drying(also some questions)

Post by Garden gnome » Mon Nov 29, 2021 8:13 am

Hey there! I have some experience drying vegetables, herbs, seeds and fruits under adverse conditions an i'm happy to help. I will compare it to drying watery plums.

I imagine it might be better to dry them slower. Contact with hot stones might be too hot, and as you said, makes them runny. From experience with drying runny fruit, they prefer metal racks, like some old bbq rack or whatever you can find that will not rust. Don't use aluminum foil. It wants all around contact with warm, DRY, moving air. They dry slower, but they keep color and consistency much better (in the case of plums and runny things like that) usually, when the runnyness stops, i turn up the heat a little to shorten the tail end of the drying process. Plums i dry SKIN DOWN. Might be the obvious way to go with the amanitas too.

I have suspended racks from the ceiling around the woodstove and pipe before and it works fairly well. Now i have a couple of those barrelshaped dryers. Ideal for above mentioned fruits and what not, but not ideal for amonita, as dreamer made clear in her video. I, myself will have to look into a better dryer now. I saw they were pretty pricy.

Ohh, and i need to add, i rub the racks with the tiniest bit of vegetable oil on a tissue, so the dried matter will stick to the racks less. It does not need to be much. Just a slight polish up with a bit of sunflower oil will do, or whatever edible oil you have on hand in the kitchen.

Ohh, and my source for racks is the secondhand store. Round microwave racks are excellent. Just tie a whole bunch together with string (not something that melts!) So you get kind of a suspended layercake of them, you can hang from the ceiling from a single string so it can move around with the rising warmth and expose this hanging layercake from all sides equally over time. You don't want one side to be crisp while the others are bendy. Also a bit of a problem with the barrelshaped electric dryers. A bit labour intensive to keep an eye on all the time. Best i've got, anyway.

Although what i am saying right now, may not apply to you, it may to someone else. Drying stuff requires DRY AIR around it more than hot air. I actually had to buy a dehumidifier to dry out the space i was drying in. Stuff just would not dry, no matter the cranked up heat. Stuff would just go bad, mold or sprout. After that, it was fine.

Anther drying trick for the people interrested in drying herbs. (NOT SUITABLE IN COMBINATION WITH A WOODSTOVE) i dry herbs that need to dry slowly and stay green in those fishnet looking storage things from IKEA. Kids section. They come in all kinds of hiddeous bright colours, but they work well for stringy stuff like chinese ginseng and passiflora incarnata. Just hang them above a source of mild convection heat like hot water radiators.

I'm very sorry. I can not help you with the other questions, because i am also new to amanita, as in zero experience. I am not someone to just repeat something from somewhere that is not a trusted source, but i think you might find some answers in the drying videos. I have not watched them all yet, because for me, the season is apparently over, so i will immerse myself in those when i can pick some for myself next year.

Hope it helps!

M
Even the smallest changes add up

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