Making Amanita Honey

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TenayaAmelia
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Making Amanita Honey

Post by TenayaAmelia » Wed Jan 05, 2022 6:47 pm

Hi friends~

I am interested in making Amanita honey. The idea keeps coming into my head intuitively. I collected and dried my first Amanita Muscaria that I collected locally, and I plan to crumble it and pour honey over it and cure it for several months, then use a tiny bit at a time to microdose. Has anyone here tried this? Is it necessary for me to remove the gills before I prepare? (I know gills should be removed before smoking for instance)

I did a little research and saw that folks make honey with other species of entheogenic mushrooms, so I am excited to try this.

I'm open to any responses or tips~ Thanks!

Warmly,
Tenaya
Northern California
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Re: Making Amanita Honey

Post by lostmushroomforest » Wed Jan 05, 2022 9:17 pm

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Re: Making Amanita Honey

Post by Dbcooper » Thu Jan 06, 2022 2:15 am

From a practical standpoint is more than a culinary thing. Long story short once dehydrated the mushroom is preserved. Adding honey should not have a bearing on any further preservation as far as the active compounds are concerned. Considering how little humidity is in honey (around 15%, in contrast if you look out of the window a random tree trunk is between 45% and 200% water by weight) it is anybody's guess if it could extract the compounds into the honey itself. It also complicates micro dosing, which is already complicated by how much variability of active compounds the mushroom has. Once dried to the same level (cracker dry) 15 grams are 15 grams. Soaking it in honey it depends on how much honey to mushroom ratio you are dealing, with which is harder to meter even if you try to squeeze the honey. Again; we don't know if the actives are leaching into the honey so more or less honey could throw your dosing off.

Side note: preserving with honey (starting the process with fresh mushrooms) has its dangers. Honey often enough contain botulism spores which at normal concentrations are only a health concern to children under 12 months of age (undeveloped immune system and all that). Fresh mushrooms could add enough water for the botulism spores to reproduce; safe preservation with honey requires heat in order to destroy the toxin.
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Re: Making Amanita Honey

Post by Arktos » Thu Jan 06, 2022 2:53 am

I think it is essential to follow the food administrations recommendations about food preservation.
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Re: Making Amanita Honey

Post by lostmushroomforest » Thu Jan 06, 2022 3:26 pm

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Re: Making Amanita Honey

Post by Arktos » Thu Jan 06, 2022 4:41 pm

This is interesting. I will follow this thread. I hope you will contribute.
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Re: Making Amanita Honey

Post by lostmushroomforest » Thu Jan 06, 2022 8:36 pm

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Re: Making Amanita Honey

Post by Arktos » Fri Jan 07, 2022 12:32 am

I have searched but not found it. Where do I find source that when sugar is available microbes do not attack the substances in the mushroom?

I got inspired by this thread and will start by making pickles. If sugar protects the substances, that is good news. I just need to find the source.

I will not hijack this thread. I will start a new about pickles when the time is right.
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Re: Making Amanita Honey

Post by TenayaAmelia » Fri Jan 07, 2022 2:08 am

lostmushroomforest wrote:
Wed Jan 05, 2022 9:17 pm
This is an excellent idea! It makes me wonder if this was ever used as a method of preserving / enhancing the effects of Amanita in Slavic countries with a long cultural history of honey production / Amanita consumption. I think it should be OK adding the gills unless you want it to be super concentrated, since there are still actives in the gills. What level of decarb are you looking for the honey?

If you are looking for low decarb, the method you described will work well. If you don't plan on filtering out the amanitas at the end of the process, I would powderize them instead of crushing them for best extraction.

If you are looking for higher levels of decarb, I would also recommend using raw honey so it has the necessary microbes for fermentation, and stirring daily during the first week or so of fermentation to increase bacteria / yeast populations.

If you decide to go the route of fermented amanitas, the only issue I see arising is the hydration level of the ferment due to the dried mushrooms. Part of what makes fermented honey work is the addition of a small amount of water from the garlic/herbs/hot pepper/fruit etc, which creates an environment (18-20% moisture content) where dormant bacteria + yeast in the raw honey can begin their fermentation process. The osmotic pressure between the honey and the mushroom pulls out the water along with water soluble actives. More actives will be dissolved into the hydrated honey as the bacteria/yeast break down the mushroom.

However, I am not sure if hydrating dried mushrooms can be done with enough accuracy to ensure the moisture content doesn't overshoot the 18-20% range, and it would also limit the amount of mushrooms that can be put into one batch of honey. One way around this would be adding a small amount of filtered water to the honey to adjust the moisture content to the 18-20% range (assuming raw honey moisture content is at close to 15%). At that point the hope is that the fermentation process / hydration of the mushrooms will extract actives.

Since you are in uncharted territory, we don't know if there will be sufficient Lactobacillus populations from the honey and the proper environmental conditions in the ferment to get close to full decarb. If you are interesting in experimenting, you could split the mushrooms/honey into two batches - one with just honey and water and another where you add Lactobacillus containing brine from a live ferment (i.e. sauerkraut brine, pickle brine, kombucha). This would hydrate and kickstart the ferment simultaneously. This could generate some very useful information about the decarb potential of fermented Amanita honey. Thanks again for sharing and I look forward to hearing more about the results!
Thank you so much for your encouragement and thoughtful response. I had a little thrill when you mentioned Slavic usage~ I am of Slavic descent, so this is very meaningful for me. :-) I will read through your post again carefully~ I will try to powderize the Amanita I collected. I live in a a foggy/humid environment~ Do you think it would be worthwhile to just leave the mushrooms out to absorb some of the atmospheric moisture?

I was aiming for a less decarbed preparation (so more Ibotenic Acid), because I am wanting a more stimulating/focusing effect. I am also currently taking a tincture as a microdose from Harmony Acres that I love, and I want to explore another side of Amanita. I have raw honey to use. The concept of fermented honey is new to me...but I'm intrigued.

Thanks again for your reply! Warmly, Tenaya

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Re: Making Amanita Honey

Post by TenayaAmelia » Fri Jan 07, 2022 2:10 am

Dbcooper wrote:
Thu Jan 06, 2022 2:15 am
From a practical standpoint is more than a culinary thing. Long story short once dehydrated the mushroom is preserved. Adding honey should not have a bearing on any further preservation as far as the active compounds are concerned. Considering how little humidity is in honey (around 15%, in contrast if you look out of the window a random tree trunk is between 45% and 200% water by weight) it is anybody's guess if it could extract the compounds into the honey itself. It also complicates micro dosing, which is already complicated by how much variability of active compounds the mushroom has. Once dried to the same level (cracker dry) 15 grams are 15 grams. Soaking it in honey it depends on how much honey to mushroom ratio you are dealing, with which is harder to meter even if you try to squeeze the honey. Again; we don't know if the actives are leaching into the honey so more or less honey could throw your dosing off.

Side note: preserving with honey (starting the process with fresh mushrooms) has its dangers. Honey often enough contain botulism spores which at normal concentrations are only a health concern to children under 12 months of age (undeveloped immune system and all that). Fresh mushrooms could add enough water for the botulism spores to reproduce; safe preservation with honey requires heat in order to destroy the toxin.
Thanks so much for your response!

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