I’m sure many readers have been aware of magic truffles for quite a few years, but for those of you who haven’t yet explored the underground fungal wonders, truffles can provide similar experiences to the more commonly consumed magic mushrooms.
They are categorised as sclerotia, which are compact masses of hardened mycelium containing food reserves intended to survive environmental extremes. One example of this is the Claviceps purpurea sclerotia (the fungi responsible for the creation of LSD), which can become detached and remain dormant until conditions are right.
These truffles can be consumed fresh, although I personally find the taste quite off-putting, generally with quite sour/nutty undertones, which makes the start of the experience somewhat unpleasant! In general, I’m not in favour of consuming any kind of fungi or mycelium in their raw state, as it seems humans aren’t really able to break down the cell wall structure of fungi completely, which can create more work for our digestive system and potentially impact how comfortable we are during our truffle experience.
This cell wall structure, known as chitin, can be partially broken down during the drying process, which can make digestion of the truffles easier, as well as prolong shelf-life and allow us to dose more accurately, where we can understand the potency in a more standardised way. I’ve encountered this conversation many times with my work in the fungi space, and I’m always keen to stress the importance of drying in order to create more accurate dosing protocols (especially if we’re consuming small amounts within a microdosing protocol) as well as making things easier for our bodies. Even then, my cupboard is full of jars of different types of culinary and medicinal mushrooms that I have foraged and want to use at different times of the year, or for different purposes, and it makes perfect sense to store them dry (and rehydrate if need be).
Fresh truffles are 60-70% water, and while it’s recommended to store fresh culinary truffles as they are, since we’re not looking for taste when it comes to psychedelic ones, it might make more sense to dry them to increase the shelf-life which then gives you the possibility to space out your experiences over a period of time. Improperly dried truffles might end up going mouldy and lose potency, and as we explore this topic further, we’ll look at all the practical steps required to ensure your truffles are properly dried to ensure long-term storage and maintenance of potency. The different compounds within truffles seem to be stable with no detectable loss of potency, which could allow people to effectively “dial in” their experiences with a potential faster onset compared to fresh magic truffles.
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