From: [a--n] at [panix.com] (Doug Ayen) Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1993 19:27:10 GMT Newsgroups: alt.drugs Subject: Blue Mead OK, enough of you have asked about it, so here we go... Blue Mead: First off, this is a mead (honey wine) that has, in addition to yeast, blue "'shroom" spoors added to the mix. The end result of this is a pale blue, psychoactive mead and a clump of 'shrooms about the size of your hand. The recepie is for 1 gallon, but you can expand/contract at will. WARNING: as with all brewing, and this one more than most, keep everything STERILE!!! I don't want any of you getting sick(er) because of stray bacteria. Ingredients/equipment: For Mushroom starter: 1 fresh blue 'shroom (Psilocybe Mexicana)* growth media (sterile solution of sugar/water) 2-3 petri dishes (The more you have, the better the chances of at least 1 success) * Dried may work. What you really want are active spoors For Mead: 3-5 lbs honey Yeast nutient * Wine yeast* kettle 1 gallon bottle cotton wad fermentation lock(optional)* anti-foam (optional)* Campdem Tabs* * indicates something available at a decent brewing store. Directions: 1 Week Before: Make a mixture of 3 tbs sugar to 1 cup water. Boil, put in petri dishes, cover, let cool. Take 'shroom, quicly open each petri dish & add spoors from underside of 'shroom (a tap on the top should do it).Cover. Let sit for a week. By then, you should have at least one good culture going. If not, then try again with another batch of 'shrooms. The Brewing Session: Take the honey & mix with enough water to make 1 gallon. Bring to a boil and skim off the thick froth on top. Crush 1 Campdem tab, stir in, add yeast nutrient as per directions on the container, pour into bottle, put a wad of cotton in the top. Leave at least 2" of space at the top of the bottle. Let cool & settle 24 hrs. Take the successful petri dish of psilocybe and a sharp knife. In rapid sequence: sterilize the point of the knife in flame, open the petri dish, cut out a 1"square section of the growing culture, remove the cotton from the mouth of the bottle, drop in the culture, and replace the cotton. Move as quickly as possible as to avoid contamination. Wait one week (during which the culture should grow fairly rapidly (if not, repeat the above paragraph)) and add the yeast as per the directions on the packet. (I find champagne yeast works well.) Fit fermentation lock, and wait until all activity has stopped. Rack (i.e. pour off and save the liquid part, leaving the solids behind (including the mass of psilocybe mushroom (which can be used as normal))) and let age min 4 months in a cool, dark place. Potency: varies. Try a shot first, wait for an hour or so, repeat. Make a note of what happens when, so that you can gage future experiments. Please note: this is alcoholic as well as psychoactive. Use in moderation Well, that's the recipie. Enjoy!! --Doug From: [an 11488] at [anon.penet.fi] (Marquis? Cha-Cha) Date: Sun, 28 Feb 1993 23:26:28 GMT Newsgroups: alt.drugs,alt.psychoactives Subject: Re: Blue Mead (Shroom Mead!) (I switched around some stuff in the original post to facilitate comments.) In article <[C 2 x 21 A B 7 z] at [panix.com]> [a--n] at [panix.com] (Doug Ayen) writes: >OK, enough of you have asked about it, so here we go... > >Blue Mead: >First off, this is a mead (honey wine) that has, in addition to yeast, blue >"'shroom" spoors added to the mix. The end result of this is a pale blue, >psychoactive mead and a clump of 'shrooms about the size of your hand. The >recepie is for 1 gallon, but you can expand/contract at will. >WARNING: as with all brewing, and this one more than most, keep everything >STERILE!!! I don't want any of you getting sick(er) because of stray >bacteria. > >Ingredients/equipment: > >For Mushroom starter: >1 fresh blue 'shroom (Psilocybe Mexicana)* >growth media (sterile solution of sugar/water) >2-3 petri dishes (The more you have, the better the chances of at least 1 >success) > >* Dried may work. What you really want are active spoors > >1 Week Before [brewing]: >Make a mixture of 3 tbs sugar to 1 cup water. Boil, put in petri dishes, >cover, let cool. Take 'shroom, quicly open each petri dish & add spoors >from underside of 'shroom (a tap on the top should do it).Cover. Let sit >for a week. By then, you should have at least one good culture going. If >not, then try again with another batch of 'shrooms. Wow. I've never grown any fungus besides yeast for brewing, but I'm suspicious of how easy you make this sound. >For Mead: >3-5 lbs honey >Yeast nutient * >Wine yeast* >kettle >1 gallon bottle >cotton wad >fermentation lock(optional)* >anti-foam (optional)* >Campdem Tabs* >* indicates something available at a decent brewing store. > >The Brewing Session: >Take the honey & mix with enough water to make 1 gallon. Bring to a boil >and skim off the thick froth on top. Crush 1 Campdem tab, stir in, add >yeast nutrient as per directions on the container, pour into bottle, put a >wad of cotton in the top. Leave at least 2" of space at the top of the >bottle. Let cool & settle 24 hrs. > Take the successful petri dish of psilocybe and a sharp knife. In rapid >sequence: sterilize the point of the knife in flame, open the petri dish, >cut out a 1"square section of the growing culture, remove the cotton from >the mouth of the bottle, drop in the culture, and replace the cotton. Move >as quickly as possible as to avoid contamination. > Wait one week (during which the culture should grow fairly rapidly (if >not, repeat the above paragraph)) and add the yeast as per the directions >on the packet. (I find champagne yeast works well.) Fit fermentation lock, >and wait until all activity has stopped. Rack (i.e. pour off and save the >liquid part, leaving the solids behind (including the mass of psilocybe >mushroom (which can be used as normal))) and let age min 4 months in a >cool, dark place. Looking this over, I think this would be disasterous to try as a First Attempt at mead. There's a lot of room to screw up---especially the intentional week-long lag time between boiling and pitching the yeast. That's a good long time for undesirable microbes to infect your mead! What would happen if you added the yeast at the same time as the spores? I recommend reading any books on brewing and meading that you can find. Specifically, Charlie Papazian's _Brewing Mead_ and _The Complete Joy of Homebrewing_ both present important information in a form that is easy to digest and not intimidating. (And if you're reading this then you have access to rec.crafts.brewing, whose readers are rather helpful.) It looks like this recipe might taste really really disgusting, but I'm just guessing. You have to let mead age a long time in the bottle before it gets to a point that its taste makes you think it was worth the trouble. I'm talking at least a year, or more or less depending on lots of variables. Also the amount of honey your recipe calls for would make the mead cloyingly sweet, like cough syrup. I would use at most 2 lbs per gallon. Make sure that it's natural, pure, and NOT Sue Bee or anything with additives! Fermenting anything with non-natural additives is a bad idea. Preservatives will kill the yeast (of course) and most anything else will just taste horrible in the final product. Of course, you add some character to your mead by using different kinds of honey (orange blossom, buckwheat, etc.) as well as spices like ginger, clove, cinnamon or whatever. Be VERY conservative with the spices. Fruit can be nice too, or all-natural, unpreserved cider. Go nuts! >Potency: varies. Try a shot first, wait for an hour or so, repeat. Make a >note of what happens when, so that you can gage future experiments. Please >note: this is alcoholic as well as psychoactive. Use in moderation (If your drinking your mead in shots, that's a sure sign that there's room for improvement, imho.)---Unless the psychedelic aspect of your potion makes it taste really nasty. (I wouldn't know. ) Is this the case? Would it be possible to age it longer, without losing its special shroominess? How stable are the psychedelic agents in this environment? (viz. water, alcohol, carbon dioxide in solution, very little oxygen, cool and dark storage conditions. . .) I'm not too knowledgeable about mushrooms, so I have some more questions: What exactly is going on that mushroom spores can live in a sugar solution? That sounds kind of wierd. Everything I've read about growing mushrooms implies that they need starch (like a sterile grain medium) to grow. Would one get the same effect by just soaking full-grown shrooms in the mead for a while? How long? Would this work with other species of mushrooms? >Well, that's the recipie. Enjoy!! > > --Doug Thanks for the inspiration! One more question: Is this technique in any way related to the drink that Z-Man gave his guests at the climax of _Beyond the Valley of the Dolls_?? --Marquis ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To find out more about the anon service, send mail to [h--p] at [anon.penet.fi.] Due to the double-blind system, any replies to this message will be anonymized, and an anonymous id will be allocated automatically. You have been warned. 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