Subject: Blue Mead
From: [email-masked] (Doug Ayen)
Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1993 19:27:10 GMT
Newsgroups: alt.drugs

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: [email-masked] (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 <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (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. <snrk>) 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

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