What did you do today?

[Pfeffer]

It was an awesome experience. And one I would recommend to anyone else to do.

Now that is very interesting about growing your own. What varieties can you grow? I've done oyster mushrooms from boxes before, but nothing else.

Do tell me more........


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I find shii-take the most rewarding due to it's high price in the supermarket. The easiest ones to grow though are pleurotis djamor (pink oyster) as it's a very fast growing one, that easy out competes pathogens. As it colonizes so fast it's also more fun for beginners. As it grows so fast, sterilizing errors are more forgiving. So you're less likely to end up with a big green chunk of mold (yep, that happens).

You can either do a substrate grow (straw, coffee grounds, grain left overs from brewing *hint hint*) or on logs. I'd recommend starting by buying some pleurotis djamor starters and growing it in a plastic container with pasteurized straw. Boiling it for 5min will do just fine. You can get a very large harvest with a 20 quid investment.

Homegreen.nl is a good source in the Netherlands, but I'm pretty sure you have local mushroom stores.

Tip; start small. Doing multiple containers increases risk of contamination. Don't do it in your brewing room. Mushrooms will not contaminate your brew, but visa versa it will.

It's actually a great way to learn basic hygiene. If you can grow slow mushrooms, you are good with pathogen precautions.

Edit; Using different methods you can basically grow all mushrooms, though symbiotic types like the morelle, chantarelle, truffle prove extremely difficult to grow.. but one day I will (or you can buy colonized trees).

 

[Clint]

Hells bells.....
Last night's curry is sublime....but hot as hell!
....bring me beer!


Cheers

Clint

 

[Russ146]

One of my clients is Orchard Pig Cider company and they were having a big family wedding.

Some family in Scotland were coming down and the weekend before they had a prominent University professor come to stay who was an expert on Fungi.

He took them all off for a fungi picking walk in the local woods and they came back and cooked what he said was safe.

He got it wrong, 4 of them nearly died and have been on dialysis ever since. The wrong fungi destroyed their livers.

They didnt make it to the wedding. they nearly went to their own funerals instead.

You must be a fool to eat wild fungi especially picked by someone else. It can and does kill.

 

[VW911]

One of my clients is Orchard Pig Cider company and they were having a big family wedding.

Some family in Scotland were coming down and the weekend before they had a prominent University professor come to stay who was an expert on Fungi.

He took them all off for a fungi picking walk in the local woods and they came back and cooked what he said was safe.

He got it wrong, 4 of them nearly died and have been on dialysis ever since. The wrong fungi destroyed their livers.


They didnt make it to the wedding. they nearly went to their own funerals instead.

You must be a fool to eat wild fungi especially picked by someone else. It can and does kill.

I used to be a Production Supervisor at Orchard Pig.
Never heard of this episode....

 

[alikav]

One of my clients is Orchard Pig Cider company and they were having a big family wedding.

Some family in Scotland were coming down and the weekend before they had a prominent University professor come to stay who was an expert on Fungi.

He took them all off for a fungi picking walk in the local woods and they came back and cooked what he said was safe.

He got it wrong, 4 of them nearly died and have been on dialysis ever since. The wrong fungi destroyed their livers.

They didnt make it to the wedding. they nearly went to their own funerals instead.

You must be a fool to eat wild fungi especially picked by someone else. It can and does kill.

Some expert him then eh? The world is full of them, educated idiots most of them!

 

[Russ146]

I used to be a Production Supervisor at Orchard Pig.
Never heard of this episode....

happened about 2/3 years ago family of mrs Clifton-Brown who lived in the big house. I asked her about them only recently and she said some of them are still very ill.

 

[BeerCat]

One of my clients is Orchard Pig Cider company and they were having a big family wedding.

Some family in Scotland were coming down and the weekend before they had a prominent University professor come to stay who was an expert on Fungi.

He took them all off for a fungi picking walk in the local woods and they came back and cooked what he said was safe.

He got it wrong, 4 of them nearly died and have been on dialysis ever since. The wrong fungi destroyed their livers.

They didnt make it to the wedding. they nearly went to their own funerals instead.

You must be a fool to eat wild fungi especially picked by someone else. It can and does kill.

If that is not a cautionary tale i dont know what is.

 

[Pfeffer]

There are some very safe ones that don't have poisonous lookalikes. There are also some edible ones with very evil twins. Most likely the bad one was a amanita phalloides (i.e. deathcap) which can sometimes look very much like a amanita caesara, which is actually very tasty. I tend to stay very far away from those, and everyone should.. but if you find a cantharelle..

In the worst case you'll end up with hygrophoropsis aurantiaca and not like it.

Just know what you are doing and don't Risk anything. The best ones don't have poisonous lookalikes anyway. Out of wild ones there's only 6 I'd take.

 

[brumbrew]

I often see beefsteak mushrooms or fungi or what ever growing in the woods I walk my dog. Does that have poisonous look alikes?

 

[Pfeffer]

I'm afraid I'm not thoroughly familiar with the English names so to prevent accidents I'd rather not comment. Though there are forums dedicated to this hobby as well.

Btw, don't pick it in an area where dogs are walked - you might get saltier ones then expected.....

Safest way is to stick with growing your own. Just saying that if you actually know what you are doing, it's not as risky as some people want you to believe. It's usually not the beginners that poison themselves. It's either eastern Europeans that are not familiar with deathcaps and to experienced people that start taking risks because they think they know everything.

My advice;
- Oysters
- Chantarelle
- Calvatia gigantea (giant puffball)

Stay away from;
- Morelle (can be swapped with gyromitra esculenta, a very nice tasting but deadly mushroom if prepared incorrectly.. they don't really look a like but still)
- Pioppino / poplar caps
- Shii take (not native, so don't get tricked)
- caesar mushroom (can be a deathcap)

Need less to say; safe varieties and under expert supervision only.

 

[Leon103]

Saw these in a walk tonight, tasted ok.

 

[Clint]

Look like fly agaric. ..poisonous or at the least hallucinogenic. ..

Cheers

Clint

 

[brumbrew]

The ones I'm mentioning grow high up on trees. No actual saltiness :-)

When you cut them they appear to bleed. I'm sure it's called steak mushroom or steak of the woods.

 

[Pfeffer]

That really sounds like fistulina hepatica, if it's that one.. it's edible. It has very poor taste though. It's something I wouldn't pick anyway.

Though if you stumble across a living oak on private property that has that mushroom on it, alert the owner. A fresh tree with undecayed wood is worth a small fortune (not millions, but a full grown oak can easily pay for a nice vacation). This mushroom gives some sort of a red marbling in the wood which is valued a lot by furniture makers.

The issue is that if the tree dies, the wood decays.

 

[Tau]

There are some very safe ones that don't have poisonous lookalikes. There are also some edible ones with very evil twins. Most likely the bad one was a amanita phalloides (i.e. deathcap) which can sometimes look very much like a amanita caesara, which is actually very tasty. I tend to stay very far away from those.

As soon as I saw those symtoms I thought a deathcap had got in the mix, they do look a lot like the edible one and I've avoided both just in case.

Leon103:

Read this first if you haven't eaten it http://www.themix.org.uk/drink-and-drugs/legal-highs/fly-agaric-mushrooms-9846.html

If you have eaten it, you won't be replying sensibly for a while anyway :lol:

Shamans in lapland (dressed in red & white) used to visit villages and make a stew that was dished out to the locals in winter, they even collected their urine to be reprocessd and ingested again. It's no wonder that the colour image of a jolly santa and flying reindeer entered into popular culture.:lol: