Harvest

Be patient. Wait until all of the mushrooms that pinned have fruited completely. The mushrooms don't fruit at the same time.

PF Tek says mushrooms are ready for harvest when the caps have completely torn away from the stem.

Flushing

When a mycelium cake fruits, this is called a flush. PF Tek says cakes can be flushed up to 3 times and the mushrooms gain potency with each flush. Mycelium cakes should be dunked for 1 day after each flush and don't need to be covered with vermiculite again.  Just submerge in water for a day and move back to the fruiting chamber.

Drying

It is said that fresh mushrooms are the most potent because the psilocybin breaks down somewhat with time and heat. Fresh mushrooms are easier to ingest but you will need to ingest about five times the amount of fresh mushrooms as dried mushrooms. PF Tek says 1 gram of dried mushrooms is equal to 10 grams of fresh mushrooms but this doesn't seem to be the case. It is more like 1 gram of dried mushrooms equals 5 grams of fresh mushrooms.

There is significant debate on whether or not heat degrades psilocybin. The general consensus that we've found is that low heat does not degrade psilocybin. Drying instructions for mushrooms is to dry on low heat 95 F for 8 hours. Dried mushrooms should be cracker dry. A food dehydrator works well for drying mushrooms.

Once the mushrooms have been dried out with a dehydrator, use DampRid to remove all of the moisture from the mushrooms, making them cracker dry. You can do this by spreading out DampRid in a medium tote, then placing the mostly dried mushrooms in another smaller tote that sits on top of the DampRid with a lid on the medium tote. Leave for 1 day and your mushrooms should be cracker dry.

Store them in an air tight container in your refrigerator.