Home Distiller

I came across several giant puffball mushrooms over the weekend and if they hadn't been so far past ripe I would have brought them home to eat and make some mushroom wash... Two of these were larger than basketballs in size and another was closer to the size of a football... They were the largest I've ever found in this area... I'll see about posting a picture later...

Please show us Rad! Giant mushrooms ... well, I just used small ones.

Okay, first results of my striping run were ... disappointing. Fermentartion started violently and continued for over a week on a more relaxed level. Expected to have some 10% as a goal. After stripping to 1/3 of the original wash volume, I only have ... 18%. This means fermentation stalled at 6%, which is really poor, given the sugar I added. So something must be killing of the yeast?

Anyhow, I will give the spirit run a try the day after tomorrow. Should get me close to 40%, I guess. Will make cuts, tell you about results. Fermentation performed below what you might expect from a normal sugar head wash. Taste of low wines is "mushroom" all the way.

Update expected around the weekend!

Odin.

Here you go... When these are ripe the surface is very white and smooth... As you can see, this one has been nibbled at by insects and small animals... I was being very careful not to have it implode as the center was no longer solid... The last picture is of a giant puffball mushroom located only inches from where I found this one and it has started rotting rather than producing spores because the outer surface has been compromised...

Lordy lordy that's a big ole fungus.

Update on my mushroom brandy. Just finished my spirit run. Pot distillation nr 2. Ended up with 42% ABV hearts after making cuts for heads & tails. Smelled like mushrooms all right. Tasted like that too. Makes my stomach turn upside down. Likker is just not supposed to smell like mushrooms. Okay for in the soup, better for on the pizza or in the spaghetti, but no, not for making drinks. I diluted to 35%. Did not make it better.

My opinion: from an artists point of view, it is interesting to undertake this journey, but mushrooms do not deliver a drinkable potion.

Odin.

Odin.
To me mushrooms have always smelled kinda like dirt....An earthy note that to me has a some what similar quality to peat in some way....Certainly not exactly,,,but similar,,,,,to me anyway.

Any chance that this distillate could be blended back to something else in an attempt to replicate a single malt styled something or nuther?

A couple ideas..

Used dry shitake mushrooms.

Make it St. John's Wort Vodka style. I think by using differn't base spirits a very palatable product might be possible.

My 2 cents,
SB

Dry mushrooms, like porcini for example, have a sweetness to them that the fresh ones don't ... They still have the dirt quality, but with some sweetness. I guess one could say, the dried mushrooms have an earthy sweetness. Unless it's just me

I think all your ideas are great! And please go ahead and try them. I am curious as to what comes out. I mean: there are more sorts of mushrooms than the "champignons" I used. And the original base wine had a good & fresh taste to it.

But "champignons" were wat was needed. And brandywine from that. Well, that is what the artists collective performing on the theme "champignons" wanted! For me this also means I will stop exploring for the moment. Have some UJSSM, vodka and rye waiting for me!

LWTCS: yeah there is an earthy smell & taste to them. But nothing like peat. At least not when distilled! I see no way of doing something nice with the mushroom moonshine I made. Sometimes, when making a brandy, that does not work out 100% like expected, some sherry, port, wood, honey, wood can do miracles. On this ... I don't see it happen. And I am not even going to redistill. To affraid some smell travels over.

Odin.

Odin wrote: I don't see it happen. And I am not even going to redistill. To affraid some smell travels over.

Reckon Goose would say "pour it on the ground".. Oh well. Can't win em all.

I think all your ideas are great! And please go ahead and try them. I am curious as to what comes out.

In my country, we call this "passing the buck"

Hi Blind Drunk,

I don't know if it is even worth that buck!

All I hope for myself is to get rid of that smell being scorched into my reptile brain.

Odin.

Just this week we had fresh mushrooms that we made into soup from the mountains in Norway. I need to take a class when I get home to determine which ones are safe to eat. My wifes relatives are canning them but now I have another idea for using the extra ones we pick that I can get away from my wife. I will continue following this thread.

Here's a video with one of the worlds leading mycologists John Stamets.

In it he discusses making Mico-nol, or mushroom ethanol.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI5frPV58tY" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

This guy is one of my heroes; a one of a kind conservationist.

This guy is one of my heroes; a one of a kind conservationist.

Me too. The guy is amazing.

You might like this, Peter -

http://www.mushroom-appreciation.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

yo BD, that was really cool. thanks for sharing that video. think i will need to check up on that guy to see how his science is progressing.

tomgndallas wrote:yo BD, that was really cool. thanks for sharing that video. think i will need to check up on that guy to see how his science is progressing.

That was Peter_Muir who posted the video It was really cool, though.

blind drunk wrote:

This guy is one of my heroes; a one of a kind conservationist.

Me too. The guy is amazing.

You might like this, Peter -

http://www.mushroom-appreciation.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

Thanks for the link BD, I definitely want to get more into harvesting mushrooms as another sideline.

At BD, tomgndallas, Bushman:

My Pleasure fellas. John Stamets is a true visonary. Mycology is another hobby of mine. I'm going to start experimenting with inoculating vegetable/ fruit seeds with companion mycelium. Apparently you can triple your yeld as the mycelium helps to draw nutrients to the plant and protects it from infection.

one of these days when i get a garden, i want to play around with it too. Just curious if there is an added benefit in dealing with hot Texas summers.

Thanks Peter again for that!

Incidently I don't have to tell the people on this forum that you must be compleatly sure of the identity of the mushroom before consuming them. Here's an article describing a poisoning in Canberra over new years eve. I lived in Canberra for years in the suburb of Dixon which has signs posted everywhere like trafic signs that death cap mushrooms grow in the area with a big scull and crossbones on them and a picture of a mushroom. The victims are thought to be Chinese which means that they may not have been able to read the signs.

Here's a link to the article.
http://m.smh.com.au/nsw/mushroom-victim ... 1pl9o.html

Not a brandy exactly, but I've had good luck with mushroom schnapps using golden chanterelles. In Randy Mosher's 'Radical Brewing' book he's got a recipe for a chanterelle ale that's basically a belgian abbey all with a mushroom vodka macerate added. I tried it a year ago and it was great, the chanterelles release a very bright, sweet, apricot flavor. Based on how well that went, this yeah I've infused some chanterelles into whiskey (not a great combo) and a hybrid belgian whiskey coconut sugar rum which came out pretty delicious. Next season I will likely just put them in neutral with some sugar syrup.

There is a small company making beer from chantarelles in the Netherlands. Supposed to be quite drinkable. I think if we would take something like that as a basis for a Mushroom Brandy, it might actually give good results. The mushrooms as I did it just gave of too much mushroom taste & smell. And somehow that is okay with pizza but not with likker.

Glad to see you try with chantarelles! Only beer making, or also some distilling down the road?

Odin.

Okay, guess what I just found?

The bottle of mushroom brandy I made years ago.

It does not smell as bad as I remember.

But I still feel nervous, having a sip.

Odin.

How is it?

If you insist on making booze out of mushrooms, you can try using candy caps. I have had Vodka infused with them from a craft distillery in California.

I suspect you could integrate them into a ferment, or at least add neutral to candy caps and redistill it.

In distilling, time is your friend.....things rarely get worse given time.

Waking this thread up...

There's a brewery making candy cap ale and morel ale both without hops, very malty and sweet/mushroomy, in Portland, OR as limited editions to huge success. Interested in Odin's results from tasting that mushroom brew after it aged...

What other options might there be to make a mushroom distillate? Maybe use some DME instead of sugar, and let the mushrooms flavor it, for a kind of mushroom single malt?

Barf! Undrinkable it is!

Odin.

Aw...

Maybe donate it, do you know any chefs? I bet a chef would go nuts with a mushroom liquor...