Round about 80 dried grams on your first time ever is amazing 
very nice
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I still have never tried those, but I’m very interested. It must be pretty cool to be able to find them growing wild.
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I need spend some time looking around this season. We h have a fungus festival in a few weeks that I hope to attend. Maybe someone there will have fresh local ones for me to try, to eat and to clone hehe.
Edit
Oh, forgot about an update about the cordyceps Sinensis experiment. The live horn worms have buried themselves and I can just barely see one of them through the side of the container. I’ve been keeping them cooler than they’d like, and It’s rather discolored. It may just be dead. I’ll be able to see if it’s gets colonized by the thick white mycelium or if it just rots. On the other hand, the preserved silkworms are getting colonized.
Not too surprised there, but will have to see if it pins and starts to fruit.
The Militaris bins are showing colonization, it’s going a bit slow since I’m keeping them in a cool spot at the top of the basement stairs. the other places in the house swing wildly in temp or is too warm. But I’ve heard it has more medicinal compounds when grown in cooler temps. Trouble with temps might be am issue when fruiting though, I have a floro light strip to light it to induce fruiting, but to plug it in I’ll have to move it to the basement where it’s even cooler, or into a room that might get too warm during the day.
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That is such a trip. I’ve been taking the cordyceps militaris powder from Fresh Caps lately.
Interesting stuff!
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I had to toss one of the Militaris bins, got fluffy mold growing in it. Fingers crossed for the remaining bin. Might have to jus too grow many many jars of these.
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BEAUTIFUL shots @toastyjakes
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@Seamonkey84 are you growing cordyceps??? That’s incredible man!! 
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I’m attempting it. I have a Militaris and a sinensis culture. But since sinensis isn’t commercially available, not sure if this culture is able to fruit at all, just running my own amateur trials and experiments, all while this being my first grow of any mushrooms at all 
. Just diving head in!
Still question if this is morel mycelium or mold 
. Growing very agreeing like morels is said to, but so does mold.
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I loveeeee it!! Best vibes to you, brother/sister! How did you pick your host species to try out? Any guidance on that? Are they specifics or generalists?
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@Howard.Crane congrats on that harvest dude!!! 
They look so vigorous and healthy!! Awesome that they’ve responded to good care!
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With the sinensis, I’m using silk worms since that’s what they’ve been using in Asia in trials. I also had live hornworms available so I gave them a shot 
. Militaris will hose many species in the wild, and it can be commercially grown on special enriched rice.
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I ran a syringe of the cordyceps sinensis and couldn’t get fruits, but hotdamn did it love my grain spawn and the eggy pudding I used as bulk substrate. Colonized so quickly that I considered just doing a dual extraction of the mycelium, but I’m not really convinced the resulting liquid can be shelf-stabilized like other shroomy extracts.
Anyone have tips or reading materials for ez home mycelium extraction that doesn’t just extract saccharides (carbs) from the grain and sub?
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They do both hot water and alcohol extractions from sinsensis mycelium. There’s mycelium on grain put directly into some supplements. I think some are growing it in LC, filtering out pure mycelium, and extracting from that.
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Awesome stuff y’all!!
Does the mycelium extraction retain all of the qualities of the fruit body?
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That’s what I’m trying to avoid. I can grow the shit out of some mycelium, but I don’t want the grain it grows on in my extract. So, how to easily separate them in a home environment?
I’ve read about the chinese growing huge vats of mycelium and then using reactions to “remove” the chems that keep them sanitary, but I want to actually ingest the stuff, not use it as carpet cleaner. 
At home, an LC isn’t a great way to create enough mycelial density to extract a meaningful amount of medicinal compounds. I’m open to possibilities, but I need greater than homeopathic levels of extracted compounds.
A lot of people claim yes, and even claim greater medicinal compound concentrations in the mycelium of some mushrooms, if we’re talking about the non-psychoactive types. The problem is that almost all of the health benefit scientific testing has focused exclusively on results obtained by testing the effects of fruiting bodies. Because of the vast amount of compounds found in the fruits, I suspect that the benefits are similar to many other plant extracts where you want the synergistic effects of “full spectrum” extracts rather than targeted single compound extractions. We see this in cannabis (thc + cbd + terps + plant growth compounds is more medicinally beneficial than single extracts of cbd or thc or terps themselves).
So, while there may be testably higher concentrations of some medicinal compounds in the mycelium, the lack of other compounds from the fruiting bodies, and the introduction of lots of carbs (saccharides + polysaccharides) from the brown rice introduces high chance for different medicinal outcomes. Also consider that brown rice is very high in arsenic unless you buy from a producer who tests their product and posts results, such as Lundberg.
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Would alcohol extract all the carbs and stuff from the grains? The broth for the rice can be all food grade stuff too, and most of it gets used by the colony. Maybe let it mature and use up most of the grain first before doing any extracts.
Oh, also, if you just let the LC ferment and not stir it much, it forms a really solid mat like a kombucha SCOBY
Ended up with 60g once dried to “cracker dry” and powdered. I’ll take it 
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For sure! Nice haul! Was that just the first flush?
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