How to test mushrooms and truffles
This version has been translated from Polish and links to the relevant test kits have been added. In a life-threatening situation call 112. This article is informational and serves harm reduction. It does not encourage the use of psychoactive substances and does not replace medical advice.
Mushrooms are hard to test well, at least if you were hoping for a number. Ehrlich turns purple with psilocin and psilocybin because both are indoles, which confirms you are holding something in the right family, but plant material makes a poor sample: the active content varies between species, between flushes of the same species, and between the cap and the stem of a single mushroom. Chemistry is not the limiting factor here, biology is.
Full method · Ehrlich reagent, 7.30 EUR
Where a reagent genuinely helps
On anything that is not a mushroom. Synthetic tryptamines sold as "synthetic mushrooms" such as 4-AcO-DMT, and powders or capsules sold as psilocybin extract, are exactly the cases where a purple ehrlich and a yellow-green hofmann tell you something useful. It also helps with the substitution that matters: if somebody sells you capsules described as mushroom extract and ehrlich gives nothing, you are not holding a tryptamine at all.
The new tryptamines · Tryptamine test kit · Hofmann reagent
Truffles are not weaker, they are different
Sclerotia contain psilocybin at a different concentration from the fruiting bodies of the same species, and the fresh against dried distinction moves the number again by roughly a factor of ten. Most reported dose confusion comes from mixing those units up rather than from anything a test could have caught, so the useful tool here is a scale and a written record rather than a reagent.
Precision scale · Substance library · Precision scale, 24.10 EUR
What we would actually do
Weigh dried material rather than estimating it, keep a note of species and source, start low with an unfamiliar batch because potency varies within it, and use ehrlich when what you have is a powder or a capsule rather than a recognisable mushroom. For an actual psilocybin percentage there is a laboratory and nothing else.
Full lab analysis, 99 EUR · Set, setting and harm reduction
Questions?
Can a reagent tell me how strong my mushrooms are?
No. It indicates an indole is present. Potency needs a laboratory.
Does ehrlich work on dried mushrooms?
It reacts, though plant material gives a fainter result than a powder does. It is at its most useful on powders, capsules and anything sold as an extract.
Are truffles weaker than mushrooms?
Different, not simply weaker, and fresh against dried changes the figure by about tenfold.
What about 4-AcO-DMT sold as synthetic mushrooms?
That is a case where a reagent is genuinely useful, because it is a powder rather than plant material.