INSTRUCTIONS How to test magic mushrooms and truffles

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.

What the mushroom itself tells you

Before any reagent, the material is worth reading. Pinch a mushroom that is not fully dried and look for blue bruising where you touched it; on already dried material the same bluish marks are usually still visible. Two other features are characteristic of Psilocybe species: a veil around the gills while they are growing, and purple-brown spores that leave a distinct print.

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.

On the mushroom itself, read the result carefully. Ehrlich is not specific to psilocybin or psilocin: it turns pink or purple with indoles generally, tryptophan included, so an ordinary supermarket mushroom can give you a colour too. The reaction tells you an indole is present, not which one, and not how much.

The new tryptamines

Ruling out the substitutions that hurt

The more useful question is often what your sample is not. Phenethylamines from the NBOMe and DOx families produce a psychedelic state that can read as psilocybin or LSD, at doses where the margin for error is far smaller. To rule those out, use at least two of Marquis, Mecke, Liebermann or Froehde, and look for an instant, vivid colour change. A weak, slow browning is the reagent burning organic matter, not a positive.

How to detect NBOMes

Truffles are not weaker, they are different

The truffles sold in Europe are sclerotia of Psilocybe tampanensis and Psilocybe mexicana, different species from the Psilocybe cubensis that most dried mushrooms come from, so they carry psilocybin at their own concentration rather than a fraction of a familiar one. Fresh against dried 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

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 quantity varies within it, and use Ehrlich when what you have is a powder or a capsule rather than a recognisable mushroom.

A psilocybin percentage is not something we can get you. Our laboratory does not accept botanical samples and no reagent gives a number, so for mushrooms the weighing and the notes are the whole toolkit. A powder or capsule sold as an extract is a different matter: that a lab can quantify and a reagent can screen first.

Set, setting and harm reduction

Questions?

Can a reagent tell me how strong my mushrooms are?

No. It indicates an indole is present, which is identity rather than strength. Our laboratory does not accept botanical samples either, so for mushrooms weighing dried material is what you work from.

Can an ordinary mushroom give a positive?

Yes. Ehrlich responds to indoles in general, including tryptophan, so a culinary mushroom can produce a colour. Read it as an indole result, and use the bruising and spore print to tell you what the material actually is.

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 species, not simply weaker: they are Psilocybe tampanensis and Psilocybe mexicana sclerotia rather than a form of the Psilocybe cubensis most mushrooms are. Fresh against dried also 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.