What is Lemon Tek, and why should you Lemon Tek mushrooms?
Lemon Tek is a method of preparing magic mushrooms with something acidic, such as juice from lemons or limes, before consumption in order to produce desired effects.
Common Effects of Using Lemon Tek with Shrooms:
- Reduces gastrointestinal issues
- Stronger
- Onset is quicker
- Duration of journey is shorter
- Maybe: Pre-metabolizes, or dephosphorylates, psilocybin into psilocin (no scientific literature to support this claim)
Do you learn better visually? Check out our Ultimate Lemon Tek Guide on YouTube!
We get those gastrointestinal issues from chitin, a polysaccharide that’s present in all mushrooms. Chitin also makes up the exoskeletons of insects and crustaceans. It’s really hard for us to digest, so if you consume a high amount of mushrooms or eat raw mushrooms, you’re probably going to get a stomachache. Luckily, chitin breaks down with heat (cooking mushrooms) and acid (Lemon Tek)!
We can extract some of the alkaloids that we want from mushrooms (such as psilocybin, psilocin, and baeocystin) with either hot water extraction, like making mushroom tea, or with any other form of extraction. With Lemon Tek, we’re doing cold water acid extraction.
Some people say that one of the benefits of Lemon Tek is that you’re pre-metabolizing the psilocybin present in the mushrooms into psilocin, but we at Fungi Academy have personally never found any literature supporting this argument, so take that with a grain of salt. (Did You Know? Psilocybin actually doesn’t pass through our blood-brain barrier; we need to metabolize, or dephosphorylate, psilocybin and turn it into psilocin before it attaches to our serotonin 2A receptors (5-HT2ARs) and creates the effects that we desire from magic mushrooms.)
Many people who use the Lemon Tek method say that the psychedelic effects are a little bit stronger, the onset of the trip is a little bit quicker, and the duration of the whole experience is a little bit shorter. So instead of having 45 minutes to an hour of onset, which can be as quick as 20 minutes after ingesting, and instead of the experience lasting anywhere between 5 to 7 and a half, maybe even 8 hours, the Lemon Tek experience is about 4 to 6 hours.
What do you need for Lemon Tek?
Lemon Tekking is simple and you probably have most, if not all, of the ingredients already!
- Limes or lemons (acidic fruits)
- Dried mushrooms
- Scale to weigh mushrooms
- Blender, coffee grinder, food processor, or mortar and pestle (anything to crunch up your dried mushrooms would work)
- Coffee filter, cheese cloth, or small sieve for straining solids from liquids
- Knife to cut citrus
- Mugs or jars & stirring device
- Optional: citrus squeezer (or you can also just squeeze the citrus with your hands)
How to Lemon Tek magic mushrooms
First things first, we need to weigh our mushrooms. This is really crucial and really important, we cannot stress this enough! Please don’t eyeball your mushrooms, as you might think they’re way less or way more than you’re actually consuming and you only have an accurate idea when you actually weigh them.
2. Blend your mushrooms
Next up, we’ll get our blender/coffee grinder/food processor and blend our mushrooms into a rough fine powder. We don’t want them fully powdered because it’s going to be very difficult to strain everything out after, and that’s the goal.
3. Mix your mushrooms and lemon juice
Very carefully pour your roughly ground mushroom powder into a jar. Give your lemons a good roll to get more of the juice out, and squeeze the juice into your jar until the mushrooms are fully submerged. Give the mixture a good stir, as agitation will help the juice extract our desired alkaloids. Let the mixture sit for about 20 minutes, coming back every 5 to 10 minutes to give it another stir.
How many lemons do you need? That depends on how much mushroom matter you need to submerge and how juicy your citrus is!
PRO TIP: You can get these tea bags and simply dunk your ground-up mushrooms like your morning cup of tea!
4. Strain your mixture
Now it’s time to strain out any mushroom matter and citrus seeds from the extract. If you don’t want any mushroom matter present in your drink, use a cheesecloth or coffee filter. Personally we’re okay with a little bit of a mushroom matter being present, since, although we probably extracted a lot of our target alkaloids within 20 minutes, we probably didn’t extract everything. So if you want to get the full experience and your stomach is strong enough not to get gastrointestinal issues, you can consume some mushroom matter.
Now your Lemon Tek drink is ready to be consumed! We personally like mixing it with tea, like a nice strong ginger tea with some honey so it tastes delicious.
👉Want to learn more about magic mushrooms? Try our online Psychedelic Journeywork course for free!
Responses