Saturday, June 13, 2020

Vitamin D Sun-Dried Shiitake Harvest (now being air dried to increase Umami flavor): Chafon Lithium powered Cooler worked well

So I just drove up and grabbed the sun-dried Shiitake shrooms - still alive on the forest logs - and I loaded them into the cooler (just like I was shopping at the grocery store!)....

That's not all of them but you can see I covered the first layer of the cooler. These shrooms were dry but only about 50% dry (just guessing). When I got home I had some water condensation in the bottom of the cooler - proof that the shrooms exuded moisture as they cooled and the moisture condensed into water. The shrooms were definitely dry to the touch but very pliable.


So the cooler started out at about 95% battery power (31 amphours) - and got home to about 22% battery power. So I could keep driving into the city for a big sale if I need to - and the cooler would still be functioning.

That green light means the switch is on cooler (not heater).



So yeah it's a pretty big cooler but it gets down to 45 degrees - when I tested it - actually closer to 40 degrees Fahrenheit (like a real refrigerator). So it's cool enough to keep the mushrooms fresh to preserve the Lentinan (the medicinal protein specific to Shiitake). Forest grown shiitake have over twice the amount of medicinal Lentinan protein than the sawdust indoor grown Shiitake!!

So here is the load once I got home - and it weighed in at 1 and half pounds - but again these are about 50% dry (in contrast to the previous harvest that was wet when I got up there, so I dried it on the wood stove and outside a bit).

So I would say it's more like 2.5 to three pounds if they had been harvested soon after the rain - like the day after.

But the caps never fully opened - so I didn't harvest these too late. In fact it was perfect since they got sun dried and were dry enough to not crumble at all when stored in the cooler.

A full day of driving but it was worth it!

Wow - starting hour three drying at 158 F. for optimal Umami flavor - the smell is so amazingly delicious - filling our whole house. It's truly mouth watering. Umami is the real deal. I'm mailing out the last batch to my first "customer" - and reader of this blog. thanks again!




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