Pink Paradise devlog

February 6, 2023

So I came across these pink truffles online, called Pink Paradise.
They’re called Psilocybe Roseus on the box, so at first I wondered if it might be a separate species.
Then I found this tweet, which says that they actually become pink by adding beet juice:

I often read that mycelium is so good at filtering what it eats, that food colors won’t end up in the fruit bodies. Perhaps beet juice is so natural that the mycelium doesn’t filter it out?

Truffles are a little pigmented, so there’s a limit on how pink they can get, but I wonder what would happen if I grew Albino mushrooms instead, like this:

So welcome to my devlog trying to figure this out.

I started by soaking corn (which will become the grain spawn) in the beet juice from vacuum-packed beets:

This was not enough juice to completely cover the grains, but I hope it will be wet enough to let the endospores inside the grains germinate so I can kill them later by pressure cooking. I think I will simmer the grains in more juice tomorrow.

I also cut up the leftover beets to dry slightly. I want to experiment with adding them to the grain spawn in various ratios, to see whether this makes the mushrooms pinker, and if the mycelium can utilise the beets at all.