B+ Mushrooms: Psilocybin that’s Not a Quite a Perfect Score, Yet Never a Fail
A B-plus grade on your report card is one you’re happy to show your grandma. A B-plus is good enough all around. Sure, an A+ would’ve been nice. The Harvard admissions office might want an A+. But anyone complaining about a B+ needs to chill. We don’t have to be overachievers all the time.
I’ve grown B+ mushrooms for years. They are a strain of the popular psilocybe cubensis magic mushrooms. As the name suggests, extremely solid. Dependable. Easy to grow. The grows, and the trips, are rarely a complete failure.
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I tend to listen to the growers who know mushrooms best. What they often tell me is that the differences between strains have a lot to do with how they’re grown. A mushroom grown with attention, care and reverence will feel different than one grown carelessly in a dark lonely room. Mushrooms, these experts remind us, are more like animals than plants. If you raised a puppy with love and attention, you might end up with a loving and affectionate dog. Same goes for mushrooms.
B+ = B-Positive Trips
Many people pronounce the name of the strain as Be Positive. Why? Because the experience of tripping on B+ mushrooms is, often, a pretty happy one.
People tend to get done eating B+ mushrooms and think: yeah, that was pretty darn good. The trip didn’t necessarily astound me. I’m not a changed person–in a good way or a bad way. All around, a pretty positive time.
B+ Are Becoming More Popular to Grow
I learned about B+ mushrooms from a friend, an expert grower. He said he only grew B+. At the time, I was growing a half-dozen different strains of psilocybe cubensis–on the theory that I like variety. Other mushrooms are more potent or more colorful or have more personality in the way they look.
But my friend said there wasn’t any need to grow a bunch of different strains. Just find one that’s pretty good and stick with it, he said. After that, I grew more B+’s. I’ve found B+ mushrooms to be just as advertised: a consistent, reliable, tried-and-true strain.
When grown, B+ mushrooms are beginner-friendly. They tend to colonize the substrate quickly and reliably. They aren’t super liable to be contaminated by mold. The fruits — the mushrooms — are usually big and thick. And the flushes — the actual sprouting of the mushrooms — happens a few times, not just once.
To grow B+ mushrooms, follow the steps for growing other types of psilocybe cubensis.
B+ Mushrooms are of Average Potency
One thing is clear: B+ mushrooms don’t contain the most psilocybin of any strain. That distinction tends to go to the strain sometimes called Penis Envy (although Penis Envies are being re-branded with other names, like Shiva Lingam, as we speak).
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Testing is only just beginning for magic mushrooms, to show users how much psilocybin is in any one strain. One of the few pieces of data come from Oakland Hyphae, which puts on the Hyphae Cup. Oakland Hyphae and their partners, Tryptomics, test strains that growers submit. In a recent cup, a strain of B+ was found to have about an average level of psilocybin, compared to other strains.
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Dosing B+ Mushrooms
That finding from Hyphae Labs tracks with what normal people are saying: B+ mushrooms are about average in their potency.
If you’re using B+, you can follow the dosage recommendations passed down by users around the Internet. For example:
- A tenth of a gram of B+ is likely to be a microdose.
- A half a gram is a mini-dose.
- A full gram is a “museum” dose.
- Two grams is a comfortable journey dose, but you probably want to be somewhere safe, with access to an outdoor space and someone around to watch over you.
- 3.5 grams is a “therapeutic” dose, for which you’ll likely want a sitter, guide or caregiver nearby.
- 5 grams and above is a “heroic” dose, for which you definitely want safety and support.
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A caveat: psilocybin potency varies a lot depending on many factors: growing conditions, genetics, whether the mushrooms came from an early flush, or bloom, or a later one. Without testing your mushrooms in a lab, you can’t be certain how much psilocybin you’re taking in any gram of B+.
