Melmac is a strain of Psilocybe cubensis magic mushrooms.
The name is believed to reference the American sitcom Alf, which aired from 1986 to 1990, following the friendly extraterrestrial Gordon Shumway from the planet Melmac who crash-landed onto Earth and is taken into an American household.
As for the mushroom strain’s origin, Melmac is a lab-bred variant of the famous Penis Envy mushroom. You might also find this strain named “Melmac Penis Envy” or “Homestead Penis Envy.”
There are even some stories floating around that Melmac shrooms are closer to the original Penis Envy that was on the market in the 1970s than the Penis Envy cultivars sold today.
Regarding physical characteristics, Melmac mushrooms have a similar phallic shape and a strong psilocybin potency, like the more famous Penis Envy. What really distinguishes them from Penis Envy are their deep golden wavy caps and warped stems.
In this article, we’ll dive into this strain’s specs, history and how to grow them yourself successfully.
Melmac PE Magic Mushrooms Specs
| Potency | Above Average 💪 |
| Cultivation | Intermediate |
| Species | Psilocybe cubensis |
| Suggested Substrate | Brown Rice Flour + Vermiculite (BRF-Tek) |
| Cost | $$$ |
Melmac PE Magic Mushrooms Potency & Psilocybin Content
If the lore surrounding the Melmac mushroom strain’s origins is true, then it should have a higher-than-average psilocybin content, just like the original Penis Envy strain. However, most experts speculate that the potency of a given mushroom strain depends more on the growing conditions than its genetic material alone.
Thanks to the efforts of the Oakland Hyphae and the Psilocybin Cup, there’s more information available now about the potencies of shroom strains sold by popular cultivars.
The Psilocybin Cup is an event where cultivators and psilocybin mushroom breeders can enter their shroom strains to compete for potency, appearance, and taste, attaining recognition and awards.
The Melmac strain has been entered into the Psilocybin Cup six times so far. The strongest submission to date was entered in the Spring 2022 competition by Chad’s Mycology NPB. This sample tested 1.45% total tryptamine levels (psilocybin, psilocin, baeocystin, and other tryptamine derivatives combined).
The average potency for this strain is much lower, at around 0.98%. This places it in the “above-average” category, which ranges from 1% to 1.8% of total tryptamines.
The average psilocybin levels of this strain are around 0.84%, and the average psilocin levels were just under 0.1%.
What Do Melmac PE Magic Mushrooms Feel Like?
The effects of Melmac are generally similar to other Psilocybe cubensis strains, which typically intensify the user’s mood at the time. In the right setting, it causes a sense of euphoria, deeper feelings of empathy, and a sense of connectedness to nature.
Experiences with Melmac shrooms can vary from one person to the next based on the dose taken, unique body chemistry, experience with psychedelics, mindset, and setting.
On a full psychoactive dose of Melmac shrooms, people report intense visual and auditory hallucinations with vivid colors, patterns, distorted sounds, and an altered perception of time, with effects lasting up to six hours.
Sometimes, a shroom trip goes wrong, leading to nausea, vomiting, anxiety and panic attacks, and even poor decision-making that can lead to accidents and injury.
Where To Buy Melmac Shroom Spores
Melmac mushroom spores are harder to find than the Peny Envy strain.
Our go-to source for rare shroom strain spores that ship to Canada and the US, Ralphsters, doesn’t carry the strain.
We haven’t ordered from this company before, but Mush Love Genetics, out of Denver, Colorado, says it has these spores in stock — but it doesn’t say whether that’s in a spore syringe, swap, or culture in an agar plate.
If you’re based in Canada, SporesLab carries Melmac syringes, which, in our experience, have been a dependable source of spores.
For those of you based in Europe and the United Kingdom, our favorite sites, Magic Mushroom Shop and Magic Spores, don’t currently stock Melmac mushrooms.
Still, you might have some luck trading or purchasing rarer strains like this through online forms.
The History Of Melmac Mushroom Strain
The history of Melmac mushrooms is closely tied to Terence Mckenna’s discovery of the Penis Envy strain in his adventures in the Amazon Rainforest in the early 1970s.
One story goes that Mckenna collected the wild spore sample to send to mycologist Steven Pollock. Pollock isolated the genetics that led to the Penis Envy strain as we know it today.
Another story exists of another mycologist, Richard Guiterrez (Rich Gee), isolating and stabilizing the genetics from Mckenna’s spores, which would eventually become Penis Envy.
The Melmac mushroom strain emerged throughout the iterations of breeding techniques to produce high potency and stable Penis Envy shroom genetics.
Some mycologists argue that Melmac is just another name for Penis Envy, which is why it also goes by the name “Homestead Penis Envy.”
It was given an original name, separate from Penis Envy, because of its unique physical features — the deep golden cap color with its wavy texture and gnarled stems.
It’s believed that the Melmac might be the closest sub-variant of the strain among other popular variants such as Albino Penis Envy, Penis Envy Uncut, and Penis Envy #6, which came about through mutations.
The Melmac strain is rarer than other Penis Envy sub-variants listed because these shrooms are known to release very few spores from their fruiting bodies.
How to Grow Melmac Mushrooms
Penis Envy shrooms are a surprisingly easy strain to cultivate. However, Melmac shrooms are more of a novelty strain as the genetics are challenging to come by, and they tend to produce a low fruiting body count with smaller subsequent flushes.
Nonetheless, Melmac shrooms are still a highly sought-after strain due to their faster-than-normal colonization speed and their ability to produce exceptionally potent mushrooms under the best growing conditions.
We recommend a quick read-through of our guide on cultivating magic mushrooms to get started using the PK-Tek method, which in our opinion, is the most straightforward and reliable way to grow magic mushrooms.
This method involves inoculating sterile jars with your Melmac spores, allowing them to colonize, and transferring them into a fruiting chamber where you’ll harvest your crop.
The whole process, from inoculation to reaping the fruit of your efforts, takes anywhere from five to seven weeks.
The ideal environment for most cubensis strains, including Melamac, is as follows:
- Humidity — High (>80%)
- Substrate — rye grain, wild bird seed, brown rice flour, vermiculite
- Temperature — 20–28 ºC (68–82ºF)
- Light — None
- Airflow — Low
Melmac shrooms, like most Penis Envy offshoots, are fairly resistant to contaminants. Ensure you’re setting yourself up for success by being extremely attentive to the cleanliness of your working station and tools.
The most notable difference with Melmac is that it’s faster to colonize, but it does tend to have a longer growing cycle — with the fruits reaching full maturity around the six to seven-week mark, so patience is key with this strain.
When the caps open, you’re ready to harvest your mushrooms.
Carefully pinch the mushroom at the base of the stem. You could eat them fresh or allow them to dry fully before consuming them, and for longer storage.
After the first flush, don’t throw out the cakes. You can expect a few more flushes from your cakes, though each flush will be sparser and sparser as Melmac isn’t known for its impressive yields.
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