Are these wine cap mushrooms?

So I was going to make a woodchip bed that would be innoculated with wine caps. I had the spawn which I got from field and forest, but it was a busy year and didnt have time to make the bed.

So what I did was, I got 2 storage bins that I drilled holes in for drainage, addee a shovel of dirt since they say they need some bacterial activity to fruit, and filled the bins with the sawdust spawn and woodchips in April. They are at the side of the house and are in full shade because of another house close by, this also creates kind of a wind tunnel that it is always shady and very windy.

So now it looks like the bins are thiroughly colonized with mycelium, and after a few day break from the heat with a thunderstorm, one of my bins has 4 mushrooms in July!!. But they look different from the wine caps I have seen online, I wouldnt say they are burgundy wine red colored, they are more brownish/yellowish/tan, with the top kind of cracked on one of them (i assume its just the very windy location drying them up), the gills are white to pale grey.

Can anyone confirm that these are wine caps, if not what could it be? I thought that wine caps are super aggressive and outcompete everything, the bins with the woodchips are full of mycelium after 3 months of being innoculated with sawdust spawn.

Those look like wine caps to me.

Some “wine” caps actually look more amber than wine colored.  I have especially noticed this when the weather is not cool and moist.  I commonly find this color at the end of the fruiting.

By the way, congratulations on getting actual mushrooms so quickly.  I typically don’t expect mushrooms for the first year.  Nice work.

Eric

Wine caps start with pale gills that turn grey as they age, so keep an eye on the gills to see what changes they undergo.

Thanks for the reply guys. So most likely these are wine caps, just the weather/conditions most likely affecting them.

Is this the size I would eat them at, or should I be waiting for them to get bigger (also if they are edible, why don't people wait for them to get to their full size?) What are the chances that I am going to get more this summer or I'm probably not going to get anything until the Fall?

Thanks for your replies.

A White,

Actually you want to eat the mushrooms as soon as possible, preferably the same day they emerge.

A young wine cap is a tender, delicious mushroom.  Unfortunately the larger they get, the closer they taste to a cross between cardboard and shoe leather.  Truthfully, they may already be past their prime.  That’s too bad for these mushrooms, but the future mushrooms can get harvested and rated immediately.  I have tasted large mushrooms, but they tasted like wood.

The last note I would make is that the more burgundy they appear, the better they taste.  If the climate is having an adverse affect on the mushrooms, could you move the container into a cooler place like a basement?  When you get done with all the woodchips in your container, place them in the garden and they make wonderful garden compost.

Hope this helps,

Eric

They look like wine caps, but making a spore print is always a good idea. Wine caps drop dark purple spores, if I’m remembering right (doublecheck me on that!).

I think they’re much tastier when they’re still fairly small. Are you going to move them to an actual woodchip bed at some point?