Last week we restocked our spores... Wavy Cap, TTBVI, KSSS, GT, B+, dozens of brand new spore stock!
Updated: We are now at a comfortable spot, we can reduce the spore syringes back down to £8. If you thought last year's chaos we brought this scene with £8 12ml spore syringes which were higher quality than any other shops offering at twice that price, this year we're rolling out the red carpet to chaos... That'll be sure to get a mark on our backs by the competing shops - last year after introducing £8 12ml's guess what happened to our Instagram? It got suspended for drug reports... Then reinstated after someone at IG seen sense, then it all happened again permanently. That's the mon🖕ey-over-morels BS in this scene.
You can get those sweet 12ml spores for your microscope for £8 again.
Wait - think we're done? Nope, how about free shipping at checkout on orders of £10 or more too? Not happy with your syringe within 12 weeks, let us know and we'll drop one into your basket free of charge.
This is permanent and it's the new direction for us. We can all be broke together.
If you're about here much, you will notice plenty of things improving over time on our website as we work on different sections of it as well as testing out new product ideas (my favourite), and just generally trying out new concepts to see what sticks and what doesn't. We only just opened in July, we switched domains from the old .co.uk to the .com and it takes a good while to get those cogs running - but, we're getting there. There will be delays, there will be mess-ups, it's unavoidable, but good things are coming and we're feeling in our element to do some amazing things in this scene. We've already put our stamp on it, so why stop there.
Other things we should mention: between working on Cylocybe, we have a couple of ideas we're deep into in our free time. These are 6 years in the making and we're now getting super close to launch. You MIGHT freaking love this. No spoilers though, only that we intend for it to be given away for free as a massive thank you to the scene for basically changing our lives, making us UK no1 for years and letting us avoid working in an office or having to deal with people we don't like every day. Just a little bit of giving back (well, a big bit of giving back!) we've wanted to do for years but never had the time. You'll know when it lands 🙂
Oh, and for all of the folk we've sent parcels out to without nice product labels - Sorry. We print in-house with a high-end label printer that needs to be powered on all the time or the printhead will dry up (and guess what our recent power cut did to it!). Anyway, a £700 replacement printhead later and this beast is back to printing sharper than a razor! If you're curious about our label printer, head over here.
Just a quick little news update for those who like reading this stuff.
We've made quite a few changes to the site, we won't be listing them all - but let's just say that people will be pleasantly surprised when they shop around. But, we did also remove the 3mls, 1ml and vials for all Psilocybe cubensis because it's just too much work for us. Though, you might get a little treat or two at checkout to make up for that. Also, who's looking forward to PsychoCybe '26 ?!
As we're getting snowed under with orders and expect the month to get even busier, we are adjusting our Grow Kit promise - grow kits will be dispatched 0-3 working days as long as payment is received before 1pm. Spores-only orders are still same day dispatch right now. All product pages have a dispatch promise on them. We removed the Saturday dispatch idea, we just like our beds too much.
Same day dispatch, or free gift worth £5.95 if we are late.
We now dispatch Monday to Saturday, so an order placed before 1pm on any of those days leaves that day (Saturday orders need to be paid before 9am, as the post office closes earlier). Sunday orders leave on the Monday.
(CyLab and liquid cultures are excluded, they take too long to make!)
EZ-REPLACEMENTS
We added this to the shop yesterday or the day before, and forgot to tell you all about it...
All sterile mushroom grow kits are now covered with a free guaranteed replacement for 12 weeks after dispatch, and the best bit - you don't need to pay an extra penny for it.
Oh and it's just a button click. Y'know, just one of those common self-service replacement buttons you've never seen on any shop ever.
"Say what??", "Are you mental?" and "Niiice" are the thoughts we can sense.
Yes, for any product marked as 'EZ-REPLACEMENT' it means it now includes the coolest warranty system we've ever had. Most spores have it (except swabs/prints/or wild exotics for hopefully obvious reasons!).
Too many people abandon this hobby because they've messed up, or nature's done a number on them at the final hurdle.
We re-opened on 1st July and came back to our original .com after years on the .co.uk! We've also built a monumental site upgrade ourselves to get your orders out faster. As you browse our microscopy spores, grow kits, and cultivation supplies, you'll see new features like Privacy Guest, stock notifications, currency conversion, and live delivery calculations (still a work in progress to get spot on).
We were in a massive rush to get product pages done, so used AI. That's temporary and we know it reads like AI and sucks, there's an interesting story there though... The AI intentionally writes like AI, it's all part of something called SynthID meaning it's all watermarked. If AI wanted to write good stuff, it could, it's just that the models released to the public intentionally spout the weirdest crap going.
Thank you for coming back! We're going to have fun seeing if we can work our way from 30th position on Google back to our old No. 1 spot. Wish us luck! 🙂
Update in September: Pretty much all the pages and products have been reworked, there is an 'About' tab for every one of the 60-odd cubensis strains which is AI - we're content with that as no human has a spare year to research every piece of nonsense that gets shared around social media about strains (I'd rather eat a death cap than subject myself to that personally). The terms page has been AI'd because we're not hiring a lawyer to write a page that no-one even bothers reading anyway. So basically, the site's clean from that temporary AI copy - it takes a while to find your voice, but we found it. Onwards and upwards!
Hi folks! Cylocybe is on a break right now! We tend to re-open sometime between late Jan to late Feb, so check back later. Waiting for a reply to an email? We've not been on top of emails during our annual winter holiday - we'll have a lot of catchup up to do 🙂 See y'all soon folks for another year of extraordinary mycoscopy adventures!
We're taking a festive break right now. We won't be reading emails while we recharge. Thanks for all the support this year - see you all in 2026 (not sure of a date yet)! ✨
❄️ Our checkout closed on Fri 12th Dec. Our holiday will begin once we've finished dispatching all orders left on our system. We'll be reopening at some point in January (undecided when exactly!). Thanks so much for 2025 and we'll see you back here in 2026 with an even better selection of products and a website makeover! Cylocybe.co.uk ❄️
❄️ Our product offering is purely limited to spores and cultures right now as we are taking a bit of an easier one until 16th January. We may decide to fully close at any time, but for now we'll just see how we feel not having to make a gazillion grow kits and CyLabs each day 🙂 Please remember that the postal system is chaos just now with Black Friday and Xmas post (we recommend choosing Tracked services instead of the budget option). Thanks! ❄️
Hi mushroom lovers, we'll be reopening around midnight tonight after a brief 3 weeks off sorting the place for the busy season ahead. We will update this news page with more info in the coming days about all of the new changes, new products, etc.. Right now, we are focused on getting product pages, terms pages all cleaned up.
Checkout closed from Monday 4th until Monday 25th August to allow us time to restock, reorganise and get prepped for the busiest season of the year! All remaining orders will be dispatched as normal over the coming days.
Note, 16th September 2026: Our prices have since risen to £12. But before you accuse us of hypocrisy, here's what you now get: Free UK Shipping on orders of £10 or more, Free Extra Spore Syringe and EZ-Replacement so you can replace syringes for up to 3 months... All of that for £12. KING. KONG. BOOOOOOM! (If you get the reference, gold medal for you).
Why are our spore syringes suddenly so 'cheap' compared to other shops? It doesn't reflect crappy quality. Let us explain the real story behind the price....
This regards a blog post we made years ago about the technical aspects of starting your own business, you can read it on our blog page Running or wanting to run a business like ours?
Correction:
We used to recommend Gandi as a place to buy a domain from, but they aren't actually the same Gandi anymore and we never realised until recently.
In 2023, Gandi switched ownership and removed their "no bullshit" policy. They have since tripled prices! We recommend Cloudflare to buy your domains.
Dispatch, Replacements, Removal of 3ml, Promo and Reduced Products
Few important updates to talk about!
We have improved our dispatch times. For orders containing only spores, we have moved from 0-7 days to same day dispatch. For grow kit orders, we've moved down to 3 working days (from being at 0-7 working days only a month ago). The grow kit dispatch promise is for orders placed after 1st June. If we break our dispatch promise, we'll always make up for it. Being held accountable for our promises is what keeps us on our toes - nothing like having to work doubly hard making extra spore syringes because we had to give freebie syringes to customers as an apology for being a day late!
Replacements. This is something we have improved too. As long as a customer hasn't been reckless with our grow kits, we will offer replacements on grow kits even if they have used the kit and contaminated it within 6 weeks after dispatch. We have some tricks up our sleeves to prevent people from abusing our generosity because if we don't, we could go out of business. But for the legit, genuine customers who aren't trying to freeload - we have your back for 6 weeks. For the others, we aren't buttoned up the back - and even the most cutting edge AI video generation tools won't be able to fake the video proof we'll require for a replacement (which will also render the kit completely useless, if it wasn't before). We're still to write the detailed replacement policy, it's coming and it's so much better.
This month we are moving our remaining equipment and stock from the unit as the lease comes to its 5 year conclusion. This means we are going to be super busy moving it all, so we've hidden lots of products from our shop to make this month that little bit easier. We've kept what we think are the most important products. After this month, we'll show all the products again.
A more permanent change is the removal of our 3ml Psilocybe cubensis spore syringes. The reason for this is simple, it was becoming too difficult maintaining our huge selection of strains in two different volumes. This little change cuts the work in half, and is a better deal for customers as the cost of one 12ml syringe is £15, which is less than the cost of two 3ml's which would add up to £16. If we had removed the 12ml and only offered the 3ml, it would feel unfair to customers. The decision was quite easy... Customers over profit.
Regarding that, we have a lot of 3ml's here that we are giving away as a promo. So for every customer who spends at least £15 in our shop, we will give them at least one 3ml Psilocybe cubensis spore syringe of our choice. Big orders could see multiple of them! We'll look at how much spent to decide how generous we are going to be.
And lastly, we are sitting on a new product we are keeping secret right now. It's the most game changing product we've come up with to date. When we say gamechanging, we really do mean it. Our customers are going to freaking love it (and our competition are going to freaking hate it). More on this later!
Technical issues resolved. We just recovered from a server crash and had to revert to old backups of the website. Orders are unaffected.
At around 17:30, our server crashed and wouldn't restart so we had to restore an older backup from a few days ago. Sorry for the inconvenience caused. All orders completely unaffected! Enjoy your weekend 🙂
Other than just more varieties of strains and species of spores, we have kitted our shop with super useful products.
AgarPots, DIY PF-Tek, Kilner Jars, Syringes, Vials, Contamination Control Chemicals, Fertilisers, Peptone, Agar Agar, Unicorn Bags, Dextrose, Rye Grain, Verm, Perlite, you name it... And we aren't done either, many more to follow. Product pictures are still a work-in-progress, but the products themselves are all available to purchase right now.
Take a look through the categories page to see them all, or head over to the /shop page to see everything.
We have also lowered the dispatch time from 7-14 working days for CyLab's to 0-7 working days, which we think is a much more reasonable time to wait for customers 🙂
Note, 28th August 2026: these kits sold out and will be returning in the coming days.
Hello InocuBox™ (and Ps. Tampanensis!)
We have just launched our brand-new Cyspec InocuBox™ Grow Kit.
Not only that, but we will soon be launching the full range; InocuTub™ / InocuPot™ / InocuBag™ over the coming days and weeks.
These are the biggest changes to happen since we launched our MonoBox Grow Kit back in 2021, and a big deal to us on our never-ending pursuit to bring the absolute best quality grow kits you can find in the UK. The entire Inocu™ series of grow kits are a major jump in quality, value, speed and cleanliness but with no jump in price - rule-breaking at its finest!
Before we go, today we added to the shop fascinating Psilocybe Tampanensis spores (our absolute personal favourite for the microscope!), with stocks of various new Psilocybe cubensis spores such as Lizard King and more ready to be processed into syringes over the coming days.
Within a couple of hours or so, we'll be updating our spore offerings for you guys. We're talking Psilocybe Azurescens, Psilocybe Cyanescens, Panaeolus Cyanescens, and more Psilocybe Cubensis like Red Boy and Tidal Wave. We're even adding a wonderful sclerotia / truffle type that some of you may have heard of called Psilocybe Mexicana, with a personal favourite called Tampanensis (which takes us back to younger microscopy days...) coming within a week or two.
Today is a special day for us and this is what we're all about, exciting spores!
CYLOCYBE RETURNS! The shop is open, sorry for such a long time off. If you want to find out more, there's a news article from Dec 2024 about it (warning though, it's rather heavy!).
But, we are in a good place right now and ready to do something more productive with our time - ie. serving the UK with the most innovative myco products and belter prices you can get for the quality.
Oh, and working towards getting our No.1 spot on Google back, because we have essentially disappeared off it! Get ordering so we can start working again! 🙂
We're closing on Sunday 3rd of December at 9pm. Check homepage for full info.
We're a little unsure when we'll be reopening, January or February. We'll let you know closer to the time 🙂
As soon as we're back, we'll be working on a few ideas for Cylocybe. Some absolute belter products we're planning, and if all goes to plan, 2024 is going to be an exciting year around here.
That's all the parcels now out, folks. So our summer break has officially started.
This means we'll only be replying to emails about the big stuff like payment issues or lost mail. Now, if you're dealing with contamination issues, we feel bad for you, son, we've got 99 problems but trich ain't one. Unless our products were contaminated before you used them, which is pretty rare, we're not classifying things like that as important as we have no control over nature or your sterile technique (or lack of).
Take care, have fun, and see y'all back here on 28th July!
Cylocybe's summer break is from 21st June to 28th July.
Ensure your orders are placed and paid for before midnight tonight strikes! After that, we're turning our checkout sign to 'closed' for the summer break, and late payments will need to be refunded which is a hassle for everyone.
Make sure to follow the payment instructions email precisely (especially the part in orange which says '[Order No.] <- IMPORTANT!' and especially today) as we will not process any orders from today with payment mistakes but will refund them for you of course.
Again, to make clear, if you haven't sent your payment (correctly) before midnight - the only thing you will receive is a refund, you won't receive your order. So do not try to wire us a bank payment after midnight for an order regardless of us being closed because we won't fulfil that. We need our break.
Once we've sent out all your orders, we're switching to full summer mode. That means we'll only be replying to emails about the big stuff like payment issues or lost mail. Now, if you're dealing with contamination issues, we feel bad for you, son, we've got 99 problems but trich ain't one. Unless our products were contaminated before you used them, which is pretty rare, we're not classifying things like that as important as we have no control over nature or your sterile technique (or lack of).
To those who emailed today, worried about their orders not getting shipped before our holiday - relax. Of course, we're sending out the orders. We're setting the cut-off tonight so we have the time to close up shop and get your orders on their way. We're on top of it!
Starting off our summer vibes, we're heading out later tonight to see The War on Drugs in Glasgow - can't wait!
Thanks for your support and we wish y'all a brilliant summer.
PS. We just launched a SpawnBag version of our XXL MonoBox Grow Kit at a discount rate of £35 as a kind of goodbye gift.
We wanted to just use Parcelforce, but it turns out they do not like envelopes and prefer boxes. Who would have thought?! So, we're back to using RM for orders which fit in an envelope. Prices are lower as a result for those customers.
Since reopening last month, we've been busy with many orders, and it's been great to see the warm welcome from our customers. Your support and excitement for our return mean the world to us and show how much you value our products and the effort we put into them.
After a 6-month break from Cylocybe, we're back and ready for action. Most importantly, our heads are in the zone.
Since reopening two weeks ago, we've been absolutely inundated with orders. While it's nothing we can't handle, we honestly didn't expect so many people to be looking forward to our return. Thank you for the genuine and welcome surprise!
We now use Parcelforce for all orders to Scotland, England and Wales, no matter how big or small. No Royal Mail. We are taking the hit ourselves, as it's costing us more than the £5 we are charging.
Parcelforce for all UK orders, and a new replacements policy
Parcelforce for all UK orders - no matter how big or small. No Royal Mail. And we are taking the hit ourselves, because it costs us a lot more than the £5 we charge you. Can you tell we're in good moods? 🙂
Our replacements policy has changed, and we believe it is much more customer-friendly than our previous policy. We highly recommend you read it in full. Here is the shortened gist of it: Established customers can now receive free replacements for reportedly contaminated microscopy spore syringes, while new customers will receive replacements on a case-by-case basis. New customers are now able to potentially receive kit replacements even after they have used the kit and contaminated it, up to a total value of £50. Established customers aren't restricted to the same limitations as new customers. RMA may be required for us to agree to any replacements.
Have a Brilliant Christmas and See You in the New Year
We are taking a well-deserved (if we do say so!) break until the start of the New Year! No late orders or payments will be processed until then, however, all orders that were paid for prior to the cut off time will be dispatched this week.
We are truly thankful to you fun guys for this past year and the positive impact our products have had on folks lives. We can't wait to come back refreshed, with new ideas and products!
Wishing you all a very merry Christmas and a magical New Year!
Shop will be closed from Monday 14th November (EXCEPT for one day in Dec)
Sunday 13th of November is the last day you can buy things from our shop until the new year.
Well, with one exception...
We will re-open on Sunday 4th December for one day for Christmas pressies for your lucky friends, partners, kids, parents and such! This gives us plenty of time to make sure they turn up on time!
Please don't send payments when our website is closed. We will not be coming into our unit to spend all day making a grow kit and then waiting all of the following day for a courier to come and collect it. If you miss your opportunity to purchase, you will have another on Sunday 4th December 🙂
But as soon as it hits 12am on Sunday night, we are closed.
ps. Cash in Post is now disabled at checkout - we don't want cash envelopes turning up when we're closed.
If you have made an order and selected Cash in Post - don't send us a Bank Transfer unless you are looking to cause us hassle! ie, don't take the biscuit with our time please 🙂 Simply create a new order and follow the provided payment instructions.
We're not sure how long we will keep bank transfer options or even our shop open. It has been a relentless few months. We are on top of orders right now but we'd be lying if we said we didn't want a holiday... The positives though is that we know that we are bringing joy to other peoples lives, as cheesy as that sounds. That fact alone does make it more bearable.
All we need from you guys is to make sure you are reading those emails. If we send an email, it's going to have important information in it. It feels like we are always hitting a brick wall trying to drum this into people. 5 years ago when we first started we didn't have an issue with people not reading emails or the website, but every year since we've seen the attention span get less and less... to the point where 80% of emails sitting in our inbox are completely avoidable. Sometimes we just wished we had a normal business selling normal things and taking normal payments... But in saying that, normal gets boring after a while... so back to reality it is!
We made the decision to temporarily disable bank transfer at checkout this week and maybe next (we're unsure how long exactly).
If you still want to order from us and are prepared to use one of the other payment methods at checkout, that's A-OK!
The reason we've chosen to disable Bank Transfers is because we need to shrink the number of orders coming in til we're on top of things and through experience having just Crypto or Cash in Post is enough to filter the people who really want our products or who just want products (if you get what we mean).
Sorry for the inconvenience folks, but we're up to our eyeballs right now.
Honestly - we're not intentionally ignoring people (except some, but that's for legal reasons!).
If you've sent an email our way but not had a reply, we're sorry.
While we are managing (just) to keep within order dispatch times, the unread emails sitting on our system have been piling up.
And this is us working 12 hour shifts!
We try to skim to the important ones from the subject lines, like issues with payments etc. But God love the folk who can't write a meaningful subject line!
These past few months have been the busiest ever for our shop, even crushing lockdown.
We know we need more staff, but finding people who can cut the mustard is difficult and time consuming. We've put a lot of time and effort into training the wrong people before and we don't want to repeat our mistakes.
Some products are being made out of stock today to try to make things a bit more manageable for us.
If you are buying something from our shop then please make sure to read, read, read. Reading our site and emails carefully avoids the majority of emails needing to be sent in the first place, therefore resulting in a better experience all around.
There's an expectation on us by some to solve failed grow attempts and send free replacements when shit happens. Whether that expectation is fair or not depends on a few things, like was it bad luck or being careless (rarely does anyone admit to being careless!).
We've been producing these replacements whether it's fair or not, for far too long. Winter is the worst because too many people don't do their maths before buying at our shop... if they did, they'd know that even keeping a single 2KW electric heater on at full pelt can cost over £250 per month (768 hours x £0.19 per kWh x 2kW).
We've intentionally kept our shop closed these past few months because we know what happens. So many folk buy our products during winter, have temperature issues and then email us for replacements. It was just a couple of days ago we had an email from a customer admitting their house was cold and telling us to send a free replacement, without as much as a please or thank you.
Keeping our business closed every winter is a terrible solution, but we're fed up with this current situation.. So we're asking for your input here. We have two solutions which we can make work.
Option 1 (on approx. 20% of the vote at 16:45 on Feb 18th)
Speedy, no-fuss replacements at the touch of a button (ie. no email or proof needed). We'll also provide limited support on cultivation questions. This will put the price up by quite a bit, which might make it unaffordable to some.
Option 2 (on approx. 80% of the vote at 16:45 on Feb 18th)
Only providing a very limited replacements policy (like damage in transit) and offering zero support or advice on anything cultivation related. This keeps our prices the same but is bound to piss off a lot of customers who want replacements or answers to their cultivation questions.
Both options have their own pros and cons. If we could make Option 1 work without putting the prices up then we would. But let's be realistic for a minute. Option 2 might generate a lot of hate for us whereas option 1 could make us too exclusive.
We're on a self-preservation break from 19th Nov, 2021 until 1st Jan, 2022.
Please ensure all orders are paid for by 23:59 on Friday 19th. If we receive a payment after this time, your order won't be dispatched until the new year.
But don't worry - all active orders on the system will be dispatched as usual and all emails will be replied to before we go on our break!
Since the very first lockdown last year, it's all been work, work, work for us and it's time for us to look after ourselves. Not having a break in that long is unhealthy so we've decided in 2022 to do things a little differently and try to have more of a work/life balance.
During our time off, we may spend a couple of hours max each week on replying to emails - but it certainly won't be any more than this, and even that only covers a handful for emails. Expect delays in replies as we won't be checking them very often.
To every single person who still ordered with us even when we were stuck with just cash and crypto, you guys really saved our shop. If it weren't for you being willing to put in that little extra bit of effort, we would 100% have been gone by now.
We have so many new ideas for Cylocybe in 2022 and we can't wait to make them a reality, especially the equipment section of our shop 🙂
December closure dates, gift vouchers and pre-orders
We will do a proper end of the year news update for you all soon but for now, we just need to give some more info about our December closure:
You will be able to order Grow Kits up until 23:59 Monday 30th Nov
Spores and supplies can be ordered up until 23:59 Monday 7th Dec
Any orders made before these times will be dispatched as normal before we go on holiday.
Whenever we close for some time off, we always end up working an extra week or so to get all of the grow kits prepared, sterilised and dispatched - so, we thought it made sense to continue to offer spores and supplies during this time as they are quicker to prepare and dispatch.
During the time we're closed, we will have the option available to purchase gift vouchers - there has already been lots of you asking if gift vouchers are available to buy for Christmas presents!
This will be the first year that we've offered this option, and we're really excited about it!
If it goes well, we may continue to offer gift vouchers permanently.
We will also have a pre-order system available, so you can place orders for dispatch after we return.
Again, this will be the first time that we've had this feature on our website and we can't wait to see how it goes!..
Years of running your own business can build up a lot of rage frustration at times.. So, why not take this out on a few deserving walls with a sledgehammer?!…
An overview of what's been happening the past few months, exciting things ahead for us and the reason why we have to close the shop to accepting new orders for a few weeks - starting on Sunday 28th June until…
No stock because of Covid. We have to extend our break 🙁
It's with heavy hearts that we have to let you know we are extending our break until 28th April as huge delays on obtaining crucial stock right now is hitting us hard.
Coronavirus is causing havoc in so many ways.
We know that many of you will be hugely disappointed when you come onto our site tonight at 12am expecting everything to be up and running but this is a decision we just have to make right now.
To see some positivity in it all, we are going to use this extra time to really build upon what we have. The development opportunity is unprecedented and we have a chance to do loads more with Cylocybe over the next 30 days.
We send our well wishes to you and your loved ones during this uncertain time.
We will now be having a break from accepting new orders until 10th January.
There has been a banner on our website for the past couple of weeks letting everyone know about these holiday dates and you guys have certainly been getting your orders in before our website is put on pause..
..We're going to be working through all of these orders ASAP and getting them sent out to you this week.
A lot of you have emailed asking if orders will arrive before Christmas because you have bought them as presents - Don't worry, they will be dispatched by us in plenty of time for you to gift the wonders of mushrooms to your loved ones!
Cylocybe continues to grow bigger with each month and we continue to be amazed by all the support we receive.
With this growth, of course comes a much heavier workload and longer hours.. so it's absolutely crucial for us to have a break and try to avoid feeling completely burned out. We will come back with clearer, focused minds to further our efforts in bringing quality service and products to the mycology scene.
We have lots of exciting ideas for 2020 floating around in our heads.. New products, new tutorials (we hope to soon gain new skills in video and animation to really ramp up our grow guides to the next level) and work on ways to help our processes in the background, like speeding up dispatch times for you.
We won't be checking our emails every day over this break and don't guarantee any replies until we return on 10th January. Responding to the volume of emails we receive daily is a full time job in itself, so please understand that we also need time away from this.
If your email is absolutely urgent and cannot wait - Put 'Urgent' in the subject line and we will know to check it, but we have to ask that you please only use this for genuinely time-sensitive queries and respect our holiday time.
Our website will stay live, so that you can all still get access to our grow kit instructions and we also may be running a very special competition over the next couple of weeks to win a brand new 23L Presto Pressure Cooker - So definitely keep checking out the website for that!
2019 has been monumental for Cylocybe and we hope to continue this over the years to come with you all by our sides.
Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
Ruth, Nick and Clive x
Oh, we have had a few requests recently for more pictures of Clive, so as not to disappoint the fans - Here's our favourite photo of the year! - A wild Clive appears..
We are running a bit late on dispatching orders this week, for which we apologise hugely.
It gets us down when we can't get orders to you in time for the weekend, because we know how excited you are to get started with your projects. It's very rare for us to be in this situation at the end of a week and we are so sorry, knowing that there'll be many disappointed folks out there..
On Wednesday night we were involved in an accident - our car slid off an icy country road late in the evening and smashed through a sturdy farm fence and steel gates.
Because of this, we've been having to try our hardest to keep up with dispatching orders and responding to emails, whilst dealing with our abysmal insurance provider (cheap insurance providers through brokers - avoid them if you can!) - and considering we have very limited time as it is running Cylocybe, this has all resulted in delays for some orders.
Trust us when we say we feel guilty - and please know that we always do our best.
We will be working all weekend to catch up on lost time and will be back to normal by Monday or Tuesday.
If you have sent an email and haven't had a reply - please don't stress, we'll get back to you ASAP.
All work and no development makes Cylocybe a dull site.
All work and no development makes Cylocybe a dull site.
All work and no development makes Cylocybe a dull site.
We're taking a short break from orders next week:
When: Monday, 21st October at 00:00 (GMT)
Until: Monday 28th October at 00:00 (GMT)
During this time, you won't be able to add items to the basket as the checkout will be disabled. The rest of the site will work as per usual and you can still browse around and read guides, etc.
We'll continue to dispatch orders until all the payments come in, but if we do not receive your bank transfers or cash in post orders by 10am on Tuesday 22nd (at the very latest), then your orders won't be sent until the week later. Cash in post orders will need to be sent on a next day Royal Mail service to ensure the payments arrive safely with us on Tuesday morning with our post person.
As usual, we'll be using the majority of our break to develop Cylocybe (and Cyanita.com) further. We'll hopefully squeeze in some well needed time for visiting family and friends, just to remind them what we look like (it's been that busy here!).
Some of the things we'll be working on include new product ideas (especially for the DIYers!!), more payment options, getting a van for our business (we both just passed our driving tests), promotions for the Halloween / Guy Fawkes week and lots more ideas we need time to sort through and see what makes the cut.
Unless there is some absolute major issue which needs addressing - please hold off on the emails until we are back on Monday 28th.
Our website will not accept any new orders from Today until Wednesday 28th August.
The website has been bombarded with orders since we put the banner up about our break so it looks like we will need to work up until Friday to get everything out to you all.
We plan on coming back with some more new products and changes to our site, also hoping to finally set up worldwide shipping rates for all of our products instead of limiting international customers to just our spore and culture products.. It sounds an easy task setting up shipping rates, but trust us - when things are more than a hundred grams, virtually every single country outside the UK massively varies in price to ship, making a comprehensive list of these prices for each country and varying weights is a mammoth task.
We will give you all an early teaser on just one of the new products planned for our return on the 28th - The Cylocybe Special Mycopots. They look beautiful, colonise fast and have an awesome fruiting capability so we'd be surprised if they don't become an instant hit!
After a sufficient battery recharge - Cylocybe is live and accepting orders again!
Please remember that we won't start dispatching orders until Tuesday 2nd July, as we are using this Monday to trial run a new way of fulfilling and dispatching orders. We will be using a whole new system, which we expect will help us get through an extra 40% of orders each day.
This will be the biggest change for us behind the scenes since we started our business.. It may sound a bit boring for you guys, but for us - oh we can't wait!
It's exciting knowing how much more efficient our dispatch process is going to become - We're not going to be at Amazon level speed any time soon, but if we can speed up dispatch times for everyone by even one day.. that means happy customers and happy us!
Other than big changes behind the scenes.. We have also developed a new substrate which we've named 'Cylo-Tek' (our reinvented PF-Tek recipe) and this is available right now as MycoPot and MycoBox Grow Kits.
..It has taken months of experimenting to nail down a perfect recipe and incredible results, and we are now insanely proud to bring you yet another original Cylocybe product!
We will also have this available in MycoBags over the coming days, for those of you who enjoy this style of grow.
Due to the unpopularity of our rye grain products (MycoJar and MycoBag) we decided to remove them from our website. This was a sad decision to make, but, if only one or two people order these each week, then it means that our steriliser capacity isn't being used efficiently and run virtually empty - which slows down the production of our other kits and causes us a bottleneck in our production. This has a chain reaction effect on every process down the line, right into our dispatch times for all customers.
Every little part of the business is connected to everything else and we are learning how best to move forward with efficiency in mind.. We need to constantly work on this (which is why the time off is so important) to make sure we can cope with the ever increasing demand on us.
In other happy news, we have invested in an extra 72 litres of sterilisation capacity, which now brings us close to 200 Litres all in all.. Another important step in keeping up with demand!
We still have lots more planned for Cylocybe and there's always things going on behind the scenes.. We won't ever become stale, that's for sure!
Thank you again to everyone for all the love and support, we have come across some really lovely people during our time in running Cylocybe and long may that continue 🙂
As mentioned in our previous news post back in April, we are going to try and take a break from fulfilling orders every couple of months to work on improving our business.. and to recharge our batteries!
We will not be accepting any new orders from Friday 21st June until Tuesday 2nd July.
All orders placed before 12am Friday 21st June will be dispatched as normal and we will re-open the website at 12am on Tuesday 2nd July to begin accepting orders again.
This time is extremely important for us and our business and we see it as essential for us to continue to develop Cylocybe - We have been discussing the changes that we want to make for weeks now, so it will feel amazing to finally get everything on that to-do list checked off!
We have been working hard on re-stocking and adding to our gourmet, medicinal and novelty mushroom culture syringes over the past month and now have a huge range of 29 species available!
You will now also be able to get these wonderful cultures in handy 3ml syringes.
This is a substantial expansion to where we want to take Cylocybe - to not only provide the absolute best experience for our magic mushroom microscopy enthusiasts, but to provide this same experience for absolutely everyone who adores mushrooms like we do.
We have also just restocked many popular species within our microscopy spores category which have been out of stock for a few days.. Azurescens, Wavy Cap, P.E. and many more (you guys really have your favourites!).
On another note..
It looks like we have some fresh competition from an old source, a UK based salvia site which has just rebranded to focus on magic mushroom spores - Now, we don't mind competition, in fact we love having some competition because it keeps us on our toes! But, in the time we have been running our business, we have experienced some other suppliers who have plagiarised our products, which we spend a lot of time innovating, and even one who copied almost every bit of content from our website (we confronted them.. they disappeared).
Now, this newly rebranded site is claiming to be the UK's 'best supplier' for spores.
We added our own statement thanking you all for helping us become the UK's biggest and most trusted supplier of spores a couple of months ago, as we knew this to be absolutely true due to our search engine rankings, service reviews and many other factors.
This was actually added to our website after we experienced devastating technical issues which we managed to bounce back from in only 5 days (a whole new website had to be built and hosted on our own server) - We wanted to basically show a big confident two-finger salute to the people who managed to take us offline and show that thanks to the support of our customers, we were still the UK's number one!
We regularly work around 120 hours a week to specialise in what we do, provide a first class experience for you all and are proud to now see ourselves as the UK's number 1 spore supplier. We have worked unbelievably hard to get where we are.
So, it feels a bit frustrating that this website thinks they can just do a simple rebrand after making their name specialising in another field for 18 years (stick a mushroom in their logo).. and then just walk straight into this field and claim to be the UK's best spore supplier.
In fact, they actually then claim to sell the highest quality magic mushroom spores and spore vials anywhere in the world.. Seriously - BOLD!
We're sorry about having to bring this up, but we needed to get the frustration off our chests. When you have a genuine passion for your business - these types of things really do hurt.
We just want to thank you all again for your continuous support and we will keep working hard to grow Cylocybe into an even bigger and better business.
Just a quick update to let you know that since accepting orders on 26th April (see last news post), we have been utterly bombarded with them.. we are under a whole heap of stress trying to frantically catch up! So please bear with us if there are any delays.
We will hopefully soon be hiring a small team of staff to cope with this - but it will take time to source the right people who we can totally put our trust in.
Until then, stress stress stress!
p.s. For the BRF lovers - we decided to make the PF-Tek MycoBoxes out of stock.. Most of you are choosing our round grow pots and bags anyway, so it seems the wise choice to for us to make some needed steriliser time efficiency savings! If you really love the MycoBox style grow - just opt for our Cylocybe Special which is the number one kit in our shop!
Since going on our break we have made some new developments:
We have invested heavily in new equipment such as an industrial grade substrate mixer, lab supplies and the huge All American 75X Electric Steriliser! This now brings our total sterilisation capacity up to 104 litres when you take in the other equipment which we use - and we have plans to add another 220 litres to this capacity in the coming months!
A 6 foot by 4 foot tall laminar flow hood has been added to our lab - massive.. so you can probably figure that we are planning something quite big here.. and we need all the big guns to achieve it.
Our stock rooms have been restructured to allow more inventory to be held and we also moved our office/shipping room into a bigger space to cope with bigger demand.
With some rare Scottish sun making an appearance, we did manage to squeeze in some chill out time.. when not trying to rescue birds from our 'Head of Security' cat - who can take his job too serious.
As you will see below, a lot of changes have been made to our website and eBay shop, with many new products that we're excited about still to make an appearance over the coming days and weeks.
Website changes:
Packaging changes for PF Tek based grow kits
Re-wrote many product descriptions for extra clarity and consistency
Lowered international postage prices make us more accessible to a wider audience
Added new products such as Rye Grass Seed and with many more planned in coming days and weeks (see below)
Ready-made substrates now show options for small, medium and large glove sizes for included basic hygiene kit
PF Tek MycoJars are temporarily removed due to their ever increasing difficulty of obtaining
Homepage changes to show more of our different grow kit and substrate products
eBay changes:
10% of recent sales prices on our most popular products have gone to 'Bread Over Bombs' - a Glasgow based charity which raises money for food banks!
Removed some products from eBay and made them available only on our website
Re-wrote many product descriptions for extra clarity and consistency
Fixed postage prices to be more consistent whatever product is purchased
Added our best-selling Cylocybe Special Grow Kit which has been exclusive to our website
New products still to come:
Sawdust substrate bags to support all gourmet and medicinal species we offer
Liquid culture jars for making your own liquid mycelium syringes
Agar petri dishes for growing out your own mushroom cultures
Cylocybe Special MycoPots due to their huge success as MycoBoxes
Chicken of the Woods, Maitake, Giant Puffball and 20+ more exciting species all coming soon!
Hi everyone, you are probably wondering why we aren't accepting any new orders until 26th April?
Well, it's nothing bad - actually, it's pretty exciting..
You may already know that cylocybe.com is our first and only business. Thanks to you all, you've kept us the UK's biggest spore vendor even with all the new competition on the scene. It feels strange for us to even write that, so you can figure how insanely proud we are as we put our entire life and soul into this business.
What you might not realise though is that we are each working 100-120 hour weeks on keeping cylocybe.com going this strong and meeting the huge demand on us - that's like three full time jobs.. for anyone else who works those kinds of hours, hats off to you, seriously!
The last time we had some time off was at Christmas and New Year and guess what? - We came back with our most popular grow kit yet - the Cylocybe Special Grow Kit.
Due to the complete lack of time that we have, we are struggling to make so many new products available for you all.. growing supplies that we know you would love are literally just gathering dust in our store rooms. It's driving us crazy not having the time to do the things we want because what keeps us motivated is innovation - keeping Cylocybe fresh, getting orders out quickly and hearing how happy you guys are with the entire experience we provide.
So, enough is enough..
We are taking a break from preparing and fulfilling orders to allow ourselves the time to think through our business - the products that are working well, the ones which need improving, making our guides easier to follow.. there are many questions and ideas floating around in our heads, which we haven't had the time to do anything with.. until now.
From now on, we plan to take a week or two off to work on improving our business every couple of months. We are sure that you will all understand our reasons why - essentially, we want to continue to make Cylocybe bigger and better!
Sending love, peace and positivity to you all, as always.
p.s. All orders which haven't been sent yet will be going out on Monday!
We have been having power cuts here due to the big storms last night. It seems every time we have our systems all set up to start fulfilling orders, it just goes down again.
After speaking with the power grid, they have assured us that it will be fully operational sometime this afternoon. But, unfortunately this means delays for many orders and a really busy day ahead trying to catch up on the time lost!
We have lots more grow kits, ready to use substrates and raw substrates products now available on our site, as promised back in January. It looks like our brand new Cylocybe Special MycoBox Grow Kits are really taking off which we are excited about as it adds a bit more variety to our days (which used to be almost exclusively BRF PF-Tek). The contrast of white mycelium against the black substrate looks very amazing too!
Other than just new products, we have also created guides for each of the available grow kits which you will find linked to within the product descriptions and also within the Guides section of our website.
We have lots more planned, as ever, so stay tuned!
Closed for the holidays! We'll be back on January 7th.
If you have placed an order, don't worry, we'll be dispatching all orders currently on the system as per usual (we just aren't taking new orders). If you need to get in touch, head over to the contact form or drop us an email. Contaminations? Get in touch, we'll be close by.
It's been such an eventful year, so much has happened. Grow Kits, the move, the lab, driving lessons and busier than ever. Business has sky-rocketed and we are able to get all the post out of the door quicker than ever with all the extra space we have. The products are cleaner, and higher quality because we have the room for the tools. We are well kitted with electric sterilisers here, that's for sure!
We'll try to update around Christmas, but if we don't, have a fantastic Christmas and a Happy New Year and see you back on 7th January for some hopefully brand new products!
Hey folks, it's been a super busy last couple of months here. And we're looking forward to that Christmas time off to put our feet up for a few days. That will also be a time we can stop and think through some nifty innovations, we have some ideas we want to try out for a new product 😀
Between 15th December and 7th January, we'll be closed, so get your orders in as soon as you can to avoid Christmas delays (they'll all be mobbed).
We have set up shop in our new premises - take a look:
This is a special moment for Cylocybe, and it's all thanks to you fun guys that got us here! We finally have a home which we can work in, it's even on the contract with the landlord that we can run our business from here. Our landlords are super chill with it all - which is a massive relief. We've got HEPA flowhoods installed in the lab - no more working in restricted SABs. We spent much of our days in a 4ft x 5ft cupboard making all of our syringes within a SAB - it was fine, it worked and with skill it can still get great results ... The bigger problem is with space efficiency, it gets messy fast and it slows production, which is fine if working on a few things but if you're having to make hundreds of spore syringes then a SAB just won't cut it. And now we'll very rarely ever need to use our SAB.
Only problem with the new place is that none of us can drive, and there are no buses or shops. We've had to book ourselves driving lessons.
If you are considering making an order, remember we will be closing at midnight tonight. All orders made and paid will be dispatched as per usual, if you need to get in touch about something we'll still be here answering emails.
It has become almost impossible to keep up with demand where we currently live, only able to buy 2 weeks stock at a time because of those space constraints!
Next month we are moving to a new home, from our one-bedroom flat in the city to a massive property in the country, we'll finally have plenty of space for the business to keep growing! We have outbuildings, a garage, huge garden space, as well as half a dozen rooms inside the property we can use for a lab, office, stock room, you name it. We will have all the space we need.
This means we will have to close briefly for a couple of weeks.
Between 27th September and 10th October we will be closed. We will continue dispatching orders until there are none left on the system, so if you want to order make sure you do so before 27th September. We'll still be answering emails as ever during this time, so don't hesitate if you need to get in touch about something!
After a wildly successful launch of our new injectable XL PF-Tek MycoBox Grow Kit in May, with no-one yet claiming their free grow kit by finding another example of the Inject-Thru system being used elsewhere before us, we are celebrating by adding two more grow kits to our shop available right now:
Rye Grain MycoBox Grow Kit
PF-Tek MycoPots Grow Kit
We are struggling so much for space within our kitchen to keep up with the demand that we're already starting to look for another home for running the business... Our 1-bedroom flat has almost entirely turned into a warehouse and we are struggling to even move around. Wish us luck on our house-hunting adventures!
Welcome to Cylocybe, the UK's only mushroom spore specialist!
After our spore products became such a success on eBay, we decided to take the plunge and build our own shop! If you want to find out more about us, please see our 'about us' page.
In the mean time, take a look around, we're bound to have what you need. And if we don't, get in touch with us!
