Turning black when dehydrating

Hi, i am a beginner and harvested my first flush of golden teachers and am in the process of dehydrating them.

I am using my oven at 140 degrees and after checking them an hour in I see that they turned completely black.

I have read a few articles trying to find out exactly what went wrong. Possibilities being, harvested too late( veils completely broken off and too many spores oxidized?), i put them into the fridge overnight before drying process, didnt use ample airflow in the oven.

Regardless of what caused it, ive seen conflicting comments on where they should be thrown out or still could be used. Some of the mushrooms had a slight blueish tint in the stem prior to dehydrating but not all of them but i read that is normal(?).

What would be recommended in this instance? Can they be consummed as normal?

Hey! It's easy to burn mushrooms while drying in the oven. In your case the temperature was way too high (140F while up to 122F is recommended) and without airflow in the oven. This is the main mistake.

Technically your mushrooms still edible, but... useless. If they are black, it means they have literally burned and lost all their active ingredients :-(

It's sad that you didn't find this article before you started drying mushrooms How to dry and store mushrooms

I have read a few articles trying to find out exactly what went wrong. Possibilities being, harvested too late( veils completely broken off and too many spores oxidized?), i put them into the fridge overnight before drying process, didnt use ample airflow in the oven.

You harvested mushrooms in time and they didn't drop too many spores to make your mushrooms totally black. Moreover, spores don't oxidize as you probably believe. Storing in fridge overnight is not a problem here.

Some of the mushrooms had a slight blueish tint in the stem prior to dehydrating but not all of them but i read that is normal(?).

Yes, bruising is absolutely normal for magic mushrooms. You can find more info and examples here: Mycelium and mushroom bruising

Now, learn from mistakes and choose a gentler method of drying mushrooms for the next flush (see the article I shared above) ;-)