With all of the hype, advertisements, and interest in mushroom coffee and mushroom extract powders, there seems to be a lot of well-founded skepticism as to whether or not these products contain enough mushrooms or mushroom extract to offer real medicinal value. Many mushroom coffee products don’t even disclose the amount of mushroom extract included in their products. Furthermore, among those that do, there is not a standardized definition of what a mushroom extract or mushroom extract powder actually is. Unfortunately, a lot of companies are adding fillers and undisclosed materials to these extract powders, and many of these products are quite misleading.

I realized this firsthand when I started to make my own mushroom extract powders several years ago. In doing so, I have figured out how to identify integrity (or lack thereof) in mushroom coffees, capsules, and supplement products. My goal in writing this is to pass that wisdom on to you. Let’s start with some basic context about the process involved in making a mushroom extract powder.

The two most common types of mushroom extract powders are hot water extracts and alcohol extracts. Both are made through a two-step procedure utilizing liquid and heat for extracting, followed by a drying/evaporation process.

A hot water extract is exactly what it sounds like–a potent brew of a large quantity of a specific mushroom species in hot water, like making an extremely potent tea. The beneficial compounds that are water soluble will dissolve and become suspended in the water. Once the hot water extract has finished brewing, the spent solid mushrooms are strained away or discarded, and the liquid that remains is then dried either by freeze drying, spray drying, infrared drying or just simple evaporation until all of the water is gone. A dried film or powder is left behind, containing all of those water soluble constituents that the mushrooms once held.

An alcohol extract is more or less the same thing as a hot water extract, except with alcohol as the solvent instead of water. Many of the healing compounds in medicinal mushrooms do not dissolve in water, but will dissolve in ethanol. Mushrooms may be soaked or simmered in alcohol, typically at lower temperatures because alcohol has a lower boiling point than water.

One logistical challenge that inhibits the commercial availability and affordability of alcohol extracts is the fact that alcohol is much pricier than water. In the process of drying a liquid alcohol extract down to a powder, it would likely result in a large and expensive loss of alcohol into thin air. Additionally, an alcohol extract would theoretically only dissolve again if added back into alcohol, not water. For these two reasons, and for the scope of this conversation, we can narrow the definition of a commercially available mushroom extract powder to mean a dried hot water extract.

So if you think about it, a dried hot water extract of a mushroom is really not much different than instant coffee or powdered milk. With any potent liquid extract or tea, once you evaporate enough water away it becomes more of a thick syrup. If you continue to do this until all of the water evaporates, you’re left with a film of dry material that can be scraped up and reconstituted. In this sense, think of instant coffee as a coffee extract powder. Or powdered milk as a milk extract powder. That is the same basic premise.

Or at least it should be.

Generally speaking, I find the yield of mushroom fruiting body weight (the input) to the weight of soluble powder (output) that can be extracted from any mushroom with hot water to be about 20%. This is a ballpark figure that I am generalizing for all mushrooms, but the real yield would vary from batch to batch and by mushroom species. Not to mention, many mushroom companies don’t specify how many mushrooms went into the extract to begin with. But on a rough average, if we were to put 5 pounds (input) of dried Lion’s Mane fruiting bodies into our kettle, and brew it as specified in our mushroom tincture formulation/production procedure, we would yield about 1 pound (output) of Lion’s Mane extract powder.

So if you brew 5 pounds of Lion’s Mane, dry them completely and squeeze out the moisture, then 4 pounds of (input) solid mushroom cellular waste from the fruiting bodies would remain and be filtered away or composted. The water will have dissolved the remaining 1 pound of the Lion’s Mane (input). Then, when you evaporate the water away, you’ll be left with a solid concentration of soluble and bioavailable constituents from the Lion’s Mane (input), with 5x the concentration of the original mushrooms.

As I got into making my own mushroom extract powders, beginning with our own ChagaNOW, I was puzzled to find that the mushroom extract powders I was making do not share any of the most basic physical characteristics (color, texture, solubility, etc.) of commercially available products touted to be the exact same extract powder of the same mushroom species.

Let’s take a look and compare the mushroom extract powders that Birch Boys produces internally in our own US-based mushroom factory with some of the other mainstream brands, who are more liberal and international in their sourcing.

The differences are easily discernable, which is odd. You’d think there wouldn’t be much variation in terms of the mushrooms or the process used to make these powders. Even if there was, it would result in a lesser or greater quantity of output… Not a completely different color, texture, or type of output.

Naturally, I’ve been spending the last few years trying to understand what these other companies are actually selling and calling mushroom extract powders. I have been reluctant to jump to conclusions, but I’m pretty disturbed by some of the things I’ve learned in my research. Here are some of the possible explanations of what may be going on with these other mushroom extract powders.

We make Lion’s Mane extract powder for our new mushroom coffee, but we found in the research and development process that it is almost impossible to actually remove the lion’s mane extract powder from the pan it is dried in. This is because Lion’s Mane is rich in sugars, which glob up in the extract as it dries making a sticky substance like a messy tar. We’re not the only ones who have this issue, and Lion’s Mane isn’t the only mushroom that does this. There are some ways around this issue, but the most common is maltodextrin.

Maltodextrin is a caking agent which is commonly found in many processed foods. This helps make the extract easier to handle and more powder-like. A quick look on Made-in-China.com demonstrates that you can also choose a wide variety of color variations for your maltodextrin filler to try and match the material or mushroom that you’re selling. From tans, to light and dark shades of brown, to white and even yellow, maltodextrin comes in any color one might desire.

Unfortunately, maltodextrin is associated with some potential health risks, including:

• Maltodextrin has a high glycemic index (GI), meaning it can cause rapid spikes in blood sugar levels, potentially leading to energy crashes and increased appetite.
• The majority of maltodextrin is a GMO byproduct, often derived from genetically modified corn, which can raise concerns for some.
• Sensitivities to Maltodextrin are common, and some individuals may experience digestive issues like gas, bloating, or diarrhea when consuming maltodextrin, especially those with sensitive stomachs. Some studies suggest it can affect gut bacteria balance, though research is still ongoing.

So what do we do at Birch Boys? Well, instead of adding a genetically modified filler from China that carries health risks, we counteract the stickiness by mixing it with other (less sticky) mushroom extracts that more readily become a powder. For our Mushroom Coffee, we mix our Lion’s Mane extract with Chaga and Turkey Tail extracts, which both dry and flake more nicely. This creates a perfectly balanced powder that is easy to handle, effective and doesn’t include any fillers.

Another common practice is to add back spent mushroom waste. What some of these large international suppliers of mushroom extract powders do is add back the dried and powdered cellular waste of the original mushroom fruiting bodies used as the input to brew the liquid extracts.

To get an idea of what this looks like in practice, let’s think back to our example of extracting 5 pounds of Lion’s Mane. Remember that we yielded 1 pound of 5x concentrated extract, and discarded the remaining 4 pounds of cellular waste. That 4 pounds of waste doesn’t contain very many bioavailable compounds, those are all in the 1 pound extract. So adding back those 4 pounds of material reduces that 5x concentration back down to the original 1x concentration that we started with.

There are several problems with this extraction method. For one, it is extremely misleading. In this example, there’s only 1 pound of actual Lion’s Mane extract plus 4 pounds of byproduct. But if that was sold as 5 pounds of “Lion’s Mane Extract Powder,” as is often the case, that would be overrepresenting the extraction amount by a factor of 5.

This method also results in a gritty or grainy user experience where the extract powder doesn’t fully dissolve, and doesn’t tangibly darken the beverage it’s added to. Additionally, spent mushrooms are harder to digest. This potentially contributes to the gastrointestinal side effects that some people experience when they start taking a new mushroom product. Plus, this addition is likely the culprit of the funky, earthy taste that many mushroom drink blends have. Pure extracts certainly have a taste, but it’s different - more pure, while still strong - but easily balanced when added to a beverage.

The majority of healing compounds associated with mushrooms are found in their fruiting bodies or sclerotia, rather than the mycelium they grow on. Despite this, many companies that are cultivating mushrooms are actually adding back the myceliated substrate (mycelium on grain, or MOG) to the product. Sometimes this is in addition to the more potent fruiting bodies or sclerotia, but sometimes they use just the MOG and not even any fruiting bodies or sclerotia at all. Mycelium on grain is 70% grain substrate and 30% mycelium (which is less concentrated in nutrients than the fruiting body/sclerotium). The most frustrating example of this phenomenon can be found in many Chaga products.

Click here if you want to read my full take on the fruiting body vs mycelium debate.

The Chaga conk is a sclerotium, so it can’t be cultivated in a traditional sense (tree inoculation attempts are still in their infancy, but we’re trying!) This means that with Chaga in particular, the medicinal part–the sclerotium–that has been used for centuries is completely absent in products made from cultivated “Chaga.” Real Chaga comes from the forest, not a grain bag.

At the time of writing this blog, most commercial mushroom powders—and raw mushrooms themselves—originate from China. While China leads global production, sourcing powders internationally can raise some quality concerns. These range from potential contamination in polluted harvesting areas, to economically motivated adulteration, to limited regulatory oversight. Similar issues have been documented in processed foods imported from various countries, not just China. One of the most recent being the scandal involving incredibly high amounts of lead in children’s applesauce pouches where the input ingredients (namely, cinnamon) crossed borders, and passed through safety checkpoints, several times before being packaged for sale, and resulting in the poisoning of children in 44 states.

“The FDA says it has no authority to investigate far down the international supply chain. Records show that the Ecuadorean government had the authority but not the capacity. Ecuadorean regulators had never before tested cinnamon for toxins and, when the F.D.A called looking for help, nearly half of the government's lab equipment was out of service." - Daniel Sanchez, head of Ecuador’s food safety agency

Additionally, “Made in USA” doesn’t mean what you think—it usually just means the product was bottled or packaged in the states. The mushrooms themselves very likely still come from overseas. If you care about quality, look for products that are both sourced and made in the USA.

In conclusion, as the founder of a company that was genuinely inspired by my Grandmother’s battle with pancreatic cancer, it was clear to me from the beginning that if I was going to make mushroom extracts, they had to actually work. I wanted to create something with real value—extracts that honor the medicinal constituents of these fungi and the forests they come from. We vote with our dollars, and every dollar spent on a Birch Boys product is a vote for integrity, which is hard to find in this hyper-commercialized world that we live in.

Birch Boys' mission is to promote healing by creating the most potent and efficacious handcrafted medicinal mushroom tinctures and extracts from sustainably sourced ingredients. We strive to be leaders in quality, transparency, and ethical practices, empowering health-conscious consumers with authentic and effective wellness solutions while fostering environmental responsibility.

Do us a favor and drop an honest comment about your experience with any extract powders that you've tried. We'll send you a 20% off coupon!

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