Adaptogenic Mushrooms: Not quite magical, but they add some cheer to your morning coffee
I come from a family of coffee purists. High-quality, pure Arabica beans brewed hot with a little cow’s milk – or bust. My dad nailed the exact moment he fell in love with my mom when he found two dozen bags of Peet’s dark roast coffee in her freezer and then watched her brew a steaming, unadulterated cup.
Adaptogenic mushrooms do not contain psilocybin. Rather, they contain a high density of bioactive compounds that may help your body deal with stress and return to homeostasis.
As a devotee of balanced medium roasts, I’ve been known to stock the best beans from local cafes in my kitchen cupboard over an overflowing collection of Far Side mugs.
But the new favorite I’ve recently added to the shelf might knock me off my high horse. It’s an adaptogenic medium roast Arabica mushroom coffee called Hocus Pocus from a new Seattle coffee shop and online mushroom coffee and tea retailer called Wunderground.
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“Brainwashing” in every cup
Dedicated to the trending medicinal mushroom movement, Wunderground Café offers a selection of tantalizing beverages in a welcoming and elegant space punctuated by whimsical woodland decor. Their menu offers the normal litany of espresso and tea drinks, but they’re all infused with 1,000mg of Wunderground’s trademark adaptogenic mushroom blend called “Brain Wash.”
On a few visits to the café this summer, I sampled a variety of drinks — including the Hocus Pocus drip coffee I took home, an oat milk latte, and a frozen matcha latte — to see if these schroomy, Wellness chopped drinks satisfied my coffee taste and delivered their “magic” benefits.
A trendy old remedy
Adaptogenic mushrooms, also known as medicinal or functional mushrooms, are not magic mushrooms and do not contain psilocybin. Rather, they contain a high density of bioactive compounds, or “adaptogens,” that may help your body cope with stress and return to homeostasis.
Adaptogenic mushrooms are a trending new product in the health industry, but the use of adaptogenic plants, herbs, and mushrooms as medicine dates back thousands of years and spans many cultures.
Grind up special functional mushrooms for your daily java? This dates back to WWII-era Finland, when coffee rationing forced Finnish people to use locally native chaga mushrooms as a coffee enhancement and substitute, according to some online sources.
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Today, perhaps inspired by the popularity of CBD-infused beverages, shroom suppliers are turning adaptogenic mushrooms into “beverage enhancements” by dehydrating the shrooms, grinding them into a fine powder, and blending them into instant coffee, ground coffee, or tea.
This is the premise that spawned Wunderground, founded by well-known entrepreneur and mushroom fanatic Jody Hall.
Hall, founder of Seattle’s popular Cupcake Royale bakeries and pioneering cannabis edibles company The Goodship, had a desire to improve coffee and tea beverages and the experience around their consumption with four specific adaptogenic mushrooms.
Four types of mushrooms in combination
All of Wunderground’s coffee and tea beverages, as well as their online products, use Cordyceps, Chaga, Lion’s Mane, and Reishi mushrooms in various combinations. According to Wunderground’s website, their mushrooms are organically grown on natural wood substrate to mimic how they’re grown in the wild and tested for heavy metals, pesticides, and herbicides.
Cordyceps is a Wunderground favorite for its potential anti-aging, anti-inflammatory and performance-enhancing properties, and for centuries traditional Chinese medicine has used cordyceps stalks to collect and dry them to treat a range of health conditions. Likewise, limited modern studies indicate that certain Cordyceps species have the potential to affect “immunological, hepatic, renal, and cardiovascular systems” and act “as anticancer agents.”
Wunderground also uses chaga mushrooms, which have the surreal look of soaked wood. Chaga is used to increase energy, calm the stomach and boost immunity. Likewise, chaga is a natural remedy used in China, Russia, and Korea, specifically for one of its adaptogenic components, Inonotus obliquus, which limited scientific research has found in humans.
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The third component of Wunderground is Lion’s Mane, a shaggy, light brown mushroom used in Chinese medicine for centuries as a memory, focus, sleep, and happiness enhancer. Sure enough, some research supports lion’s mane’s positive neurocognitive effects, including its potential to relieve depression.
Finally, these drinks include reishi mushrooms, a staple known in Chinese medicine as linghzi, which, according to Wunderground, contains “beta-glucans, a naturally occurring soluble fiber that slows your digestion,” to help regulate blood sugar and calm nerves improves sleep. Looking at the scientific literature, studies have found that the bioactive components in Reishi mushrooms have the potential to boost the immune system and help with a variety of conditions such as anorexia and cancer.
How is it to drink?
Both the frozen oatmilk latte and the frozen matcha green tea drinks I ordered contained 1,000mg of their trademarked Brain Wash, which is a potent combination of all four of the above mushrooms. Wunderground’s description promised a virtually undetectable mushroom flavor combined with the benefit of making the consumer feel energized without “crash or jitters.”
I found the oat milk latte to have a slightly earthy aftertaste and a slight graininess from the added mushroom powder, but overall it was a very good espresso drink. The matcha latte I ordered on a subsequent visit was even better because the already grainy texture and earthy taste of the matcha green tea worked well to mask any added fungus.
Hey, no shaking!
After drinking the mushroom latte, I was surprised at the coffee’s low acidity and lack of jitters. It was similar with the mushroom matcha – the tea went down easily and the drink didn’t immediately cause unwanted fatigue, jitters or stomach upset. Both also gave me energy, but it’s hard to tell if that was just the caffeine or if the shrooms really “improved” my performance.
On my next visit, I moved on to the cafe’s hocus pocus drip. According to Wuderground’s description, Hocus Pocus filter coffee, with its 15:1 concentration of reishi and an 8:1 concentration of chaga per 12-ounce cup, was said to boost immunity, reduce anxiety, and calm the gut.
In fact, the hocus pocus was so potable that I didn’t treat the power of functional mushrooms with respect.
This drip coffee was the real test for me because the drip is stronger and can sometimes cause an upset stomach and, if the roast is too acidic, heartburn. But Hocus Pocus turned out to be a good, robust, medium-roast coffee. I didn’t really taste the mushrooms and in the hot format I didn’t notice any powdery residue. More importantly, I felt calm and my stomach was settled after drinking it.
The hocus pocus was so drinkable, in fact, that I didn’t treat the power of functional mushrooms with respect, and during the visit, where I ordered my iced mushroom matcha green tea latte, I also downed another half-cup of hocus pocus without a second thought. Driving home, I felt unexpectedly tired.
Research has shown that adaptogenic mushrooms such as lion’s mane, cordyceps, and reishi are generally well tolerated by the body and safe for human consumption. However, very little research has been done on human ingestion of medicinal mushrooms, so there is no standard recommended dose. Some people have reported negative side effects such as upset stomach, fatigue, and dizziness from consuming mushrooms in high doses.
What is a high dose? That depends on your own body chemistry and the type of mushroom you consume. At 1,000mg each, Wunderground’s drinks use a conservative amount of adaptogenic mushrooms per drink, but I think consuming two powerful mushroom adaptogenic drinks in a single session was too much for my system.
Not a miracle cure, but very tasty
Overall, it’s hard to say if Wunderground’s mushroom drinks actually deliver the subtle health benefits they promise, including a boosted immune system, improved cognition, and better sleep. These were not necessarily effects that I noticed.
However, aside from the slight fatigue on the day I had two mushroom drinks, my experience with Wunderground’s drinks has been positive. The drinks were delicious and I felt vital, energetic and happy after all three drinks without the jitters and stomach upset I often get from traditional coffee.
So consider me a new mushroom coffee convert. Whether I can push a coffee with mushrooms, no matter how delicious and beneficial, past my parents’ uncompromising coffee palates? I wouldn’t bet on that.
Alex Peters
Alexa Peters is a freelance writer specializing in music, writing, travel, feminism and self-help. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Paste, The Seattle Times, Seattle Magazine and Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls.
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