Now that 2022 has officially begun we as a company are looking to expand our product line. Because we currently offer both Balance and NOT COFFEE, which are functional mushroom blends, we thought it would be awesome to provide single ingredient mushroom extracts to really hone in on the benefits that you want to receive. With this, we ultimately needed to decide whether we wanted to provide tinctures or extract powders. Today I thought it would be cool to go over the pros and cons of each method and explain why we chose what we did.

Tinctures

Mushroom tinctures are a great way to consume your daily dose of functional mushrooms however, there are a few key differences in what exactly your body can absorb through this method. As an example, most tinctures are made through an alcohol extraction process. While this is very effective for herbal supplements, mushrooms are not herbs, but rather fungi. Some of the main benefits of functional mushrooms come from the beta glucans, however, alcohol cannot extract these nutrients as they are water soluble. On top of this, because it is in liquid form, you also do not get any of the nourishing fibre that is present in the mushroom flesh. Now, there are other ways to make mushroom tinctures. When mushroom extract powders are being made, they go through a liquid stage before entering their final concentrated powder form. This would in turn make the tincture much more bioavailable as the nutrients are extracted via water versus alcohol. However, because it is now in liquid form due to the adding of water, these tinctures will not be as nutrient dense as the powder. 

Mushroom Extract Powders

Mushroom extract powders are in our opinion the best way to consume functional mushrooms. Because the medicinal properties found in mushrooms are in relatively low quantities compared to the fibrous body of the mushroom, extracts allow you to consume more of those healing nutrients. For example, in the mushroom extract powders that we will be releasing this year, we use only 8:1 extracts. This means that for every pound of powder we receive, there were eight pounds of that mushroom used to produce it. Essentially this renders the powder about eight times more n compared to the whole mushroom. On top of this, because it is hot water extracted, all of those good nutrients are present, not to mention the fibre itself from the mushroom.

What We Chose

As you can see, in many ways mushroom extract powders are superior to tinctures. Not only will the nutrients be more bioavailable in powder form, but it will be much more nutrient dense as well. At their worst tinctures provide almost no medicinal benefits from alcohol extraction and at their best (hot water extraction) provide a more diluted product comparatively to extract powders. That is why we have chosen to release our single ingredient functional mushrooms in extract powder form! With these new products, our intention is to help you get more of the nutrients you need specifically in your body as we know everyone needs something different to feel like their optimal version. We are so excited to bring you guys these products and we hope you are too!