Mushrooms have an earthy flavor, making this tea taste similar. Elderberries add balance and round out its taste further; in low doses they work wonders at preventing sickness altogether while high doses help you recover faster.

Ingredients

To achieve maximum health benefits from mushroom tea, it is crucial that whole mushrooms including caps, stems and gills be utilized. Many mushroom coffees and teas on the market contain only mycelium which may contain less beta-glucans that promote health benefits than functional mushroom products. Look for products made exclusively with functional mushrooms for maximum quality and potency.

Don prefers using dry mushrooms rather than fresh when making his tea as it allows him to quickly create hot water for infusion, while lemon also aids in extraction and can potentially increase psilocin potency slightly.

Flavors

When making mushroom tea it is essential to use organic arabica beans from a high quality coffee source and medicinal mushrooms such as lion’s mane, chaga, cordyceps and reishi as ingredients. Furthermore, only use fruiting bodies of mushrooms such as caps, stems or gills since mycelium contains lower beta-glucan levels than fruiting bodies (caps stems gills etc).

Mushrooms added to hot water can either be strained out or left intact; for group tea-making sessions it may be wise to strain out as they may cause discomfort to inexperienced users. However, experienced users who are familiar with its effects may prefer grinding up and leaving in whole mushrooms instead.

DQ (Don Quixote) suggests adding a few drops of lemon juice to boiling water to assist in extraction, whether before or after steeping mushrooms. Some users have even taken to soaking dried shrooms in lemon juice prior to steeping, which may increase potency. For fresh mushrooms, DQ usually cold filters tea in the fridge using clean fingers in order to minimize mushroom flavors in his tea.

Preparation

If you are making mushroom tea for friends, strain out any chunks that might cause stomach discomfort; however if making it for yourself or experienced shroomers you may grind up and leave them in. But hot water extracts psilocin faster than dry shrooms do; honey makes an especially great addition as he believes mushrooms begin and end with honey (much like Don Quixote thought chasing windmills was all about honey!) Lemon also speeds up this process of extraction.

Storage

Dried mushrooms offer many advantages for domestic use. First and foremost, they can sit in your cabinet until you are ready to rehydrate and use them; this is an effective way of avoiding the domestic tragedy of purchasing fresh aspirational vegetables only to have them quickly go stale in your crisper. Dried mushrooms remain potency for quite some time depending upon humidity levels; it all adds up.

Don prefers cold filtration with dry mushies for his tea, though this method takes more time and may result in less potency than boiling. He often adds citric acid as an aid to speed up the process and preserve the psilocin for as long as possible.