They also offer mushroom grow kits for both lion’s mane and oyster mushrooms that are incredibly easy to use.
The best mushroom coffee alternative: Rasa Original Adaptogen-Packed Herbal Coffee Alternative
Rasa Original – Adaptogenic Mushroom Coffee Alternative
Mushrooms: Chaga, Reishi
Price/ounce: $1.00
Flavor score: 4.5/5
Mouthfeel score: 4/5
If part of your exploration away from coffee is fueled by a desire to lower your caffeine intake, Rasa offers its caffeine-free blend of plants and herbs like chicory, dandelion, burdock, date seed, and cinnamon, along with supplements like maca and ashwagandha. The taste is something between a coffee and an herbal tea. To be somewhat blunt about it: Rasa has notes of a milder Ricola cough drop. I like herbaceous drinks and cocktails and I enjoy licorice tea after dinner, so I enjoyed the flavor, but I also know something too herby can be polarizing. The instructions recommend a ten-minute brew in a French Press, and the resulting beverage definitely had the color and texture of coffee. The substitutability with coffee was further cemented with a splash of milk, which brought it close to a super rich spiced tea, but much mellower than, say, masala chai. Because it’s not trying too hard to taste like, as far as I can tell, anything familiar (other than the chicory hinting at coffee) I would argue that’s why it works.
How we chose the best mushroom coffee and mushroom coffee alternatives
As mentioned above, we’re not scientists or doctors. So these tests did not set out to prove the veracity of claims made by the producers of mushroom coffee and functional mushroom supplements. As the experts we spoke to pointed out, those tests are academic and ongoing. Our test focused on which brands of mushroom coffee tasted the most like regular coffee and, ideally, the least like mushrooms. Because if you’re a coffee drinker switching to something with adaptogens, you probably want a drink that won’t totally alter your ability to enjoy your morning cup.
For the brands that add mushroom supplements to ground coffee beans (in most cases, if you want to make mushroom coffee using whole beans, you would need to buy and stir in your own separate mushroom supplements), I used a standard French press method and ratio of two tablespoons of coffee grounds per eight ounces of 200ºF water and steeped for five minutes. After pouring, I first took in the aroma and tasted the coffee black before adding a splash of milk, which is how I normally take my coffee. I judged on overall flavor, mouthfeel, and whether I could taste any funky mushroom notes that were off-putting or otherwise distracting from the usual coffee experience.
