What Does Mushroom Coffee Taste Like?

Mushroom coffee tastes like slightly earthier coffee, and the thing most likely to disappoint you is not the mushrooms. People brace for damp forest floor. It does not happen, because dried mushroom extracts are close to flavour-neutral and there is not much of them in the cup. What you taste first is the coffee, which is almost always instant. That is worth knowing before you spend $1.20 a serving.

As on every mushroom coffee page here: Coffee Studies is published by Nature Lion, which makes a mushroom coffee called Shyne. So the brand-by-brand notes below are other people's, with the source on every line.

First question: is there coffee in it?

That decides more about the taste than any mushroom.

Coffee-based blends contain real coffee, usually instant: RYZE, Everyday Dose, Four Sigmatic, Om, Crockett, Cuppa and most others. They taste like instant coffee with an earthy edge. A few, such as Four Sigmatic's bagged roasts and Bones, are ground coffee with mushroom extract added, and they taste like ground coffee.

Coffee-free blends contain no coffee at all. MUD/WTR's Original is black tea, cacao and chai spice with mushrooms, and 35 mg of caffeine from the tea. The brand describes it as rich cocoa melting into an earthy masala chai. Chowhound left it out of its coffee ranking as more of a mushroom tea; My Subscription Addiction found it spicy, bold and medicinal. Order one expecting coffee and you will be surprised, and not by the mushrooms.

Brand by brand, from independent tasters

Two patterns show. The ground products are described as coffee, full stop. The instants are instant coffee with adjectives, and the adjectives disagree most about RYZE: smooth to one tester, gritty to another. Food Network's RYZE week tested only the latte sticks, and found the chai one very mushroom-forward and the matcha's earthiness not overpowering.

Bones and Crockett have no independent taste review we could find. Their own descriptions are earthy, nutty and smooth, and bold, smooth coffee with subtle earthy notes. Artizan, a roaster selling ground mushroom coffee, promises the boldness of real Arabica with no mushroom aftertaste. Brand copy, all of it; weigh it accordingly.

What each mushroom tastes like on its own

Chaga smooths, reishi bitters, and the rest barely register. Knowing which is which explains most of the variation between products.

Chaga is the most palatable of the woody fungi and the reason many people say they like the taste. Mild, woody, faintly sweet, closer to a weak black tea than to a mushroom. Simmered on its own it makes a dark amber drink that works. In a blend it reads as depth, not an off-note.

Reishi is the problem child: assertively bitter from its triterpenes. That bitterness is a signal. Triterpenes need alcohol to extract, so a reishi product with no bitterness raises a question about what was pulled out. Blends carrying much reishi almost always add cacao or sweetener.

Lion's mane is nearly tasteless at these amounts. Fresh, it is firm and mildly sweet, often compared to crab. As a dried extract at a few hundred milligrams it contributes essentially nothing.

Cordyceps is close to neutral in coffee. Turkey tail, shiitake and maitake appear in small amounts in longer blends; shiitake is the one that can read as savoury if there is enough of it.

The instant coffee problem

Almost all mushroom coffee is instant, because the product has to dissolve; you cannot brew mushroom extract through a paper filter. So if you normally drink pour-over, French press or espresso, a mushroom coffee changes two things at once. It adds mushrooms, and it swaps your coffee for instant. Blaming the mushrooms is the natural mistake. MassLive's tester went looking for them and reported "I couldn't find anything", while the instant-coffee haze was unmissable.

Two things follow. If taste is the priority, a ground mushroom coffee, which some brands make, removes the instant base; Taste of Home found one tasted like any other bagged drip coffee. And judge a blend against other instant coffee, not against your usual cup.

What else is driving the taste

In most blends the mushrooms are not the biggest flavour variable. Cacao, when present, dominates, and a cacao-forward blend tastes like weak mocha. Cinnamon and chai spice do the same. Coconut milk powder or MCT adds body and softens bitterness. Stevia and monk fruit leave an aftertaste many people notice more than any mushroom. Chicory or inulin adds a roasted bitterness that gets blamed on the fungi.

Everyday Dose, for example, uses coffee extract for a hint of coffee flavour and describes the result as creamy and dreamy with a touch of chocolatey goodness. That is the chocolate and the creaminess talking. To know what the mushrooms taste like, you need a product that is basically coffee plus mushroom. Most are not. ^[14]

Making it taste better

Four adjustments, in the order they help.

1. Cooler water, around 90 to 93 °C rather than straight off the boil. Boiling water makes instant coffee harsher.
2. Less powder. Start below the recommended scoop. The most common first-cup mistake is too strong, which amplifies every earthy note.
3. Milk or an oat drink. It softens the drying finish; VICE found RYZE holds up fine in oat and regular milk. ^[4]
4. A pinch of salt, which suppresses bitterness, especially in reishi-heavy blends.

Our preparation guide has the fuller version, including lattes and cold preparations.

Why some cups are gritty

Three usual causes: water not hot enough to dissolve the powder, raw milled mushroom rather than an extract, or too much powder for the water. Om is open that its lion's mane and cordyceps are whole mushroom powder, dried and milled, never extracted, which fits Taste of Home's "strong, earthy". Grit that survives hot water and stirring points at unextracted powder, a quality signal rather than a technique problem. A settled residue, as VICE found with RYZE, is a stir-before-sip issue, not grit.

The short version

Mushroom coffee tastes like earthier instant coffee, not like mushrooms, unless it is one of the coffee-free blends, which taste like spiced cocoa tea. Chaga makes it smoother, reishi makes it bitter, lion's mane and cordyceps contribute almost nothing, and cacao or cinnamon will overwhelm all of them. Independent tasters found Everyday Dose mild and chocolatey, RYZE earthy and tangy with a residue some minded, and the ground products indistinguishable from ordinary bagged coffee. Cooler water, less powder and a splash of oat milk will do more for your cup than switching brands.