The 5 best mushroom coffee brands in 2024 | CNN Underscored

Nov 03, 2024

Most popular: Everyday Dose The Mushroom Coffee

Affordable option: Pella Nutrition Organic Mushroom Instant Coffee

Ryze Mushroom Coffee

Renude Chagaccino

Four Sigmatic Balance Organic Mushroom Blend

Mushroom coffee is all the rage at the moment. Everyone from Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, to Taika Waititi to Joe Rogan is promoting it, but is it worth the hype?

It’s marketed as providing all kinds of health benefits, including immune support, stress relief, gut health, energy, focus and even fat-burning. But it’s not FDA-approved.

So, is mushroom coffee worth trying or just a flash-in-the-pan gimmick? We tested five popular brands and spoke with some registered dietitians and certified dietitian nutritionists to find out.

The less-than-simple answer to this question is, “It depends.” It comes in various forms and different brands contain different ingredients.

Usually, it’s a blend of powdered medicinal mushrooms combined with other ingredients and coffee. These powders are mixed or frothed up with hot or cold water to make coffee drinks that often contain less caffeine than a regular cup of joe.

Some products in the mushroom coffee lineup don’t actually contain coffee. These are designed to mix with coffee and sometimes tea, soups, smoothies or the like. This latter variety can be added to joe made with your usual coffee maker, be that drip, espresso, cold brew or French press.

The Clevr Coffee SuperLatte, endorsed by Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, also contains organic oat and coconut milk powders, so you can create a latte by just adding water. This one also has green tea extract, ashwagandha root extract and other ingredients, along with mushrooms and coffee.

The jury is still out on this one. All the experts we interviewed noted that most edible mushrooms are nutrient dense and provide essential vitamins. But there’s no definitive research dedicated to mushroom coffee products yet. So, no one is sure if they work … yet.

“Mushroom coffee has potential health benefits, but its effects can vary based on factors like dosage, preparation methods and mushroom types,” says Tamar Samuels, a registered dietician and the co-founder of Culina Health. “We need more research to understand the safety of medicinal mushrooms and investigate how the active compounds in mushrooms interact with other food ingredients, like coffee.”

Beth Czerwony, an registered dietician at the Cleveland Clinic Center for Human Nutrition, was equally skeptical: “Because mushroom coffee is not regulated by the FDA, there may be issues with the potency of brands or even batches.”

If you’re willing to roll the dice and try mushroom coffee, how should you choose one?

Our experts agree that six mushroom varieties are most likely to provide health benefits. These are lion’s mane, reishi, turkey tail, cordyceps, king trumpet and chaga. So check for these in the ingredients — but no promises that you’ll become a highly productive yet zen beacon of health.

Also, ensure an effective dosage of at least 500 milligrams per serving, says Lorraine Kearney, certified registered dietician nutritionist and the CEO of New York City Nutrition.

Samuels says that seeking “100% mushroom extract” is important and that fruiting bodies of the mushrooms are likely to have higher concentrations of beneficial compounds.

If the product has sweeteners or flavorings, she advises choosing ones without artificial ingredients, adding that ground coffee may be more nutrient dense than instant coffee.

If you’re trying to navigate the confusing world of mushroom coffee, you’ll also see terms like adaptogens (stress relievers) L-Theanine (an amino acid found in some mushrooms) and monk fruit sweetener, which is FDA-approved and zero calories.

Some mushroom coffees also contain coconut products, other tree nuts, cinnamon or cacao. So, if you have allergies or food sensitivities, check the ingredients carefully before buying.

Everyday Dose was the most popular with Underscored editors, but we have no idea if their positive reactions resulted from the mushroom content.

The Everyday Dose powder is touted as a nootropic, which is a “smart drug” to improve brain function. We found blurbs like “Become a Jedi” on Everyday Dose’s packaging a bit eye-roll inducing, but we liked the drink’s flavor.

It’s smooth, creamy and mild but doesn’t taste anything like coffee. So, if you’re a coffee purist, you’ll probably want to retain your morning routine and maybe sip this later in the day. Or you can add coffee to the mix, like one of our testers did, to give you the benefits and taste of your morning cup of java.

Bovine (beef) hydrolyzed collagen powder is the main ingredient in this blend, so if you’re vegetarian or vegan, look away now. The four brands listed below are all vegan.

As gross as beef collagen may sound, some of our testers reported that their skin looked better after just a few weeks of drinking mushroom coffee. Some of our testers also reported better concentration and fewer jitters/less crashing after substituting their normal coffee for Everyday Dose. But that could be because of the reduction in caffeine rather than the effects of the powder. There’s also the placebo effect to consider.

Everyday Dose also contains L-Theanine, which is touted to promote relaxation and reduce anxiety; coffee bean extract; and two types of mushroom from the fruiting body, as Samuels recommends. The downside is that there are only two types of mushrooms in this blend — chaga and lion’s mane — but they come in a high concentration (1,500 milligrams per serving, according to the manufacturer).

Ryze contains all six mushrooms you’d want in a mushroom coffee but not the “fruiting body” that was recommended to us. The dosage is generous, though, at roughly 2,200 milligrams per serving, which is far more than the 500-milligram minimum Kearney suggests. The price seems reasonable for that amount of mushrooms.

Ryze claims that the quota of mushrooms in each bag is “more or less distributed evenly,” so you’re probably not getting a chunk of the cheapest variety and a few specks of the more precious ones. However, it also contains instant coffee, which, in our opinion, affects the flavor negatively. Ryze’s other ingredients are organic MCT oil and organic coconut milk.

None of the editors enjoyed drinking Ryze black or unsweetened, citing a slightly “bitter” and “harsh” flavor. Most found it far more palatable with their preferred milk (oat, cow, almond) and sweeteners (honey or sugar).

But taste is a matter of, well, taste. So you won’t know if you enjoy it unless you try. There is a little sediment and graininess to this blend, which actually makes it feel more legitimate as a health product somehow. It just takes a bit of getting used to. Ryze is also USDA-certified as organic.

All things considered, for our testers, Ryze came in joint second place with Renude Chagaccino for its purported concentration of mushrooms, organic credentials and value for money.

This is the most expensive mushroom coffee we tested, and it makes some pretty wild claims on the tin, such as “Use your superpowers wisely.” However, it claims to contain a decent quantity of the rare chaga mushroom (500 milligrams per serving), which is the most expensive of its ingredients.

Renude Chagaccino is made with the exact type of mushroom it sounds like its made of: wild foraged chaga, which is hailed as the “king of mushrooms.” This fungi has more antioxidants than acai, pomegranates and blueberries, and is a bonafide superfood. But we’re not picking it fresh off the tree here (chaga mushrooms grow on the side of trees), so the supposed benefits in this context are open to debate.

Chagaccino is pre-sweetened with monk fruit extract and erythritol, a fairly new sweetener, to hide the natural bitterness of the chaga. Chaggaccino does not contain coffee, so we added some during testing, just like we did with Everyday Dose. It not only detracted from the very sweet taste of Chagaccino but gave us a nice caffeine kick.

Some of our testers reported feeling more focused after drinking it for a few days. One said he felt “less frantic” than usual.

Overall, the vegan-friendly Chaggaccino was our second choice, alongside Ryze Mushroom Coffee.

The Four Sigmatic Balance is one of the two mushroom coffees in our testing pool that does not contain actual coffee. It’s supposed to contain 400 milligrams of mushrooms, including chaga and reishi, per serving, though.

Most of our testing panel didn’t particularly enjoy the taste of the Four Sigmatic Balanced Mushroom Blend with coffee. Words like “grainy,” “too many particles” and “sediment” were thrown around. One tester reported that it did work well with herbal teas such as Traditional Medicinals Throat Coat and a dash of honey, and they didn’t mind the sediment at all. We also tried it with smoothies, which worked wonderfully well.

The Four Sigmatic has the most earthy and savory flavor of those in our testing pool, so it can also be used with soups, salads and other foods. It’s pretty versatile.

The can is tiny and was half-empty when it arrived — or half-full, if that’s your mindset. However, the scoop provided is also tiny, so the smaller servings would still mean the can contains roughly 30 servings.

It contains several supplemental ingredients such as moringa powder, Tulsi extract (associated with several health benefits, including stress relief) and ashwagandha (associated with anxiety reduction). One tester even reported “faster bowel movements” after drinking it with their usual coffee, possibly providing another benefit for some people.

It’s also vegan and USDA-certified as organic.

This one tasted like instant coffee and not much else, in our opinion, though the packaging claims it has seven mushrooms: lion’s mane, chaga, reishi, cordyceps, maitake, shiitake and turkey tail.

The Pella Nutrition Organic Mushroom Instant Coffee is by far the most affordable option we tested, with the nearly 6-ounce package containing 60 servings as opposed to the typical 30 the others in our testing pool tout. Pella claims there are 1,000 milligrams of mushrooms in every serving, but there’s no real way of knowing which of the seven mushrooms are most prevalent in the blend.

Pella also makes a version with more mushrooms and less caffeine for $20, but unless you like the taste of instant coffee, we wouldn’t recommend Pella.

We drank each brand two to three times daily for at least two weeks in a row. We evaluated each product using the following criteria:

After consulting our experts and trying some out, we don’t think mushroom coffee is worth getting hyped about yet. But if you’re looking to reduce your caffeine consumption while trying to add something potentially nutritious to your diet, some brands could be worth trying out. Be sure to read the ingredients and the FAQs below before you buy because not every mushroom coffee is suitable for every person. We also suggest potential buyers avoid being swept away by hyperbolic marketing language and freebies like stickers, magnets and whatnot. It’s the content of the brew that matters and more research is needed before any health benefits are confirmed.

That said, our tasting panel did report that they would continue to use either the Everyday Dose or Renude.

CNN Underscored editors thoroughly test all the products we cover and provide full transparency about how we test them. We have an experienced team of writers and editors who have many years of testing experience and ensure each article is carefully edited and products are properly vetted. We talk to top experts when it makes sense to ensure we are testing each product accurately and speaking about pros and cons of each item. For this article, we spoke to a number of dietitians and nutritionists to learn as much about the health benefits (or lack thereof) of mushroom coffee as possible.

For this article, we consulted three experts to gain their professional insights:

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