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Best Overall
Atlas Coffee Club Atlas+ Latte Superblend
Best Nootropic Cocktail
Lucid Nootropic + Mushroom Coffee
Best Whole Package and Add-Ons
Laird Superfood Organic Coffee with Functional Mushrooms
Best Mushroom-Infused Coffee
Four Sigmatic Organic Coffee
The world has been addicted to caffeine for centuries, and in the year 2025 the scientific argument over whether coffee is good or bad for you remains unsettled. One might believe the lack of consensus is a Mainstream Media™ psyop to keep people scrambling for marketable solutions to a problem that’s completely made up, but the cottage industry of coffee alternatives that’s proliferated by this endless tug of war is an interesting outcome regardless of which side you’re on. This is where mushroom coffee makes its inevitable entrance.
Some quick googling revealed 10 known players in the game, all of which offer their own riff on a common base formula of dried mushrooms–usually a combo of lion’s mane, chaga, and cordyceps—boosted with buzzy add-ons like probiotics and nootropics. I spent a week with each, swapping out my morning coffee for each brand’s recommended dose of powder and hot water. After day five I allowed myself to experiment with sweeteners and milks, which you’ll need with almost all of these to get through the entire cup without gagging.
Photograph: Pete Cottell
Some hit like a mild cup of coffee, some were actual coffee, and others were uncanny concoctions no normal person would ever crave unless they were fully indoctrinated in the heady lifestyle this unique alt-beverage industry revolves around. I laughed, I cried, I got the runs, and I crashed on my couch in the early afternoon more times than I could count, all for science, and all so you don’t have to try this on your own.
Also be sure to check out our guides to the Best Energy Drinks, Best Coffee Makers, and Best Electric Kettles.
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Photograph: Pete Cottell
Best Overall
Atlas Coffee Club Atlas+ Latte Superblend
As its name denotes, Atlas Coffee Club is a subscription-based mail order coffee service. And a darn good one at that! So when it announced it was dipping its toes in the dark arts of adaptogen-infused mushroom coffees, we trusted it could deliver the goods without all the superfluous lore and manosphere cosigns that most others come bundled with.
The starter kit includes a frother and a scoop and comes with your choice of Atlas’ riffs on mushroom coffee: a coffee superblend or a latte superblend. The former is a straightforward take on mushroom-infused instant coffee. The fine powder dissolves quickly, the coffee flavor is muted with a roasty aftertaste, and only the last two sips had any amount of silty residue. If this was all Atlas offered, it would do well enough in this space.
The latte superblend, on the other hand, is a real treat. Upon my opening the bag, a strong whiff of toasted coconut wafts through the room. The powder emulsifies easily in hot water without any need for a frother. Lacing on the edge of the mug is minimal, and there’s almost no gunky residue or powdery finish to speak of. The flavor of the finished product has a pronounced coconut aroma up front without the requisite sweetness that’s omnipresent in tiki drinks. The swallow offers subtle notes of earthy spice and a soft acidic tang akin to a shot of espresso pulled from Kenyan or Ethiopian beans. It’s an absolute delight to drink.
After three mornings of Atlas’ latte superblend standing in for my coffee, I found myself wondering if I could permanently replace my morning brew with this delicious powder. The caffeine buzz was smooth and devoid of any mind-rattling peaks, but the probiotics did a number on my stomach on the two final days of the weeklong experiment with this one. I would not pair this with a rich, fatty breakfast loaded with eggs and dairy unless you work from home by yourself all day. Intermittent rangus aside, Atlas Coffee Club struck gold here.
Score 9.5/10 Key ingredients Coffee, coconut milk, functional mushrooms, prebiotics, probiotics, adaptogens, collagen, vitamins Caffeine 45 milligrams -
Photograph: Pete Cottell
Best Nootropic Cocktail
Lucid Nootropic + Mushroom Coffee
A cursory scan of the About Us section on Lucid’s website reveals it was founded by what appears to be an extreme sports bro, a DJ, and a former marine. The trio’s aesthetic is a trippy minimalist vibe that’s aligned with the bisexual lighting most Twitch streamers use in their backgrounds, and its marketing leans on a preference for nootropics like alpha-GPC and creatine to kick things up a notch so you can rage or do push-ups all night. One tablespoon mixed with 8 ounces of hot water yields a deep black liquid, with a slight tingle on the front of the sip and notes of toasted sesame on the finish. It’s nothing to write home about on its own, but lack of dusty mouthfeel and off notes make it supremely drinkable. A splash of Chobani Sweet Cream really brought this cup to life, and a mix of steamed oat milk and agave nectar did wonders as well.
The upfront effects of Lucid were hard to discern, but the last few days with this pleasant dust were punctuated by an elevated sense of excitement for the rote tasks I carried over from one day’s checklist to the next. My girlfriend and I finally cleaned out our attic to make room for some spare boxes of hardwood flooring, and then repetitive schlepping up and down three very tall floors in our 150-plus-year-old house left me invigorated and craving more small domestic victories. I organized the spice drawer after that and felt amazing while doing so.
Score 8.7/10 Key ingredients Lion’s mane, cordyceps, turkey tail, tremella, alpha-GPC, L-theanine, L-tyrosine, creatine, ginkgo Caffeine 35 to 45 milligrams
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Photograph: Pete Cottell
Best Whole Package and Add-Ons
Laird Superfood Organic Coffee with Functional Mushrooms
Laird Superfood takes its name from cofounder Laird Hamilton, an infamously aggro big-wave surfer who’s best known for being Kevin Costner’s stunt double in the 1995 clunker Waterworld. Hamilton and his wife, sand volleyball superstar Gabrielle Reece, founded Laird Superfood in 2015 with the mission of helping the wellness-curious “take something [they] do every day and make it better.” I don’t drink protein powder every day, but I do drink enough coffee to drift into space quite often and fantasize about what my life would be like if I had the cojones to get towed by jet ski into a 50-foot wave in Tahiti and hope for the best, like Hamilton did in 2000.
Laird’s Functional Mushroom Focus coffee is a medium roast that gently tickles the pleasure center of clandestine dark roast freaks, with a hint of smoke on the sip and a gentle numbing tingle on the swallow. It’s a fine coffee on its own, clocking in a few clicks above your average grocery store brand preground medium roast.
The added protein creamer is a special treat that’s so naughty it feels good. The suggested one-third cup dose filled almost half my trusty Ember mug when I added before the pour, per the bag’s instructions, and it clocks in at a whopping 200 calories with 50 percent of your daily saturated fat intake right there. After five seconds of whisking, the off-white powder dissolved almost fully into the coffee, leaving me with a light brown brew loaded with rich notes of vanilla and coconut.
The tandem of coffee-based caffeine and vegan, soy-free protein (plus 9 grams of sugar) was the kick in the pants I needed to bounce back from over a month of placebo-ing my brain into submission with kooky mushroom dust and heady nootropics. I don’t have any surfing plans on the books at present, but as soon as I do I’ll be sure to pack an Aeropress and the full Laird Superfood kit.
Score 8.6/10 Key ingredients Ground Peruvian coffee beans, lion’s mane, rhodiola Caffeine 60 mg to 100 mg -
Best Mushroom-Infused Coffee
Four Sigmatic Organic Coffee
Four Sigmatic was founded about a decade ago by Finnish-American bohos who had the prescience to market mushroom coffee to woo-woo Angelenos who are rich enough to disregard science. Its catalog is expansive and includes a whole constellation of mushroom-infused ingestibles, with bagged, preground coffee serving as the flagship product alongside instant latte mixes, smoothie add-ins, and “capsules.” Buying from Four Sigmatic is a breeze—no need for subscriptions, kits, or any other nonsense. Just pick out what you want, pay for it, and it shows up on your doorstep a few days later.
Four Sigmatic’s Focus blend is labeled as a dark roast, but it’s missing the cigarette-butts-and-bowling-alley aftertaste that looms on the finish of similar blends. Despite my preference for lighter beans, this hit like a hug from an old friend after weeks of sipping murky silt. The caffeine buzz normalized after two days of using Think in lieu of more standard shroom-based coffee replacements, so I added a three-quarter-teaspoon hit of the powdered Focus blend to my daily cup to see what would happen. Within 10 minutes I felt an overwhelming urge to sort my finances spreadsheet in preparation for tax season, then I set up a new template in Loopy Pro to accommodate a friend who planned to join my basement jam session that evening. He bailed, but I was jacked on Genius Adaptogens so I played all the instruments myself into the wee hours of the night.
Score 8.2/10 Key ingredients Arabica coffee, log-grown lion’s mane extract, chaga extract. Caffeine 50 milligrams
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Photograph: Pete Cottell
Least Gunky
Micro Ingredients Organic Instant 10 in 1 Mushroom Coffee Powder
The fine brown powder that’s packed tightly into this massive bag has a faint smell of burnt coffee, sort of like that last bit of sludge that’s stuck to the bottom of a Bunn carafe after a long day at a diner. The taste is forgettable and inoffensive. A hat tip to Micro Ingredients is in order for its flawless execution of a product that’s as mid as mid can possibly get: It barely tastes like coffee or mushrooms, yet it gestures toward both and offers the same end result for the user.
I started with 2 teaspoons of the powder mixed into 8 ounces of hot water with the handheld blender the folks at MUD/WTR so graciously included in its own overengineered box (see below), and it took just a few seconds to realize this level of emulsion is overkill. You won’t need more than a few turns of a common spoon to completely dissolve Micro Ingredients in your cup, and the lack of silty or gunky residue is greatly appreciated after a few sips. I gussied up subsequent cups with 4 ounces of steamed milk and 1 teaspoon of simple syrup for a slightly more gratifying sip, but it tastes fine on its own and would be a decent substitute for coffee on a camping trip or in some sort of emergency. The caffeine content is just a few clicks above a cup of decaf, which makes this a nice late-afternoon pick-me-up for folks who have to take it easy with the real stuff.
Score 6.8/10 Key ingredients Instant Arabica coffee powder, chaga, reishi, lion’s mane, cordyceps, turkey tail, shiitake, mesima, wood ear, oyster mushroom Caffeine Not stated -
Photograph: Pete Cottell
Best Value
Max Fit Ten Mushrooms Coffee
The flavor of Ten Mushrooms is remarkably similar to that of Ryze (see below): smoky and savory with a sour finish and a dusty residue. A week with this did little to convince me that mushroom brew is the coffee of the future, but it didn’t offend my sensibilities or my bowels in any notable way. If I were forced to choose between Ten Mushrooms and Ryze, I would choose the former due to its bullshit-free spin on a cottage industry that’s filled with late-stage capitalist trapdoors and other forms of subscription-based chicanery.
As I write this, a 142-gram bag of Ten Mushrooms is about $10 cheaper than Ryze, and you can buy it instantly on Amazon without navigating several pages of subscriptions, pop-up discount offers, and other digital shakedowns. When the economy crashes and you still need to focus your chakras and conquer your ADHD with mushroom coffee, Jeff Bezos and Ten Mushrooms will be waiting for you with open arms.
Score 6.3/10 Key ingredients Chaga, reishi, lion’s mane, maitake, shiitake, cordyceps, turkey tail, king trumpet, willow bracket, agaricus blazei Caffeine 50 milligrams
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Photograph: Pete Cottell
Best Pick for Old Hippies
Melting Forest Mushroom Coffee
When browsing the various mushroom coffees available on the web, I was surprised to find that Melting Forest is the only prominent brand that really leans into the schwilly, post-Jerry ’90s aesthetic associated with a different strain of shrooms. The packaging is a toned-down riff on something one would find in a mall kiosk that sold blacklight posters and grinders until Spencer’s Gifts rolled through and put them out of business. It’s likely the same ex-hippie who does all the design work for Philz Coffee who slapped together Melting Forest’s website. The flavor of this powdered, lightly caffeinated coffee replacement tastes exactly like what you’d imagine to be the ideal brew of a guy who flips out when the barista attempts to rinse out the handmade ceramic blob he brings into his dusty old cafe in Marin at the exact same ungodly hour every morning.
The upfront taste has a light bitterness that would repel coffee noobs but endear old heads whose tastes have evolved from Folgers to Stumptown and back again. There’s very little grit in the top 80 percent of the cup, but the small bits of silt that linger at the bottom bring the funky, earthy flavor of the mushroom blend to life. Melting Forest plays nice with sweeter alternative milks like Pacific Foods coconut milk or original Silk soy milk. The energy level is a mild tickle of alertness that’s on par with a can of Yerba Mate or a half-caff Americano. It’s a reliable daily drinker that pairs well with long days of organizing stacks of magazines, working on a VW bus, and haranguing your local NPR affiliate about the lack of jazz fusion in its playlist.
Score 6.2/10 Key ingredients Arabica coffee, organic mushroom fruiting body extract (chaga, lion’s mane, reishi, cordyceps, maitake, shiitake, turkey tail) organic cacao, Senactiv Rosa roxburghii (fruit) and Panax notoginseng (root), Rhodiolife rhodiola extract, L-Theanine Caffeine Not stated -
Photograph: Pete Cottell
Best Option if You’re Afraid of Flavor
Ryze Mushroom Coffee
One could consider two different approaches to how purveyors of mushroom coffee dial in the flavor profile of their product: They can go all in with a bombastic brew filled with spices and overtones, or they can play it safe and concoct the base of a beverage that tastes more like memories of other drinks than a beverage with an identity of its own. The underwhelming flavor of Ryze falls in the latter camp.
In fairness, there are plenty of folks who have no interest in savoring their morning beverage and instead need to put the liquid inside them as fast as possible so they can “adult” that day. Twenty-one-year-old Pete thought people who claimed to enjoy espresso were insane, yet here I am, two decades later wishing I could sip bitter bean water instead of this sour cup of forgettable swill that curdled the whole milk I tried to cut it with. A week with Ryze did little to boost my mood, focus, or energy. It mostly made me cranky and sad.
Score 5.2/10 Key ingredients Cordyceps, reishi, lion’s mane, shiitake, turkey tail, king trumpet Caffeine 48 milligrams
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Photograph: Pete Cottell
Best Option for Incontenence
Everyday Dose Mushroom Coffee Starter Kit
Of all the contenders included in this experiment, Everyday Dose feels the most like a wellness influencer pyramid scheme. Each welcome box comes with a pamphlet in which the founder, Jack, tells you about how mushrooms weaned him off 20 years of Adderall dependency. You’re forgiven if you’ve never heard a muscular libertarian spout this nonsense on YouTube before, but I can tell you from experience that many heroes’ journeys in this world start with a dweeb conquering his addiction to legalized cocaine in the first act and creating a startup in the third.
One month of this fantastical dust promises better sleep and boosted mood. Two months promises a healthy gut, and three months promises glowing skin and boosted immunity. It’s easy to acquire three months of Everyday Dose because its subscription-only model is damn near impossible to cancel. It’s difficult to drink this daily for even a week, though, but best of luck if a guy with an alpha jawline and yacht full o’ thots in Croatia told you otherwise!
Unlike MUD/WTR (below), which seems to be the closest analog as far as aesthetics and cheekiness go, Everyday Dose boasts a wee bit of caffeine, which is appealing for coffee addicts like yours truly. I first mixed 1 tablespoon of the powder with 8 ounces of hot water and drank it straight up, which yielded an unappetizing liquid that tasted like a mix of Chex Mix and bong water. Some frothed oat milk and a squirt of simple syrup turned out to be the most drinkable form, but I’d be lying if I said I enjoyed any of it. By the end of the week I found myself burning off the slight hit of energy and focus this provided with a 30-minute cardio sesh in my basement followed by five to 10 minutes on the toilet, right on queue every time. People pay money for that type of “regularity,” so I guess that’s something!
Score 5.1/10 Key ingredients Lion’s mane, Chaga, L-Theanine, collagen protein Caffeine 45 milligrams -
Photograph: Pete Cottell
Not Recommended
MUD/WTR Original Blend (6.4 oz.)
The packaging of MUD/WTR isn’t quite as unhinged as a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s, but it’s definitely in the same realm. The spicy dust inside the can is a maximalist circus of weirdness as well, with herbaceous stalwarts like turmeric and masala chai holding it down alongside the usual shroom suspects. It took me a few days to realize that properly emulsifying this ruddy power per the suggested instructions—1 tablespoon with ¾ cup of water, battered thoroughly with the included handheld immersion blender—is an impossible task, so I started experimenting with supplemental ingredients in hopes that some blend of milk, fat, and sugar would minimize the gritty aftertaste that overwhelms the palate.
I landed on 1 tablespoon of simple syrup and 4 ounces of whole milk frothed in my trusty Subminimal NanoFoamer Pro. The final result hits somewhere between a chai latte and the kind of hot cocoa you’d order at a coffee shop with boring ’90s music, mean baristas, and a dirty bin full of stale vegan + gluten-free snacks next to the register. I didn’t hate it, but the bottom quarter of the cup is an undrinkable gunky mess. And don’t get me started on the chunky brown lacing that clings to the edge of the cup.
The physical and mental effects of MUD/WTR felt more like a facsimile of a boost than a visceral kick in the pants, but a placebo high is better than nothing, right? Combine that with the amount of adjunct ingredients required to make this drinkable and I ended up with a beverage I would only drink every now and then as a treat on a chilly day rather than a daily sipper I can rely on for increased focus, energy, virility, and the million other things this product promises within the wall of text that adorns its packaging.
Score 4.2/10 Key ingredients Masala chai, cacao, lion’s mane, cordyceps, chaga, reishi, cinnamon, turmeric, Himalayan salt. Caffeine 35 milligrams
