How we make our mushroom extract: from Petri dish to bottle

A “full cycle” is easy to claim and hard to show. There are three of us: one runs the business, one the science and one the growing, and every stage from culture to bottling happens on our own premises in Yerevan. We do not buy in raw material, repackage anything or hand any step to a contractor, so we can show the whole route, stage by stage.

What makes our bottle different from another with the same name is decided mostly in the middle of the route, where the raw material grows. Lion’s Mane goes into the extract as mycelium, Reishi and Cordyceps as fruiting bodies: from each mushroom we take the part that holds the compounds people take it for.

A clean culture: the same mushroom, bottle after bottle

Our production starts in a Petri dish, and the dish decides whether the next bottle will match the last one. We keep our cultures as tissue clones. Spores reshuffle the mushroom’s traits in every generation, while a piece of tissue from deep inside a strong mushroom repeats that mushroom itself. The clone is grown on agar into a clean, vigorous culture.

You can see a clean culture against the light. Mycelium spreads from the tissue in an even circle, dense and uniform, with no green or black spots of mould and no wet, shiny film of bacteria. Our collection is made of dishes like that: no wild-picked or bought-in material goes into production.

At home this stage is the first step of our growing course: a clone, agar and an even circle of mycelium on the dish. Next, the clean culture has to be multiplied, and for that it moves into liquid.

Liquid medium: a fast start, and for Lion’s Mane the raw material itself

A liquid medium gives the culture a fast, even start. Mycelium from the agar goes into a nutrient liquid and breaks up into pieces, and every piece starts a new colony. The mycelium grows through the whole volume at once, whereas on a dish it creeps in from one edge.

For Reishi and Cordyceps the liquid culture is seed material, used to inoculate grain. For Lion’s Mane, liquid culture is how the raw material itself is grown: the mycelium builds up its mass in the liquid, and that mycelium is what goes into the extract. How to run a liquid culture at home is covered in step 3 of the course. Why Lion’s Mane takes this route comes down to the compounds people take it for.

Lion’s Mane: mycelium from a liquid medium, as in the human trial

People take Lion’s Mane for memory; it works through erinacines, and it is the mycelium that makes them. In a 2025 study erinacines were present in the mycelium, while none were found in the fruiting body samples: Lion’s Mane mycelium and fruiting body are different raw materials. That is why our Lion’s Mane is mycelium.

In the trial where people took erinacine A mycelium for 49 weeks and their score on a short memory and thinking test went up, that mycelium was grown in a liquid medium too. Our Lion’s Mane grows the same way: from our own culture, without a grain substrate.

Reishi and Cordyceps: from grain to fruiting bodies in our chambers

Reishi and Cordyceps take a longer road: they are taken for the compounds of the fruiting body, and the way to it runs through grain. Sterilised grain is inoculated with the culture, and the mycelium wraps every kernel. The colonised grain is a stepping stone to fruiting blocks, and the blocks grow on into mushrooms in chambers where we control humidity, temperature and air in any season.

An even climate on the shelves gives even fruiting bodies, and where to put heating and airflow so the climate comes out even is shown by our climate model.

How Reishi grew decides how strong it is. Strength is judged by its ganoderic acids, the bitter triterpenes of the fruiting body, and their amount varies hugely from one raw material to another. That is why we grow our Reishi ourselves, to a full fruiting body.

Cordyceps militaris rises from its substrate in orange clubs, with no insects involved. Its main compound, cordycepin, is made by the mushroom together with pentostatin, which slows the enzyme that would otherwise break cordycepin down fast. The pair lives in the mushroom itself, and to keep it together the whole fruiting body goes into our extract.

With the raw material grown, the three mushrooms share the route again: hot water and alcohol.

Two passes on one material: what water takes and what alcohol takes

A single solvent takes only part of a mushroom. Hot water loosens the cell wall, where chitin fibres are bound into a mesh of beta-glucans: the beta-glucans pass into solution and the chitin stays in the solid residue. On a water extract of Reishi like this, fatigue in a trial fell by 28% over 8 weeks, against 20% on placebo.

Reishi’s ganoderic acids and Lion’s Mane’s erinacines barely dissolve in water, so alcohol takes them; in Cordyceps, alcohol takes the fat-soluble part of the fruiting body. That is why both passes run on one and the same material, and both extracts meet in one bottle.

That is what dual extraction means, and it is covered in detail in our article on water and alcohol. Two passes leave two liquids and a solid residue, and next the liquid has to be separated from the solid.

Filtering, evaporation, bottling: mushroom extract and water in the bottle

Only what has dissolved goes into the bottle. We filter out the solid residue, combine the two liquids and evaporate the alcohol before bottling: for us alcohol is a tool that draws the compounds out of the mushroom. We do not add mushroom powder back, there are no fillers or flavourings, and the composition is mushroom extract and water.

We fill and label the bottles right here in Yerevan: 30 ml glass bottles with a dropper. A full dropper holds 1 ml and has a measuring line, so you can see each serving. The colour of the band on the pack names the mushroom: blue for Lion’s Mane, red for Cordyceps, green for Reishi.

You will not find ratios like “10:1” on our labels: without a stated method of measurement, such a figure says nothing about the strength of an extract. Instead of a multiplier we show the process itself.

How to check us: the label, the declaration and a question to the maker

The key points of this route are something you can check yourself, and it takes a few minutes.

• The label and the product page: the label gives the composition and directions, the product page the Latin species name and the raw material. Five questions to ask of any mushroom extract, with our answers, are worked through in five label checks.
• The declaration: our products are covered by EAEU declaration of conformity No. RU Д-AM.РА02.В.39933/25. The number is public, and you can look it up in the EAEU register before you buy.
• A question to the maker: write to the chat on our site, and the people who grow and extract the mushrooms will answer.
• The build: we show how the production itself is growing, as it is, on our Telegram channel.

All that is left is to pick the mushroom for your goal.

In short: which bottle to start with

The Lion’s Mane bottle holds mycelium from a liquid medium, as in the 49-week trial; the Reishi and Cordyceps bottles hold fruiting bodies from our chambers, and in each, water and alcohol have collected both groups of the mushroom’s compounds. Lion’s Mane is taken for focus and clarity, Cordyceps for energy and endurance, Reishi for calm and balance.

At 1–2 ml a day, a 30 ml bottle lasts 15–30 days. If you are pregnant, breastfeeding or taking medication, talk to your doctor before you start.

Start with the bottle for your goal (Lion’s Mane in the morning, Cordyceps before exercise, Reishi in the evening) or with the TRIO set for the whole day.