Mushroom tea won’t taste like your average cup of Earl Grey or English Breakfast, but it will make the challenge of dosing magic mushrooms a whole lot easier.
If you’ve never had or dosed magic mushrooms before, we highly recommend that you do. If you’ve had, or even if you haven’t just yet, you’ll be able to appreciate the fact that magic mushrooms and shrooms just simply do not taste very good.
We wish we were giving you an overstatement, but for many psychonauts both old and new, the taste of dried magic mushrooms is just not that appealing!
With a dry and spongy texture and a strong fungal taste, chewing the fungi in your mouth might be the most difficult part of going on a trip – but that’s only if you don’t know how to brew a mug of mushroom tea!
Here’s how to overcome the shroom-y taste and start your mushroom trip with a warm mushroom embrace!
What is Mushroom Tea?
For those new to magic mushrooms, let’s first talk a little bit about what they are.
Magic mushrooms, shrooms, or psilocybe cubensis are a psychedelic variety of mushrooms. The psychedelic and hallucinogenic compound, psilocybin, found within the mushrooms are responsible for visual, cerebral and auditory hallucinations occur. In lower doses, such as a microdose, the effects are negligible.Â
However, the more you take, the more powerful and surreal the hallucinations become. At extremely high doses, the hallucinations can bend your perception.
To enjoy their life-changing and therapeutic effects, the most common way to use magic mushrooms is to eat them raw. This, however, poses an issue!Â
Due to magic mushrooms high fibre content and tough cell walls made of chitin, our bodies can’t break them down all that effectively. Which can cause gut rot, nausea and indigestion. To fight against the mushroom’s tummy-hurting fibre and chitin, it’s recommended to make a magic-mushroom-infused tea!Â
When shrooms are boiled in hot water, their psychedelic properties are released into the water in an already active state. This means we’re able to bypass nausea and an upset stomach.
Pepto Bismol; be gone!
And last but not least, mushroom tea masks the flavour.
While some people don’t mind them, their chewy texture and earth taste can make some users gag! Sure, they’re not awful, but who wouldn’t instead sip a lovely lemon, honey and ginger tea? Check, please!
How to Make Shroom Tea
To begin with, psilocybin, the compound found within magic mushrooms and shrooms that gives its users a psychedelic experience, is completely water-soluble. If you’ve made weed tea before, this won’t be anything like it.Â
Decarboxylation and baking your shrooms aren’t required – all you’ll have to do is cut them up and get some hot water!
Here’s what you’ll need to get started:
Ingredients
- Magic Mushrooms
- Water strainer
- Large cup or mug
- Kettle or water boiler
- Teapot
- Mint (optional)
- Honey (optional)
- Sugar (optional)
- Ginger (optional)
- Orange/Lemon juice (optional)
Directions
Here’s how to brew your own cup of psychedelic mushroom tea.
- Prepare a kettle of boiling water. You’ll want at least 1 cup per person that’ll be drinking the mushroom tea.
- Crush and/or chop up your magic mushrooms. Place your desired dosage in a separate teapot. (If you want to add orange or lemon juice, this is where you’d want to do it!)
- Once your water is boiling, pour it over your magic mushrooms in the teapot. Lit seep for 10-15 minutes stirring occasionally
- Once 10-15 minutes have elapsed, strain and serve the tea into a mug or cup of your choice. This is also where you’ll want to add any additional ingredients such as mint, ginger, honey or sugar.
- Drink your first cup and put the mushrooms that you’ve strained back into the teapot for another round of infusion. Follow the exact same directions and repeat for a second brew!
2 infusions is really the limit on how many times you can reuse your magic mushrooms. Any further and they won’t be as potent or as effective.
Before you get too gung-ho on this shroom-y beverage, be sure to look up how long do shrooms last to find out your proper dosage and what to expect!
The Benefits of Mushroom Tea
As we’ve discussed above, the biggest argument for brewing a cup of mushroom tea instead of eating it as is is to mask some of the unpleasant tastes and textures of eating it raw.
Another underappreciated benefit of drinking mushroom tea is that doing so can actually reduce nausea and other disorienting feelings that can come from the mushroom’s onset.
Raw magic mushrooms have a tough, fibrous outer cell and can be hard on our stomachs to digest, leading to some intense feelings of nausea.
However, brewing a cup of mushroom tea allows you some small part in alleviating these feelings. A bit of ginger, mint and even honey can do wonders in settling an upset stomach.
Some additional ingredients, such as lemon and orange juice, can actually start changing psilocybin into psilocin in your cup before you even drink it! Psilocybin is a prodrug, meaning that the substance itself is non-psychoactive and needs to be metabolized before it can be felt.
The addition of citric acid can make the onset of effects come on much faster and a lot stronger – which can both be a positive or a negative depending on who you ask!
Mushroom Tea Alternatives
If buying shrooms and cutting them up to brew your own cup of mushroom tea doesn’t sound too appealing to you, there are a variety of fun, tasty and prepared alternatives that’ll easily get the job done!Â
Pre-infused mushroom tea mixes are a simple and easy way to dose without having to think too hard about the overall process. These teas usually come flavoured with additional ingredients such as tea mixes and sweeteners to make the experience more palatable.
Not a fan of tea?
Shroom-infused chocolates and even gummies are other possible avenues for getting your dose of shrooms in easily and effectively. These sweet confections mask the taste and flavour of mushrooms extremely well, making you almost forget entirely that you’re about to go on a psychedelic journey!Â
Check out our mushroom edibles for the full selection!Â
What to Expect from a Shroom Tea Trip
Unlike eating raw magic shrooms, which take about 45 minutes to an hour to kick in, shroom tea trips start in 15 minutes. Since we extracted the psilocybin from the fibrous mushroom and Chitin, our stomachs absorb it quickly. Within 45 to 60 minutes, the trip is full-blown.
Expect intense visual and auditory hallucinations for 4 to 5 hours. With shroom tea, the trip is shortened. It’s a slightly more intense, condensed trip than eating raw magic mushrooms. After the 6th hour, things should be back to “normal.”
Shroom Tea Recap
Shroom tea is a great way to experience psychedelic mushrooms without the nauseating pain and flavour. By extracting the psilocybin into boiling water, we bypass the vegetable’s tough fibre and cell walls, leaving for a much more pleasant, direct, and fulfilling experience. The long, slow coasting ascension with raw mushrooms is negated with a flash fry with shroom tea.
Magic mushrooms aren’t just for burnouts looking to get high. In fact, fewer people than ever are using it for that purpose.
Instead, the benefit to mental health, spiritual awakening and balance in life is drawing a wider audience. If an insight into the psyche is on the menu, then so is shroom tea.
Happy tripping!