Five Questions to Ask When Choosing the Best Cordyceps to Buy

Alex Dorr July 24, 2020

What are the best Cordyceps to buy?

The best Cordyceps to buy are the ones you’ll actually take. If you dislike swallowing capsules, you’ll end up forgetting to take them. If you buy whole Cordyceps but don’t know how to extract them, they may languish in a cupboard. That’s why Cordyceps tinctures are so convenient. You can carry them with you, add them to water (or take them straight up, if that’s your thing), or add them to a smoothie or other beverage.

Five Important Questions You Should Ask When Choosing the Best Cordyceps to Buy

When it comes to anything you put on or in your body, be your own best advocate and do your homework. Reputable companies will be eager to share information about the quality and purity of their Cordyceps products.

Here are some questions to ask when deciding which are the best Cordyceps to buy:

1. Do you use fruiting bodies or mycelium to make your Cordyceps supplements?

Not all parts of a mushroom are created equal. Sure, they all play a role in helping a mushroom grow and reproduce, but not every part has a use in herbalism (or the kitchen). Fruiting bodies are the above-ground parts of a mushroom. These are the parts you might recognize at the supermarket, and they’re the parts you most commonly forage, cook and extract. Mycelium is a part of the mushroom that humans rarely see, because it’s usually underground. While important to the mushroom, mycelium is not traditionally used to support your health.* However, it’s cheaper and easier to grow mycelium on grain than it is fruiting bodies, so many products use Cordyceps mycelium. Our products use only 100% Cordyceps militaris fruiting bodies, never mycelium, so you only get the “good stuff.”

2. Are your Cordyceps Certified Organic?

Yes, mushrooms can be Certified Organic just like the blueberries you buy at the grocery store. Not all Cordyceps supplements are Certified Organic, but ours are! We continually refine our sourcing, growing, and cultivating techniques, and in 2019, we were proudly the largest Cordyceps militaris mushroom farm in the Western Hemisphere — and the only one that was Certified Organic. We were certified by Baystate Organic Certifiers, and have since expanded our cultivation by partnering with other certified organic farms. This means that everything that we were using was organic, from our substrates to our cleaning supplies.

3. How do you extract your Cordyceps?

Mushrooms like Cordyceps contain different active components, but they’re locked inside and need to be extracted. We prefer to double extract Cordyceps — and we believe those are definitely the best Cordyceps to buy.* This means we’ve extracted the mushrooms in two ways. Our mushrooms undergo a dual extraction of water, known as decoction, and alcohol, known as tincture. The active compounds in mushrooms are both alcohol-soluble (triterpenes) and water-soluble (beta-glucans). To get full-spectrum support from mushrooms, we extract our mushrooms with 190-proof alcohol and hot water, then carefully combine the two. We follow the science and extract our Cordyceps (and all mushrooms we use) at the optimal alcohol percentages, temperatures and durations.

4. Is this company vertically integrated?

Some companies make extractions from mushrooms they buy from large suppliers halfway around the world. Sometimes this is completely fine, but the company should always know where their supplies are from.

5. Does the company test its Cordyceps for microbes and purity?

The best Cordyceps to buy are those that offer proof that they are pure and potent.*

Every batch of Cordyceps we use goes through lab testing. We test for heavy metals and biological contamination, to ensure the purity of our products. We also check the concentration of active compounds such as beta-glucans, alpha-glucan, cordycepin, and adenosine to name a few. We want to see the science when it comes to the potency of our supplements, so we make sure to get definitive numbers. Our tests have shown to be some of the most potent on the market!*