What goes into our products?

For our core mushroom range, just mushrooms. That’s it. 100% pure, fungi-powered goodness.

Introduce yourself to the big five:

1. DIRTEA Reishi
2. DIRTEA Chaga
3. DIRTEA Cordyceps
4. DIRTEA Lion’s Mane
5. DIRTEA Tremella

Our mushroom ratio

Extraction ratios are an expression of concentration rather than a measure of active compound potency. DIRTEA extraction ratios are as follows.

• Lion's mane: 8-12:1
• Chaga: 6-10:1
• Reishi: 8-12:1
• Cordyceps: 8-12:1
• Tremella: 8-12:1

The story of our process begins in the rolling mountains where our forest-shaded greenhouses and small family farms are located, far away from the urban lowland centres.

All our mushrooms are organically grown. However, the exact location will vary depending on the climate best suited for the strain. For example, the Reishi and Lion’s Mane are grown in shade houses in more humid areas, Cordyceps are grown indoors with precise climate controls, and Chaga is wild harvested.

Once grown, it’s time for picking.

Before we jump ahead, it’s worth giving you a quick mycology lesson to better appreciate the care that goes into every batch.

A mushroom is the reproductive part of the organism we call fungi.

Fungi have two main parts: the mycelium (which can be compared to the tree) and the mushroom (which can be compared to the fruit). The mycelium lives underground and can spread for hundreds of miles. When the mycelium wants to reproduce, one of the ways is to produce a fruit - a mushroom. The mushroom releases spores, which mate to form more mycelium.

Our extracts are made from only pure mushrooms and DO NOT contain any mycelium or the grains and wood on which the mycelium is grown on.

Now we delve into the extraction process.

This is the fun part - as every single one of our mushrooms is either hand selected by a team of pickers or forged by farmers. Next, they’re dried and crushed into a fine powder to create more surface area - allowing us to access more of the mushroom during the first extraction.

Depending on the strain, we use large pressure cookers filled with pure filtered water, which heats the cells and cracks the cell wall. We repeat this process up to three times to ensure all the target compounds are separated from the chitin. On its own, chitin is indigestible, but inside, it holds the secret: polysaccharides and beta-glucans. Once the cell wall is broken, these are released and become bio-available, so our body can metabolise them, and we can benefit from their fungal compounds.

Once the pressure cooking is completed, we separate the liquid from the fibre, then concentrate it to reach a specific density. Now, it’s ready for spray drying - which dries up any remaining moisture between the granules to prevent mould.

Next, we run the fine powder through a finer sieve to catch any coarse particles.

Then the only step left is to test our powder extracts for heavy metals, moulds and other unwanted chemicals. When the powders pass the quality control testing, we send them to the final testing phase to determine the polysaccharide content - by shining UV light through the powder to count the percentage of polysaccharides.

We then package the extracted and tested concentrate powders so they look beautiful and are ready to serve.