Yes. We call ours an extract, not a tincture, because a tincture is usually made with alcohol and ours has none. Our Lion's Mane Triple Extract is alcohol-free, a water-based extraction suspended and stabilized in vegetable glycerin, and our Reishi, Chaga, Turkey Tail and Trifecta are alcohol-free too.
What we do instead is on our how we extract page.
What does "tincture" mean?
Alcohol, usually. The word means an extract made with alcohol, from a plant or a mushroom, so when a label says tincture, that's most often what's in the bottle. Some liquid supplements are sold with more alcohol in the bottle than anything else. [1]
People at our market booth say "tincture" more often than "extract", and we've been asked whether ours is an alcohol or a powder. It's neither. It's a liquid with no alcohol in it, and we compare it with powders and capsules in how to choose a mushroom extract.
Why look for one without alcohol?
The first reason is the one that changed our own bottle.
The taste. Our first batch was made with alcohol. At one of our first markets, a customer said they liked Lion's Mane but found that bottle hard to take, and something hard to take doesn't get taken every day. So we dropped the alcohol and moved to ultrasound, which is now one of the primary methods we use. The story of our first batch has the rest.
Most small extract makers use high-proof grain alcohol, the Everclear kind. It has a harsh taste and a feel in the mouth that lingers, and a lot of people go out of their way to avoid it. You can still taste it after it's cut down, at the lower strengths in a dual extract.
Not drinking. Plenty of people don't drink at all. Some are in recovery, and for some their faith rules it out. Others just keep alcohol out of their diet. For them, a dropper of tincture is still alcohol.
Medications. Plenty of prescription medicines don't mix with alcohol. In a national US survey covering 1999 to 2010, about four in ten adults who drink were taking a prescription medicine that interacts with alcohol, and among drinkers 65 and older it was nearly eight in ten. [2]
Kids and pets in the house. A bottle with alcohol in it is one more thing to keep out of reach.
Is there alcohol in our Lion's Mane extract?
There's none in ours. The extract is alcohol-free, so a serving of it isn't a drink.
Is there alcohol in Lion's Mane itself?
In the chemist's sense, yes, and it's what you smell. A mushroom's smell comes from a compound called 1-octen-3-ol, which a 1983 paper names as the most abundant one in mushrooms and the one behind the mushroom odor. [3] Chemists call it an alcohol because of how the molecule is built.
It's often just called mushroom alcohol. It's an eight-carbon alcohol the mushroom makes by breaking down linoleic acid, a fatty acid. It's so typical of fungi that its presence is used as a sign that fungi are growing, and some plants make it too. [4]
Cutting a mushroom sets it off. When researchers wounded oyster mushrooms, they measured an immediate burst of 1-octen-3-ol and the compounds that come with it. [5] That may be part of why a mushroom smells most like a mushroom right after you slice it.
A 2024 study of fresh Lion's Mane lists it among the compounds behind its smell. In storage, the same study found the mushroom smell fading and the aroma turning toward alcohol and fat. [6]
Oyster mushrooms carry a sugar alcohol as well. Mannitol, a polyol, builds up in oyster mushroom fruiting bodies as they grow. [7]
None of these is ethanol, the alcohol in beer and wine.
What changes without the alcohol?
Mostly, what it's like to take. There's no alcohol burn under the tongue.
It also keeps the polysaccharides in the liquid. These are the long sugar chains researchers count among Lion's Mane's main active components, and enough alcohol makes them drop out of solution. That's how labs collect them: the usual method for Lion's Mane polysaccharides is water extraction followed by alcohol precipitation. [8] In a 2025 study, researchers added alcohol to a button mushroom extract in steps and dropped out a different set of polysaccharides at each strength. [9] With no alcohol in our bottle, nothing pushes them out, so they stay in the liquid you take.
Our Lion's Mane extract is sweet with a slight tart note. It tastes like tamarind or a mild balsamic vinaigrette. The label says to take 1 to 3 ml a day under the tongue for 30 to 60 seconds, or add it to a drink. How that works out in pumps, and how long a bottle lasts, is in how many drops of Lion's Mane per day. It also lists everything else in the bottle.
We grow our Lion's Mane in New Smyrna, extract it from fresh fruiting bodies, and have made our extracts with ultrasound since March 2022.
The deeper read: why does alcohol burn?
Because alcohol sets off the nerve receptor that senses heat. That receptor, called TRPV1, is the same one chili pepper sets off.
A 2002 lab study on nerve cells found that alcohol lowers the temperature at which the receptor fires, from about 42 °C (108 °F) to about 34 °C (93 °F). [10] That puts the trigger point below body temperature, and the authors call it a likely explanation for why alcohol burns at body temperature. In plain terms, the nerve reports heat that isn't there.
In a 2014 study, 93 people rated alcohol two ways: a weaker mix sipped and spat out, and a stronger one on a swab touched to the back of the tongue. [11] On the swab, burning or stinging rated higher than bitter or sweet, and, among those 93, the sensations they reported went along with differences in the gene for that same receptor. That may be why the same alcohol burns more for one person than for the next. Take the alcohol out of the bottle and the burn goes with it.
Sources
- Mornar A, Sertić M, Amidžić Klarić D, Klarić I, Stipanović K, Nigović B. Evaluation of alcohol content and metal impurities in liquid dietary supplements by sHSS-GC-FID and GFAAS techniques. Food Chemistry. 2016;211:285-293. doi:10.1016/j.foodchem.2016.05.068
- Breslow RA, Dong C, White A. Prevalence of alcohol-interactive prescription medication use among current drinkers: United States, 1999 to 2010. Alcoholism, Clinical and Experimental Research. 2015;39(2):371-379. doi:10.1111/acer.12633
- Wnuk S, Kinastowski S, Kamiński E. Synthesis and analysis of 1-octen-3-ol, the main flavour component of mushrooms. Die Nahrung. 1983;27(5):479-486. doi:10.1002/food.19830270523
- Yin G, Moore GG, Bennett JW. Diversity and functions of fungal VOCs with special reference to the multiple bioactivities of the mushroom alcohol. Mycology. 2025;16(3):1011-1022. doi:10.1080/21501203.2025.2453717
- Nagata Y, Sotome K, Fukuyama D, Sekimoto K, Matsui K. Developmental stage-dependent and wound-triggered formation dynamics of volatiles in Pleurotus cornucopiae. Fungal Biology. 2026;130(6):101824. doi:10.1016/j.funbio.2026.101824
- Zhong Y, Cui Y, Yu J, Yan S, Bai J, Xu H, Li M. Volatile flavor behavior characterization of Hericium erinaceus during postharvest storage using E-nose, HS-GC-IMS, and HS-SPME-GC-MS after treated with electron-beam generated X-ray irradiation. Food Chemistry. 2024;454:139771. doi:10.1016/j.foodchem.2024.139771
- Zhou S, Ma F, Zhang X, Zhang J. Carbohydrate changes during growth and fruiting in Pleurotus ostreatus. Fungal Biology. 2016;120(6-7):852-861. doi:10.1016/j.funbio.2016.03.007
- Ge F, Chen Y, Wang B, Zhou W, Du B, Hou L. Bioactive Polysaccharides from Hericium erinaceus: Extraction, Structure, Bioactivities, and Applications. Molecules. 2025;30(8):1850. doi:10.3390/molecules30081850
- Kang L, Zhu X, Yan Y, Zhu R, Wei W, Peng F, Sun L. Characterization and Antioxidant Activity of Polysaccharides From Agaricus bisporus by Gradient Ethanol Precipitation. Chemistry & Biodiversity. 2025;22(8):e202500120. doi:10.1002/cbdv.202500120
- Trevisani M, Smart D, Gunthorpe MJ, et al. Ethanol elicits and potentiates nociceptor responses via the vanilloid receptor-1. Nature Neuroscience. 2002;5(6):546-551. doi:10.1038/nn0602-852
- Allen AL, McGeary JE, Hayes JE. Polymorphisms in TRPV1 and TAS2Rs associate with sensations from sampled ethanol. Alcoholism, Clinical and Experimental Research. 2014;38(10):2550-2560. doi:10.1111/acer.12527
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