Start with what's in the bottle, not the shape it comes in. A mushroom powder is the dried mushroom ground up. An extract is what a liquid pulled out of the mushroom, and an extract powder is that extract dried back down. A capsule is just a powder in pill form. "Tincture" usually means an extract made in alcohol.
The label tells you which one you're holding, if you know which lines to read. We grow Lion's Mane on wood in New Smyrna, Florida, and we make liquid extracts from it and from Reishi, Chaga and Turkey Tail. Ultrasound is one of the primary methods we use, there's no alcohol in any of it, and how we extract goes further.
Tincture or extract?
Every tincture is an extract, but not every extract is a tincture.
Ours has no alcohol in it, so we call it an extract. It's still a liquid you take by the milliliter, which is usually what someone means when they ask for a tincture. We moved away from alcohol after a customer told us our first batch was hard to take, and our history of Lion's Mane tells the rest. What alcohol-free means for a bottle, and what changes without it, is in our guide to alcohol-free Lion's Mane extract.
Is it like an alcohol or a powder?
Ours is neither. It's a water-based extraction, suspended and stabilized in vegetable glycerin, with no alcohol in it. Here is what each form on the shelf is:
- Mushroom powder. The dried mushroom, ground. You take all of it, including the cell wall a mushroom is built from, and nothing has been pulled out of it.
- Extract powder. What a liquid dissolved out of the mushroom, dried down to a powder, often with a carrier added to make it easier to handle. A US supplement label lists it by the weight of the dried extract.
- Liquid extract. The same thing left in its liquid. The label lists the volume or weight of the whole liquid per serving, and if the mushroom went in fresh, the label has to say so.
- Capsule. A powder in pill form. Read the label to see which of the two powders it holds.
- Tincture. A liquid extract, made in alcohol by the usual meaning of the word.
A 2022 review of extract ratios defines an extract the same way: what a liquid dissolves out of a material, separated from what it left behind.
What you do with each is different too. A powder gets measured out and stirred into food or a drink. A capsule gets swallowed. A liquid gets measured by the milliliter and taken straight or in a drink.
Is a mushroom powder the same as an extract powder?
No. They're two separate products, and each has its own drawbacks. A mushroom powder is the whole dried mushroom, so you're swallowing the tough cell wall along with everything locked inside it. An extract powder has had a liquid pull those compounds out, but then it gets dried back down, often with a carrier mixed in, so part of what you're measuring isn't mushroom at all.
Why a liquid and not a powder?
Every step between the mushroom and the bottle is another chance for air and heat to break down what you're paying for, and powders go through more of those steps. A mushroom powder is dried and then ground, and grinding opens up far more of it to the air. An extract powder is extracted and then dried again, which is another round of heat. Oxidation and heat damage add up along the way, and the result is a lower-quality powder, in the worst cases an inactive one.
Most extract powders on the market are mass-produced and imported in bulk. We make our extracts ourselves and keep them liquid, so they never get dried back into a powder at the end.
Fruiting body, or what's in the capsule?
The fruiting body is the mushroom you'd recognize. Mycelium is the network of fine threads it grows from, and some products are made from mycelium instead. An extract isn't an alternative to the fruiting body. It's made from one part of the mushroom or the other, or both, and the label should say which went in.
A 2022 review that compared mycelium and fruiting bodies in button, oyster and shiitake mushrooms and their close relatives found that some of what's in each varies widely with what it grew on, the strain and how far along it was. We start with the whole mushroom, and our Lion's Mane label says Fresh Fruiting Body. If you want the longer version, mycelium or fruiting body, side by side walks through it.
How much mushroom is actually in there?
That's the question an extract ratio tries to answer, and it answers less than it looks.
On a dried extract, 10:1 means about 10 grams of dried starting material went in to make 1 gram of extract, counted before any carrier is mixed in. That is the ratio review's definition. Its definitions take in fungi, but none of its examples is a mushroom, so what carries over to a bottle of mushroom extract is the arithmetic, not any figure measured on a plant. A bigger first number doesn't mean a stronger extract. The review calls that belief "perhaps the most common misconception" about these ratios. It quotes Australia's medicines regulator, which says a high ratio usually reflects an extraction aimed at particular compounds but "may simply reflect a partial extraction procedure."
On a liquid, the second number is the liquid, not the extract. US label rules write a liquid's concentration as the weight of the starting material to the volume of the liquid it was extracted in, so 1:5 means 1 gram of mushroom to 5 milliliters of that liquid. If some of the liquid was taken off afterward and the label gives a ratio, it has to be the ratio after, not before. A powder's 10:1 counts the extract that came out. A liquid's 1:5 counts the liquid it was extracted in. You can't line the two numbers up by eye.
What a ratio leaves out, according to the same review:
- Starting material. How good the mushroom was before anything happened to it.
- The liquid. Whether it was water, alcohol or both.
- Time and temperature. How long the extraction ran, and how hot.
- Added carrier. How much of the finished powder isn't extract at all.
Our labels give you the amount in a serving instead: 1,887 mg of extract in every 1 ml, which our Trifecta splits across its three mushrooms.
So the question that gets you an answer from any seller is how many grams of mushroom go into one serving, fresh or dried, and in what liquid. Ask any seller that. It's also the number that lets you compare a powder with a liquid from their labels. The same amount going in doesn't mean the same extract coming out, though. The four things above still apply to both.
What's a serving of a liquid extract?
One serving of ours is 1 ml. One a day is what we recommend to start with, and the range is 1 to 3 ml a day. A 1 oz bottle holds 30 ml, which is 30 servings, and a 2 oz holds 60.
Lion's Mane and Reishi are best under the tongue, held there for 30 to 60 seconds, and if a drink is what gets it taken every day, take it in a drink. Consistency matters more than the method. We keep Lion's Mane out of anything hot, to preserve its heat-sensitive compounds, so cool or room-temperature water is best for it. Turkey Tail and Chaga go into a drink: water, juice, tea or a shake.
What does nano-encapsulation do?
It puts the extract in a form your body can take up more easily, and ultrasound is how we get there. Food and drug researchers use ultrasound to make nanoemulsions, breaking droplets down to a size far too small to see, because compounds that dissolve poorly become more bioavailable in that form. Ultrasound also helps build liposomes. Those are tiny spheres wrapped in a membrane much like the ones around your own cells, holding compounds inside, and ultrasound makes them smaller, down to nano size. We call ours nano-encapsulation.
That work was done in food and drug labs, and the physics doesn't change when the liquid is a mushroom extract.
Does it have a strong taste?
Our Lion's Mane is sweet with a slight tart note, something like tamarind or a mild balsamic vinaigrette. With no alcohol in it, there's no burn.
What to ask any seller
- Which mushroom, and which part? Ours: the whole mushroom. Our Lion's Mane Triple Extract label says Fresh Fruiting Body.
- Mushroom powder, extract powder, or liquid? Ours: a liquid extract.
- What liquid? Ours: a water-based extraction, suspended and stabilized in vegetable glycerin, with no alcohol.
- What else is in the bottle? Ours: apple cider vinegar and sunflower lecithin, alongside the mushroom and the glycerin.
- Fresh or dried going in? Ours: the Lion's Mane goes in fresh.
- How much is in each serving? Ours: 1,887 mg of extract in every 1 ml, split three ways in the Trifecta. If a label gives a ratio instead, ask which number is the liquid.
- Where did it grow? Ours: Lion's Mane on wood in New Smyrna. Chaga and Turkey Tail are wild-foraged in Michigan by one wildcrafter, and half our Reishi comes from that wildcrafter while we grow the other half.
- How big is a serving, and how many are in the bottle? Ours: 1 ml, 30 or 60 to a bottle.
All of ours are on our extracts page, and the mushroom quiz helps you choose between them in under a minute.
The deeper read: what an extract ratio is measuring
On a dried extract, the ratio measures yield: how much came out of what went in. It isn't a measure of what's in the extract.
The ratio review gives the working range for dried plant material extracted in water or a mix of water and alcohol. Usually 10 to 25 percent of the weight dissolves out, which works out to ratios between 10:1 and 4:1. Its example of a material that runs high is woody roots, which hold little that dissolves and so give high ratios even when they're extracted completely. None of its examples is a mushroom.
The same material moves from batch to batch. In the review's worked example, two 100 kg lots run through the same process gave 14 kg and 11 kg of extract, so the ratio came out between 7:1 and 9:1. A single ratio on a label is usually shorthand for a range.
Throwing part of an extract away raises the ratio. The review's example is gymnema, a leaf extract: 100 grams of leaf gives about 12.5 grams of extract, roughly 8:1. Purifying that further to concentrate particular compounds, and discarding about two thirds of it on the way, leaves about 4 grams, about 25:1. The second one has the bigger number because less of the leaf's weight is in it.
There are two ways to count the carrier. One US industry convention counts the finished total extract, carrier included. The European medicines guideline counts only the genuine extract and lists the carrier separately. The same powder can carry two different ratios depending on which one the label follows.
For liquids, the US rule has one more line. A label doesn't have to give a concentration, but if some of the liquid has been taken off and the label does give one, it has to state the final concentration: an extract that started at 1:5 with half its liquid removed is labeled 1:2.5.
Sources
- Monagas M, Brendler T, Brinckmann J, Dentali S, Gafner S, Giancaspro G, Johnson H, Kababick J, Ma C, Oketch-Rabah H, Pais P, Sarma N, Marles R. Understanding plant to extract ratios in botanical extracts. Frontiers in Pharmacology. 2022;13:981978. doi:10.3389/fphar.2022.981978
- US Code of Federal Regulations, Title 21, §101.36, Nutrition labeling of dietary supplements, paragraphs (b)(3)(ii)(B) and (C).
- Berger RG, Bordewick S, Krahe NK, Ersoy F. Mycelium vs. Fruiting Bodies of Edible Fungi: A Comparison of Metabolites. Microorganisms. 2022;10(7):1379. doi:10.3390/microorganisms10071379
- Modarres-Gheisari SMM, Gavagsaz-Ghoachani R, Malaki M, Safarpour P, Zandi M. Ultrasonic nano-emulsification: a review. Ultrasonics Sonochemistry. 2019;52:88-105. doi:10.1016/j.ultsonch.2018.11.005
- Vikal A, Maurya R, Patel P, Kurmi BD. Nanoemulsion Technology in Oral Drug Delivery: A Path to Enhanced Solubility and Bioavailability. Current Pharmaceutical Design. 2025;31(36):2881-2896. doi:10.2174/0113816128370159250401012611
- Rohilla S, Dureja H. Recent Patents, Formulation and Characterization of Nanoliposomes. Recent Patents on Drug Delivery and Formulation. 2015;9(3):213-224. doi:10.2174/1872211309666150629105900
- Yamaguchi T, Nomura M, Matsuoka T, Koda S. Effects of frequency and power of ultrasound on the size reduction of liposome. Chemistry and Physics of Lipids. 2009;160(1):58-62. doi:10.1016/j.chemphyslip.2009.04.002
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