Reishi mushroom tea has many benefits and it has been used for thousands of years. One of the most popular ways to get the best benefits from this therapeutic mushroom is to make a tea.
Reishi mushrooms are most commonly found on logs that are quite soft when fresh but can become hard as wood when dried. This is mainly because Reishi contains chitin, which is basically a carbohydrate that the cell walls of this mushrooms are made of.
This is important since chitin is indigestible and needs to be brewed a lot longer than your regular tea to get the most out of it. A decoction must be made, rather than a simple infusion like you would with a tea bag. Your body cannot digest raw Reishi mushroom.
You can find our entire selection of Medicinal Mushrooms at the end of the article.
Some of the benefits of Reishi mushroom tea come from beta-glucans, which are molecules that are helpful for several reasons, especially in the immune system aid in fighting off foreign cells and infections. The beta-glucans are water-soluble compounds and thus come out in the Reishi tea. Furthermore, they can help stabilize blood sugar and blood pressure.
Reishi Mushroom Tea Recipe
Watch this video for details on how to make Ganoderma lucidum tea with this Reishi mushroom recipe. (This the Latin name and you can learn more at this link: 1372+ studies published about it on Pubmed.)
The Reishi tea recipe is quite simple and no tea bags are required:
- Reishi Mushrooms
- Boiling Water
Of course, other mushrooms and herbs can also be added to the tea.
Ganoderma lucidum is very hard to break apart, but smaller pieces proved to be a much better choice for hot water extraction. By having more surface area available, you’ll be able to extract more of the compounds from inside reishi.
Typically, you’ll find Reishi cut into strips like these at many shops so that it is ready for brewing.
Boil the water in either a ceramic or stainless steel pot. Avoid any other pots or utensils made of other materials for boiling, as the whole process is quite long and might be harmful to do so in an aluminum pot, for instance. When dried pieces are added to boiling water, make sure to turn down the heat and let it simmer for about two and half hours. Then let the tea cool down a bit before drinking it.
You might not like the taste as it has bitter alkaloids. But it’s a tea, so you can do many things to improve the taste. I like to add just a little bit of honey and ginger, but some people prefer to add other teas, like green tea or even a freshly made juice.
As with anything else, don’t go and drink a gallon of Reishi mushroom tea immediately. Drink a cup and make sure it doesn’t affect your stomach in a negative way. If you use aspirin or similar blood-thinning drugs, you may want to skip Reishi tea altogether, as it may increase bleeding time. But other than that there aren’t really any side effects.
Don’t forget that you can prepare other mushrooms in this way as well like with Chaga tea.
Simple Reishi Mushroom Tea Recipe with Powder Extract
With a powdered extract of Reishi, like we have available, all you have to do is add one quarter to one-half teaspoon to hot water (or any other type of a tea). Since the Reishi is already extracted, basically it’s already been prepared as a tea and made into a powdered form, so you can add this to tea without having to boil the mushroom.
You can also add this powder to other drinks. You can even make Reishi mushroom coffee.
Our Reishi extract is super concentrated. In addition, it is already extracted with alcohol as well, which draws out other components that do not come out in the tea. It is super bitter though, which is what reishi should be.Reishi is probably the most popular medicinal mushroom in the world. One of the most popular ways of administration is by a tea. Many people interested in the health benefits wonder how to make reishi mushroom tea.
Let’s find out!
Reishi’s uses are vast and wide and it is quickly becoming more widely accepted for its brilliant medicinal purposes in our modern world.
This is an intelligent mushroom and certainly lives up to its nickname, “The Mushroom of Immortality” for many reasons. The long-lived Daoists would use this mushroom to increase their Shen, their lifespan and allow it to even help their meditations.
The different ways of preparing it can coax out different properties of the mushroom. The different ways of administration of this mushroom all have their purposes, some perhaps are less used than others, but for the sake of brevity we are only going to be going into this video and about making reishi tea. The video below takes a closer look into properly preparing raw reishi mushroom, which can be found in any Chinese herb shop and also some health food stores, to make the perfect tea.
In this video Anthony points out basic benefits of Reishi, reveals the science behind its toughness when in dried state, demonstrates which part of red Reishi is the best for making a Reishi tea and finally explains the whole process of making Reishi mushroom tea.
These same steps can be used for making tea of out any type of medicinal mushroom too.
In case you don’t have access to raw reishi or prefer to simply mix a powder with hot water instead (because sometimes that is just far easier!), why not try out our new organically grown 16:1 reishi extract?
[pt_view id=”f2724ccsuk”]We have been thoroughly enjoying this new addition to our medicinal mushroom product selection and many of us who have been taking it regularly have been more than happy with the results of this powerful mushroom extract.
We would love to hear your feedback on how you take reishi tea or coffee, straight or any other creative way of taking it.
Please feel free to leave comments below.