What Is The Mushroom Kingdom?
What Is The Mushroom Kingdom?
Welcome to the mushroom kingdom, our hands-on mushroom research and development project! Ever since we started Nootropics Depot, we’ve been particularly fascinated by mushrooms. At the time, the knowledge base surrounding mushrooms was limited, and consumers knew fairly little about mushrooms too. A lot has changed over the years though, with mushroom supplements becoming extremely popular.
Welcome to the mushroom kingdom, our hands-on mushroom research and development project! Ever since we started Nootropics Depot, we’ve been particularly fascinated by mushrooms. At the time, the knowledge base surrounding mushrooms was limited, and consumers knew fairly little about mushrooms too.
Welcome to the mushroom kingdom, our hands-on mushroom research and development project! Ever since we started Nootropics Depot, we’ve been particularly fascinated by mushrooms. At the time, the knowledge base surrounding mushrooms was limited, and consumers knew fairly little about mushrooms too. A lot has changed over the years though, with mushroom supplements becoming extremely popular.
This has brought with it a lot of innovation in the mushroom space, and a lot more consumer awareness. This means that for us at Nootropics Depot, we want to advance the science behind mushrooms, and bring out the most cutting edge products possible. This requires a lot of hands-on research though, and we are glad we started this project many years ago!
A lot has changed over the years though, with mushroom supplements becoming extremely popular. This has brought with it a lot of innovation in the mushroom space, and a lot more consumer awareness. This means that for us at Nootropics Depot, we want to advance the science behind mushrooms, and bring out the most cutting edge products possible. This requires a lot of hands-on research though, and we are glad we started this project many years ago!
This has brought with it a lot of innovation in the mushroom space, and a lot more consumer awareness. This means that for us at Nootropics Depot, we want to advance the science behind mushrooms, and bring out the most cutting edge products possible. This requires a lot of hands-on research though, and we are glad we started this project many years ago!
Stay Up To Date With Our Current Mushroom's Growth
Stay Up To Date With Our
Current Mushroom's Growth
The Problem With Lion’s Mane
The Problem With Lion’s Mane
The trickiest mushroom of the bunch in the nootropics space, has always been lion’s mane. There are a few studies floating around, which were made very popular in nootropic communities, highlighting a single compound in lion’s mane, erinacine A, as being the most bioactive compound contained in the mushroom. This caused everyone’s attention to always be affixed on erinacine A. This brought with it a whole slew of problems!
The trickiest mushroom of the bunch in the nootropics space, has always been lion’s mane. There are a few studies floating around, which were made very popular in nootropic communities, highlighting a single compound in lion’s mane, erinacine A, as being the most bioactive compound contained in the mushroom. This caused everyone’s attention to always be affixed on erinacine A. This brought with it a whole slew of problems!
One of the main problems with erinacine A, is that there has never been a reference standard for this compound.To those not all too familiar with reference standards, think of it like this. Imagine you have never seen the color red, and someone gives you the task of pointing out the color red somewhere in your environment. This would be an absolutely impossible task, because you simply don’t know what the color red looks like. Now if someone gave you a clearly labeled picture of the color red, you could use this as a reference while you browse through your environment to find something that matches your picture. This would make the task of finding something red in your environment very easy! Think of this picture as the reference standard, and now let’s bring the story back to erinacine A.
One of the main problems with erinacine A, is that there has never been a reference standard for this compound.To those not all too familiar with reference standards, think of it like this. Imagine you have never seen the color red, and someone gives you the task of pointing out the color red somewhere in your environment. This would be an absolutely impossible task, because you simply don’t know what the color red looks like. Now if someone gave you a clearly labeled picture of the color red, you could use this as a reference while you browse through your environment to find something that matches your picture. This would make the task of finding something red in your environment very easy! Think of this picture as the reference standard, and now let’s bring the story back to erinacine A.
Expand To Keep Learning About Erinacine A
In order to measure the content of erinacine A in lion’s mane, we need a reference standard. This reference standard has to be the purest possible, and verified, erinacine A. If this reference standard doesn’t exist, then testing methodologies have nothing to compare with, just like in the above example with the color red. This means that practically everyone interested in lion’s mane, was looking for a compound which nobody could verify the presence and content of. To make matters worse, this compound also is not present in high enough quantities in the fruiting body, only in the mycelium. However, the mycelium aspect of the erinacine A problem even further complicated matters. So we needed to do some intensive research, but first, we needed an erinacine A reference standard!
We finally got our hands on some high quality liquid culture mycelium one year, and devised a crazy plan. If a reference standard for erinacine A doesn’t exist, then we’ll just make our own! Well, easier said than done…A year later, we finally had a very small quantity of pure erinacine A. We sent it off to get verified via NMR testing, and all of a sudden we had the world’s first erinacine A reference standard in hand. We used this tiny amount of erinacine A reference material, to see if there was any erinacine A in available mycelium products. We didn’t find much! Our quest for liquid culture lion’s mane mycelium really picked up in intensity at this point.
Expand To Keep Learning About Erinacine A
In order to measure the content of erinacine A in lion’s mane, we need a reference standard. This reference standard has to be the purest possible, and verified, erinacine A. If this reference standard doesn’t exist, then testing methodologies have nothing to compare with, just like in the above example with the color red. This means that practically everyone interested in lion’s mane, was looking for a compound which nobody could verify the presence and content of. To make matters worse, this compound also is not present in high enough quantities in the fruiting body, only in the mycelium. However, the mycelium aspect of the erinacine A problem even further complicated matters. So we needed to do some intensive research, but first, we needed an erinacine A reference standard!
We finally got our hands on some high quality liquid culture mycelium one year, and devised a crazy plan. If a reference standard for erinacine A doesn’t exist, then we’ll just make our own! Well, easier said than done…A year later, we finally had a very small quantity of pure erinacine A. We sent it off to get verified via NMR testing, and all of a sudden we had the world’s first erinacine A reference standard in hand. We used this tiny amount of erinacine A reference material, to see if there was any erinacine A in available mycelium products. We didn’t find much! Our quest for liquid culture lion’s mane mycelium really picked up in intensity at this point.
The trickiest mushroom of the bunch in the nootropics space, has always been lion’s mane. There are a few studies floating around, which were made very popular in nootropic communities, highlighting a single compound in lion’s mane, erinacine A, as being the most bioactive compound contained in the mushroom. This caused everyone’s attention to always be affixed on erinacine A. This brought with it a whole slew of problems!
The trickiest mushroom of the bunch in the nootropics space, has always been lion’s mane. There are a few studies floating around, which were made very popular in nootropic communities, highlighting a single compound in lion’s mane, erinacine A, as being the most bioactive compound contained in the mushroom.
One of the main problems with erinacine A, is that there has never been a reference standard for this compound.To those not all too familiar with reference standards, think of it like this. Imagine you have never seen the color red, and someone gives you the task of pointing out the color red somewhere in your environment. This would be an absolutely impossible task, because you simply don’t know what the color red looks like. Now if someone gave you a clearly labeled picture of the color red, you could use this as a reference while you browse through your environment to find something that matches your picture. This would make the task of finding something red in your environment very easy! Think of this picture as the reference standard, and now let’s bring the story back to erinacine A.
This caused everyone’s attention to always be affixed on erinacine A. This brought with it a whole slew of problems! One of the main problems with erinacine A, is that there has never been a reference standard for this compound.To those not all too familiar with reference standards, think of it like this. Imagine you have never seen the color red, and someone gives you the task of pointing out the color red somewhere in your environment. This would be an absolutely impossible task, because you simply don’t know what the color red looks like. Now if someone gave you a clearly labeled picture of the color red, you could use this as a reference while you browse through your environment to find something that matches your picture. This would make the task of finding something red in your environment very easy! Think of this picture as the reference standard, and now let’s bring the story back to erinacine A.
Expand To Keep Learning About Erinacine A
In order to measure the content of erinacine A in lion’s mane, we need a reference standard. This reference standard has to be the purest possible, and verified, erinacine A. If this reference standard doesn’t exist, then testing methodologies have nothing to compare with, just like in the above example with the color red. This means that practically everyone interested in lion’s mane, was looking for a compound which nobody could verify the presence and content of. To make matters worse, this compound also is not present in high enough quantities in the fruiting body, only in the mycelium. However, the mycelium aspect of the erinacine A problem even further complicated matters. So we needed to do some intensive research, but first, we needed an erinacine A reference standard!
We finally got our hands on some high quality liquid culture mycelium one year, and devised a crazy plan. If a reference standard for erinacine A doesn’t exist, then we’ll just make our own! Well, easier said than done…A year later, we finally had a very small quantity of pure erinacine A. We sent it off to get verified via NMR testing, and all of a sudden we had the world’s first erinacine A reference standard in hand. We used this tiny amount of erinacine A reference material, to see if there was any erinacine A in available mycelium products. We didn’t find much! Our quest for liquid culture lion’s mane mycelium really picked up in intensity at this point.
Expand To Keep Learning About Erinacine A
In order to measure the content of erinacine A in lion’s mane, we need a reference standard. This reference standard has to be the purest possible, and verified, erinacine A. If this reference standard doesn’t exist, then testing methodologies have nothing to compare with, just like in the above example with the color red. This means that practically everyone interested in lion’s mane, was looking for a compound which nobody could verify the presence and content of. To make matters worse, this compound also is not present in high enough quantities in the fruiting body, only in the mycelium. However, the mycelium aspect of the erinacine A problem even further complicated matters. So we needed to do some intensive research, but first, we needed an erinacine A reference standard!
We finally got our hands on some high quality liquid culture mycelium one year, and devised a crazy plan. If a reference standard for erinacine A doesn’t exist, then we’ll just make our own! Well, easier said than done…A year later, we finally had a very small quantity of pure erinacine A. We sent it off to get verified via NMR testing, and all of a sudden we had the world’s first erinacine A reference standard in hand. We used this tiny amount of erinacine A reference material, to see if there was any erinacine A in available mycelium products. We didn’t find much! Our quest for liquid culture lion’s mane mycelium really picked up in intensity at this point.
So, how did we start this journey?
So, how did we start this journey?
Check Out What We Grew In House
Each and every one of the mushrooms above was hand-grown and carefully tended to by our product specialist, Emiel. They were then given to our Lion's Mane researcher, Robert, to be dehydrated and ran through a series of tests!
Expand To Learn More About Emiel & Robert's Research
With no liquid culture mycelium really being available, we realized we had to make our own. We were fairly successful in this, and eventually produced small amounts of erinacine A in a liquid culture utilizing a very specific liquid nutrient solution, and an incredibly specific time frame required for generating erinacine A. We realized during this process, that making appreciable amounts of erinacine A is actually incredibly difficult, and it started to make sense why we hadn’t found any real erinacine A containing products out in the world yet. However, at this point we had a big realization, we’ve all been focusing on erinacine A all these years, yet none of us have probably taken significant doses of this compound. On the flip side though, we all have a ton of experience with lion’s mane fruiting bodies! In fact, it has always been one of our top sellers. Yet we know now that it doesn’t contain appreciable amounts of erinacine A, so what is in the fruiting bodies then? This is problematic too, because for all of the compounds that are in the fruiting bodies, like the hericenones and hericenes, there are also no reference standards! This is where I, the mad scientist product specialist, and Robert, our mushroom chemistry wizard came in!
Back in the day, my desk always looked like a crazy science experiment, and at the pinnacle of this era, I was even growing some lion’s mane on my desk for fun! Here is a picture of how that looked:
A few years later, when we realized we needed fresh lion’s mane for extracting reference standards from, I figured why not scale things up a bit? I started growing some lion’s mane in a makeshift box which I could control the humidity and airflow off, and within no time, I was producing pound after pound of fresh lion’s mane. I would harvest the lion’s mane early in the morning, and rush it over to Robert in the mushroom lab.
Once in the lab, the lion’s mane would get dehydrated in our Buchi lyophilizer, and then extracted in our Buchi preparative HPLC. We ran through a pile of mushrooms this way, and Robert continuously optimized the extraction methodologies to get the most amount of bioactives out of the lion’s mane mushroom. Through this mad scientist/wizard alliance, we successfully generated NMR verified reference standards of a few compounds found in lion’s mane fruiting body! This allowed us to start advancing our understanding of lion’s mane even further.
I had a burning question in the back of my mind during this whole process however, is there any difference between lion’s mane cultivars? At this point I had grown out lion’s mane from a few different sources, and they all grew differently and preferred different climates. Some performed really well at hotter temperatures for example, while other cultivars barely grew at these temperatures. This led us to the beginning stages of the mushroom kingdom.
One day in a meeting, we collectively came up with a crazy idea. Why not up our production of lion’s mane for research and development, to a few hundred pounds a month? Better yet, why not cultivate 21 different cultivars and even different Hericium species? Well, you don’t do it because it’s an absolutely ridiculous idea, and way too complex, which is why seemingly no one has ever done this before. This is also exactly why we decided to send it, and go headfirst into this monster of a project!
We scoured the internet, sourced as many liquid culture syringes of lion’s mane cultivars, and even different Hericium species as we could, and then set out to build an environment to grow these in. We settled on a very large tent, with an even larger fan attached to it for fresh air exchange. Within this tent, we will grow out all 21 cultivars/species over the next few months. This will then allow us to determine what cultivar of lion’s mane is best, and perhaps even more interestingly, if there are any other Hericium species, like Hericium americanum, which are worth pursuing for their bioactives!
Follow along here, to see how this exciting project, which we named “mushroom kingdom” progresses. We will post regular updates of the lion’s mane growth in the tent, and post-harvest, we will update you with any interesting findings!
Read More About Our Lion's Mane Extracts
Check Out What We Grew In House
Each and every one of the mushrooms above was hand-grown and carefully tended to by our product specialist, Emiel. They were then given to our Lion's Mane researcher, Robert, to be dehydrated and ran through a series of tests!
Expand To Learn More About Emiel & Robert's Research
With no liquid culture mycelium really being available, we realized we had to make our own. We were fairly successful in this, and eventually produced small amounts of erinacine A in a liquid culture utilizing a very specific liquid nutrient solution, and an incredibly specific time frame required for generating erinacine A. We realized during this process, that making appreciable amounts of erinacine A is actually incredibly difficult, and it started to make sense why we hadn’t found any real erinacine A containing products out in the world yet. However, at this point we had a big realization, we’ve all been focusing on erinacine A all these years, yet none of us have probably taken significant doses of this compound. On the flip side though, we all have a ton of experience with lion’s mane fruiting bodies! In fact, it has always been one of our top sellers. Yet we know now that it doesn’t contain appreciable amounts of erinacine A, so what is in the fruiting bodies then? This is problematic too, because for all of the compounds that are in the fruiting bodies, like the hericenones and hericenes, there are also no reference standards! This is where I, the mad scientist product specialist, and Robert, our mushroom chemistry wizard came in!
Back in the day, my desk always looked like a crazy science experiment, and at the pinnacle of this era, I was even growing some lion’s mane on my desk for fun! Here is a picture of how that looked:
A few years later, when we realized we needed fresh lion’s mane for extracting reference standards from, I figured why not scale things up a bit? I started growing some lion’s mane in a makeshift box which I could control the humidity and airflow off, and within no time, I was producing pound after pound of fresh lion’s mane. I would harvest the lion’s mane early in the morning, and rush it over to Robert in the mushroom lab.
Once in the lab, the lion’s mane would get dehydrated in our Buchi lyophilizer, and then extracted in our Buchi preparative HPLC. We ran through a pile of mushrooms this way, and Robert continuously optimized the extraction methodologies to get the most amount of bioactives out of the lion’s mane mushroom. Through this mad scientist/wizard alliance, we successfully generated NMR verified reference standards of a few compounds found in lion’s mane fruiting body! This allowed us to start advancing our understanding of lion’s mane even further.
I had a burning question in the back of my mind during this whole process however, is there any difference between lion’s mane cultivars? At this point I had grown out lion’s mane from a few different sources, and they all grew differently and preferred different climates. Some performed really well at hotter temperatures for example, while other cultivars barely grew at these temperatures. This led us to the beginning stages of the mushroom kingdom.
One day in a meeting, we collectively came up with a crazy idea. Why not up our production of lion’s mane for research and development, to a few hundred pounds a month? Better yet, why not cultivate 21 different cultivars and even different Hericium species? Well, you don’t do it because it’s an absolutely ridiculous idea, and way too complex, which is why seemingly no one has ever done this before. This is also exactly why we decided to send it, and go headfirst into this monster of a project!
We scoured the internet, sourced as many liquid culture syringes of lion’s mane cultivars, and even different Hericium species as we could, and then set out to build an environment to grow these in. We settled on a very large tent, with an even larger fan attached to it for fresh air exchange. Within this tent, we will grow out all 21 cultivars/species over the next few months. This will then allow us to determine what cultivar of lion’s mane is best, and perhaps even more interestingly, if there are any other Hericium species, like Hericium americanum, which are worth pursuing for their bioactives!
Follow along here, to see how this exciting project, which we named “mushroom kingdom” progresses. We will post regular updates of the lion’s mane growth in the tent, and post-harvest, we will update you with any interesting findings!
Each and every one of the mushrooms above was hand-grown and carefully tended to by our product specialist, Emiel. They were then given to our Lion's Mane researcher, Robert, to be dehydrated and ran through a series of tests!
Expand To Learn More About Emiel & Robert's Research
With no liquid culture mycelium really being available, we realized we had to make our own. We were fairly successful in this, and eventually produced small amounts of erinacine A in a liquid culture utilizing a very specific liquid nutrient solution, and an incredibly specific time frame required for generating erinacine A. We realized during this process, that making appreciable amounts of erinacine A is actually incredibly difficult, and it started to make sense why we hadn’t found any real erinacine A containing products out in the world yet. However, at this point we had a big realization, we’ve all been focusing on erinacine A all these years, yet none of us have probably taken significant doses of this compound. On the flip side though, we all have a ton of experience with lion’s mane fruiting bodies! In fact, it has always been one of our top sellers. Yet we know now that it doesn’t contain appreciable amounts of erinacine A, so what is in the fruiting bodies then? This is problematic too, because for all of the compounds that are in the fruiting bodies, like the hericenones and hericenes, there are also no reference standards! This is where I, the mad scientist product specialist, and Robert, our mushroom chemistry wizard came in!
Back in the day, my desk always looked like a crazy science experiment, and at the pinnacle of this era, I was even growing some lion’s mane on my desk for fun! Here is a picture of how that looked:
A few years later, when we realized we needed fresh lion’s mane for extracting reference standards from, I figured why not scale things up a bit? I started growing some lion’s mane in a makeshift box which I could control the humidity and airflow off, and within no time, I was producing pound after pound of fresh lion’s mane. I would harvest the lion’s mane early in the morning, and rush it over to Robert in the mushroom lab.
Once in the lab, the lion’s mane would get dehydrated in our Buchi lyophilizer, and then extracted in our Buchi preparative HPLC. We ran through a pile of mushrooms this way, and Robert continuously optimized the extraction methodologies to get the most amount of bioactives out of the lion’s mane mushroom. Through this mad scientist/wizard alliance, we successfully generated NMR verified reference standards of a few compounds found in lion’s mane fruiting body! This allowed us to start advancing our understanding of lion’s mane even further.
I had a burning question in the back of my mind during this whole process however, is there any difference between lion’s mane cultivars? At this point I had grown out lion’s mane from a few different sources, and they all grew differently and preferred different climates. Some performed really well at hotter temperatures for example, while other cultivars barely grew at these temperatures. This led us to the beginning stages of the mushroom kingdom.
One day in a meeting, we collectively came up with a crazy idea. Why not up our production of lion’s mane for research and development, to a few hundred pounds a month? Better yet, why not cultivate 21 different cultivars and even different Hericium species? Well, you don’t do it because it’s an absolutely ridiculous idea, and way too complex, which is why seemingly no one has ever done this before. This is also exactly why we decided to send it, and go headfirst into this monster of a project!
We scoured the internet, sourced as many liquid culture syringes of lion’s mane cultivars, and even different Hericium species as we could, and then set out to build an environment to grow these in. We settled on a very large tent, with an even larger fan attached to it for fresh air exchange. Within this tent, we will grow out all 21 cultivars/species over the next few months. This will then allow us to determine what cultivar of lion’s mane is best, and perhaps even more interestingly, if there are any other Hericium species, like Hericium americanum, which are worth pursuing for their bioactives!
Follow along here, to see how this exciting project, which we named “mushroom kingdom” progresses. We will post regular updates of the lion’s mane growth in the tent, and post-harvest, we will update you with any interesting findings!