The field lab
A small mycology workshop with one obsession: gourmet and functional mushrooms, grown, foraged and extracted with the rigour of a field notebook.
We started with a few inoculated blocks on a shelf and a question that would not let go: why is it so hard to buy mushrooms — fresh, dried or as an extract — that tell you exactly what species you are getting and how they were grown? Hyphavel is our answer: traceable mushrooms, documented like specimens.
How it started
The lab grew out of a home cultivation habit that got out of hand. What began as a single lion's mane block in a humid corner became a rack of fruiting chambers, then a small clean room, then a network of growers and foragers who share our standards. Every step taught us the same lesson: with mushrooms, the details are everything — the species, the substrate, the humidity, the harvest window.
So we built the catalogue around those details. Each grow kit is a fully colonised block of a named species, ready to fruit. Each dried mushroom carries its Latin binomial and origin. Each extract states whether it is made from fruiting bodies or mycelium, and at what ratio. Nothing is hidden behind a vague "mushroom blend".
What we make
Five things, all strictly culinary and wellness: living grow kits for the windowsill, wild-foraged and cultivated dried mushrooms for the kitchen, dual-extract tinctures of the classic functional species, the spawn, substrate and tools to grow your own, and a small shelf of the books we actually recommend. We make no medical claims, and we do not — ever — sell psychoactive species.
Our principles
01
Species you can name
Every product carries its Latin binomial. You always know whether you are buying Pleurotus ostreatus or Lentinula edodes — never a nameless "mushroom mix". Identification is the foundation of everything we do.
02
Fruiting body, stated plainly
Our extracts are made from fruiting bodies, not mycelium grown on grain, and we print the extraction method and ratio on every bottle. If a tincture is a dual extract at 1:1, that is exactly what the label says.
03
Culinary & wellness only
We sell food and traditional wellness products — full stop. No psychoactive species, no psilocybin, no medical claims. Just gourmet mushrooms for the kitchen and classic functional mushrooms for a daily ritual.
From spore to shipment
Culture
Everything begins with a clean isolate. We keep our own library of cultures, expand them to grain spawn under sterile conditions, and test each generation for vigour before it ever reaches a substrate block.
Colonise
Spawn is mixed into pasteurised straw or sterilised hardwood, sealed in filter-patch bags and incubated in the dark until the mycelium runs the block fully white. Only fully colonised blocks become grow kits.
Fruit, dry & extract
We fruit, harvest at the right window, and either ship living kits, slow-dry for the pantry, or run a dual water-and-alcohol extraction for the tinctures. Wild species are gathered by foragers we know and trust.
Pack & ship
Grow kits ship the same week they finish colonising so they arrive ready to fruit. Dried mushrooms and extracts are sealed, labelled with species and batch, and dispatched on our Monday and Thursday runs.
The lab
HEAD CULTIVATOR
Team member — pending
Runs the culture library, spawn production and fruiting parameters. Trained in applied mycology and obsessive about sterile technique.
FORAGING & EXTRACTS
Team member — pending
Coordinates the forager network, dual-extraction and quality control. Spent years identifying wild fungi before joining the lab.