Kosmos. F.A. Hayek's word, taken from the Greek, for an order that arises out of countless local decisions with nobody designing it — as against taxis, the order somebody made. Prices are kosmos. So are language and the common law. So is the mycelium beneath a forest floor, moving what the forest needs without a plan or a planner.
Tasting Profile
Cocoa and toasted nut over a rounded, faintly earthy base. Full body, low acidity, and none of the bitterness mushrooms are blamed for.
The Two Mushrooms
Lion's Mane — also sold as pom pom, monkey head, or bearded tooth, and known to cooks as crab mushroom (Hericium erinaceus). It grows on dead and dying hardwood — beech, oak, maple — and looks like nothing else in the forest. No cap, no stem, only a cascade of soft white spines tumbling from the trunk like a frozen waterfall. Japanese tradition calls it yamabushitake, after the mountain ascetics whose robes it was thought to resemble.
Chaga — also called birch conk, cinder conk, or clinker polypore (Inonotus obliquus). It is stranger still: not a mushroom in the ordinary sense but a sterile conk, a black cracked mass that grows on living birch for a decade or two, looking exactly like a scorch mark somebody forgot to clean off. Break it open and the inside is rust orange. Across Siberia and northern Europe it has been chipped off, dried, and brewed as a dark tea for as long as anyone has kept records of it.
Neither is psychoactive. The name here is Hayek's, not the sixties'.
Origin & Region
The same Papua New Guinea single origin that becomes our Roundabout, with both mushrooms added after extraction so the coffee keeps its own character. Both are certified organic.
Servings
Eighteen to the resealable tube, about a dollar a cup. A small 5cc scoop travels inside the canister, so the measure is right from the first cup. Two level scoops to a mug — one makes a thin cup, and we would rather tell you than let you find out.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
