The Farm
An urban farm in Oswestry. A walk in the Highlands.
Everything Shrooma sells begins in one of two places: a large, certified organic urban farm in the centre of Oswestry, or a stand of wild silver birch in the Scottish Highlands. There is no third place.
Plate I
Oswestry,
Shropshire.
A working farm · many varieties
Our urban farm sits in the centre of Oswestry, in an unassuming building you'd walk past without a second glance. Inside, the air is cool and humid, lit low, and arranged around a single rhythm: substrate in, fruiting body out. It is a large, working farm, with the room, the rooms, and the rhythm to grow everything we need.
On any given week the rooms are fruiting Lion's Mane and Reishi alongside grey oyster, yellow oyster, pioppino, golden enoki, black pearl oyster, shiitake, and whatever else is in rotation. We mix the substrates ourselves and we control humidity, light, CO₂ and airflow, because if you want a mushroom that tastes like itself and tests like itself, those are the four things that matter.
Of everything we grow, only Lion's Mane and Reishi currently go into the tincture range. The rest goes to chefs, to the café bar, and into the products we are quietly developing for next year. We'd rather grow a wider farm than a thinner story.
When the fruiting bodies come down, we dry them ourselves: slow, low-temperature, so the actives stay intact. The dried mushroom then leaves the farm in sealed, traceable batches and travels to a specialist UK extractor who dual-extracts and bottles for us. The finished bottles come back to Oswestry before they go anywhere else.
Every flush is logged. Every batch is traceable to a room and a date. The people who tend the rooms are the same people whose names sit on the bottle.
In the rooms this week
More than the three on the bottle.
Lion's Mane and Reishi are what we tincture today. They share the rooms with grey and yellow oyster, chestnut pioppino, shiitake and a rotating cast of others, sent to chefs, served on the café bar, and quietly trialled for what comes next.
Plate II
The Scottish
Highlands.
Chaga · Wild · Hand-foraged
Chaga is the exception. It refuses cultivation. It only forms on living silver birch, slowly, over years: a black, cracked conk feeding on the heartwood of the tree.
So it is walked for. Our Chaga is hand-foraged by a trusted Scottish partner from wild birch in the Highlands, taken sparingly and never from young trees, so the next generation of foragers still has something to find.
Anyone who claims to grow Chaga is selling you something else.
From farm to bottle
Five steps. No shortcuts.
We don't pretend to do everything ourselves. We do the bits that decide quality, and we partner, openly, for the bit that requires a different specialism.
- 01
Grow
Lion's Mane and Reishi raised in our certified organic growing rooms in Oswestry. First flush only.
- 02
Forage
Chaga hand-cut from wild silver birch in the Scottish Highlands, sparingly and seasonally.
- 03
Dry
Dried by us, low and slow, on the farm, protecting the actives before they ever leave the building.
- 04
Extract & bottle
Sent in sealed, traceable batches to a specialist UK extractor who dual-extracts (water + alcohol) and bottles to our spec. We name them, we trust them, we don't pretend we are them.
- 05
Return & release
Finished bottles come back to Oswestry. We check, label, and release, straight to the range or onto the café bar.
The method
Four non-negotiables.
Most of what is sold as functional mushrooms isn't, quite. We've held to four rules from the first flush onwards.
Certified organic
Every substrate, every spore, every bottle registered and audited. Organic is the floor we build on, not a marketing line.
First flush only
We harvest the mushroom's first appearance, when the fruiting body is most articulate and the actives most concentrated. Subsequent flushes go elsewhere.
Fruiting body, never mycelium
We work with the mushroom itself, the part you would recognise on a forest floor, never grain-grown mycelium. It is more honest, and it is what the science is on.
Grown by us, extracted by specialists
We grow it, we dry it, and we send it to a specialist extractor in the UK who does nothing but dual-extract and bottle for a small handful of brands. The finished bottles come back to us. We don't pretend to be chemists; we partner with one.
How it started
Shrooma began with Alex and Paul, husband and wife, who met in New Zealand and came home convinced that the British Isles could grow functional mushrooms as carefully, and as honestly, as anywhere on earth.
We started with a single growing room. We still grow there. The room is bigger now, the team has grown, but the conviction is the same one we left New Zealand with.
That is the whole of our method. There isn't a second, secret one.
The makers
The people behind every bottle.
Paul Murray
Co-founder · Cultivator
Alex Murray
Co-founder · Brand & Experience
Hannah Tichopad
Co-founder · Managing Director
Mark Whittle
Co-founder · Partnerships & Growth