Matthew Eaton’s relationship with mushrooms — the so-called functional sort, as opposed to the nonfunctional psychedelic shrooms – began with a ringing in his ear in 2020. Out in the Utah desert with a friend, he woke up and couldn’t hear out of his left ear. The unilateral deafness dissipated but the ringing – Eaton describes it as like a Tibetan singing bowl – persisted.
Doctors told Eaton it was likely the onset of Meniere’s disease, a chronic, incurable inner-ear disorder. That sent Eaton on a research quest to learn more about the disease. His doctors didn’t have the answers he was searching for, but in his research he came across a study lauding the effects of Coriolus versicolor, or turkey tail mushrooms, in treating Meniere’s.
Eaton made a quick trip to Natural Grocers to get some turkey tail supplements, and sure enough, after a while the ringing disappeared.
“Was it the mushrooms? No idea,” he says. “I know they didn’t hurt me, but I know that I believe that they helped me. That’s what introduced me to the world of functional mushrooms.”
Mushrooms have been used as medicine for thousands of years by Indigenous people from China to Mexico, and while psychedelic mushrooms have had their own recent renaissance, their functional cousins – mushrooms like turkey tail, lion’s mane, cordyceps, reishi and chaga – have had their own boom as wellness supplements.
Lion’s mane is said to boost focus and cognition; cordyceps supposedly boosts energy and your body’s ATP production; reishi mushrooms may help you chill and relieve stress. The supplements come in pills and, more recently, beverages.
Mushroom coffee and beverages like MUD/WTR, a coffee alternative, have boomed in recent years as the wellness craze envelopes everything we consume. But those hadn’t been on Eaton’s radar.
“I didn’t even like to eat mushrooms, like even on a pizza,” he says. “I just wasn’t the mushroom guy.”
But Eaton’s experiences with turkey tail shrooms, and the help of a close friend who happened to be a mycologist, have since sealed his fate as The Mushroom Guy. With his husband and two other co-founders (along with his mom), Eaton launched Sēkwl, a line of mushroom-infused, adaptogenic, caffeine-free sparkling water.
Sēkwl’s lineup matches natural flavors with tincture extracts of five mushrooms: cacao is infused with reishi and chaga; chamomile has reishi extract; grapefruit contains cordyceps; hibiscus has lion’s mane, and lemon ginger contains turkey tail tincture.
“I just deeply started to feel the power that mushrooms, just generally speaking, can provide for humans,” Eaton says.
Eaton left behind a career in corporate supply-chain management to launch Sēkwl, and on May 1 the company held a launch party in the Arvada business park location where the beverages are made.
A tasting room with a tap and refrigerator and cozy furniture greets visitors to the space. Behind a glass door lies what looks like a lab: glass walls offer views of bakers' racks covered in stainless steel equipment; a monster-sized autoclave sits in a room with specially-filtered air; glass vats of the flavor extracts – made in-house with ingredients like hibiscus flowers and holy basil – sit in bright colors on shelves; and a large black grow tent covers dozens of bags of flowering cordyceps. (Other mushrooms are sourced from an organic farm in the Pacific Northwest.)
Sēkwl’s sparkling waters are currently only offered direct-to-consumer on its website, where educational information about functional mushrooms is also offered. Flavor-wise, the drinks lack any discernible mushroom flavor, relying on Sēkwl’s flavor extracts for taste. The hibiscus, with 1000 milligrams of lion’s mane mushroom extract (all the drinks contain 1000 mg of mushrooms), tastes of the tropical flower, and the lemon ginger with turkey tail delivers on its flavor promise. Chamomile with reishi is similar to a chilled, carbonated chamomile tea. The only fairly odd offering is cacao with reishi and chaga; it’s cacao-forward, with a pleasant cinnamon afterburn.
Eaton says the pairings of flavors and fungi are intentional: The chamomile and the reishi versions offer calm, and the lemon ginger and turkey tail both target the gut. “The formulations are intended to really be delivering something more," he notes, "but what we stand by is that even if you don’t feel a sort of way about a mushroom, it still is a tasty beverage at the end of the day.”
