Drink Your Fungi

Other innovations with fungi are found in the air or out the back door. Pascal Bauder, a Los Angeles–based author and “culinary explorer,” led a walk and a talk this summer on brewing beer with local fungi and herbs in Ojai, through environmental educator Lanny Kaufer’s Herbwalks.

Though Pascal uses backcountry plants and fungi such as yeasts, he describes himself not as a forager but as a “wildcrafter.” Because many of the edible plants in California are invasive species, such as mugwort, he says, they are especially valuable in wildcrafted beers, vinegars, bitters and other products.

“The differences are subtle but important,” he explains. “‘Wildcrafting’ is not about taking from nature but working with it and even helping the environment.”

Also coming soon in local mushroom products is a probiotic beer from a local brewery called Flying Embers, an homage to the operation being threatened with destruction during the Thomas Fire last December.

Flying Embers, billed as “born in Ojai, brewed in Ventura,” currently offers adult kombuchas (4.5% alcohol by volume) and has three unfiltered, unpasteurized probiotic beers brewed with mushrooms—a blonde, stout and brown ale—in the works.

They’re “brewed with bitters of the world, organic barley malts, a blend of adaptogenic mushrooms (reishi, lion’s mane, cordyceps, shiitake and maitake) and an active probiotic culture,” and are expected to be available in local markets this fall, according to Geoff Pfeifer, an executive with the brewery.