An indoor farm producing the freshest, locally grown gourmet mushrooms.

 
 

Our Story

Co-Founders, Ben Young and Lance Schiola, have been friends for over 20 years and come from backgrounds in financial services and IT consulting.

A few years back, Ben ignited a passion for growing fresh, gourmet mushrooms and was drawn into the world of mycology and sustainable farming. Of course, Lance came along for the ride, and this was where the idea for Colorado Mushrooms LLC began.

In 2018, Ben and Lance started their first grow in Ben’s basement. They relied on a 4’x4’ grow tent to get them started. From the very beginning, the mushrooms were a hit. Soon, friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers were clamoring over how tasty the mushrooms were and demand took off. By 2020, they were ready to expand their operations and build out a new production facility, but Covid-19 hit and put all plans on hold. However, they used this extra time to pour more innovation and strategy into their cutting-edge facility designs.

In two short years (minus Covid 2020), Ben and Lance took Colorado Mushrooms from a tiny, basement operation to a fully scaled, stand-alone indoor farm. Today, they supply their fresh, gourmet mushrooms to Denver/Boulder-area chefs, restaurants, CSAs, and farmers markets.

Our Process

At Colorado Mushrooms, simplicity, consistency, and sustainability are key.

 

  • Our Substrate Blend

    01

    The process starts with our substrate blend. We begin by mixing agricultural byproducts: soybean hulls, sawdust or wood pellets, and water. The ratios must be just right: if anything is off – even just a bit – the production will suffer, or the mushrooms may not grow at all.

  • Pasteurization

    02

    The precise amount of substrate is loaded into specialized bags and undergoes a pasteurization process by bringing the bags up to a specific temperature for a set amount of time to kill off harmful competitors of colonizing mycelium.

  • Inoculation

    03

    Once the bags are pasteurized, they are moved into our laboratory where we inoculate the mushroom spawn into the substrate. Spawn is used by mushrooms growers much like seeds are used by farmers and gardeners. It is the genetic material used to grow mushrooms and is the backbone to any mushroom farm.

    Unlike seeds, though, mushroom spawn is grown from selected genetics and cloned for consistent production of a particular cultivar of mushroom. Seeds (and spores for that matter!) are a genetic grab-bag dependent on two individual sets of genetic material, while spawn is a single genetic culture that can be propagated indefinitely from the same ‘master’. The ‘master’ cultures are kept on agar petri dishes in our laboratory.

  • Colonization

    04

    The bags move from the lab to colonization shelves where they sit for 2-8 weeks. Over this time, the mushrooms’ “root-system”, called mycelium, spreads throughout the substrate.

  • Growth

    05

    Once completely colonized, the bags are cut open, exposing the colonized substrate to the oxygen needed to produce mushroom bodies, and moved into the fruiting room. Our mushroom fruiting room has been designed with the precise temperature, light, humidity, and airflow for optimum mushroom growth.

  • Hand-picking

    06

    After a couple of weeks, the mushrooms are hand-picked to achieve balance of flavor and shelf-life, with the consumer’s needs in mind.