Up-cycling, community, and intentional products define our vision for the future of mushrooms.
At Opalcap Mushrooms, we grow a variety of gourmet and medicinal mushrooms for the Grand Traverse region of Northern Michigan. All of our products are grown on up-cycled brewer's grain from Traverse City breweries. Working with brewer's grain as a substrate medium certainly isn't easy, nor does it always yield the best results. This is far outweighed by the satisfaction and fulfillment the process brings us - having this kind of intention behind our product keeps us going.
Intention doesn't stop at our mushrooms. We bring it to our medicinal extracts, too. We believe that genuine well-being is a multi-faceted, lifelong pursuit that cannot be attained with a silver bullet cure-all. We view our extracts as tools to be used in pursuit of a better life. Our Wellness Log is another example of such a tool. Who knows what else we'll come up with as time passes.
Our Team
Jackson Anderson
Jackson is a biologist. He worked as a consultant, but the well-trodden path of career science wasn't his to walk. Mushrooms have punctuated every significant event in his life. In 5th grade, he even made his first spore syringe from an Agaricus mushroom growing on his lawn. He tried to grow it, but instead he grew mold. What a surprise. Now he's doing the same thing, just growing less mold and more mushroom.
Nick Spera
Nick helps Opalcap in many ways. He provides sage advice in business, marketing, and communications. He pulls from a varied history in artist management, business development, and documentary production. His dogs claim to be peaceful, but we have our doubts...
Micaela Seaver
Micaela helps Opalcap with all things STEM engagement. She has been studying ecology for the better half of a decade, and is currently pursuing her Ph.D in ecology with a focus on undergraduate education and exploring creativity in STEM classrooms. She is also passionate about increasing diversity in the field. Her experience in curriculum development and engaging learners has helped us refine our goals for using fungi as a tool for educational outreach and learning enrichment.