I Swapped My Morning Coffee for Spacegoods Rainbow Dust — Here's What Actually Happened

I'll be honest: I rolled my eyes the first time a "mushroom coffee" ad popped up in my feed. Mushrooms belong in a frying pan, not my morning mug. But by the end of last month I was drinking two large coffees a day, crashing hard around 3pm, and still lying awake at midnight scrolling my phone. Something had to give. So when a friend wouldn't stop talking about Spacegoods, I caved and ordered the starter kit — mostly so I could tell her it didn't work.

Three weeks later, I'm writing this with a purple pouch of Rainbow Dust sitting next to my kettle. Here's how that happened.

So what exactly is Spacegoods?

Spacegoods is a UK brand best known for Rainbow Dust, a powder you stir into hot water or milk instead of your usual coffee. Each 8g scoop blends functional mushrooms — Lion's Mane, Chaga and Cordyceps — with KSM-66 ashwagandha and a small dose of coffee bean extract. The caffeine content is the interesting part: roughly 20mg per serving, compared to the 80–100mg in a normal cup of coffee. So you're not quitting caffeine cold turkey; you're stepping it way down.

One thing I'll give them credit for after reading far too many supplement labels: they use mushroom fruiting body extracts with the extraction ratios printed right on the label (5:1 for Lion's Mane, 4:1 for Chaga and Cordyceps). Most cheaper blends quietly use mycelium filler and hope you don't ask.

They've since expanded the range — Matcha Dust if you're more of a green tea person, Astro Dust (a chai-style night blend with reishi and magnesium that I've started eyeing for my partner, who sleeps terribly), and a hydration one called Hydro Dust. But Rainbow Dust is the flagship, and it's what I tested.

The taste test — because that's what everyone asks first

"Does it taste like mushrooms?" No. Genuinely, no. And I was braced for it.

Made with just hot water, the coffee flavour tastes like a light hot chocolate with a whisper of coffee underneath. Nice, but a bit thin for my liking. The trick — and everyone who reviews this stuff eventually lands on the same conclusion — is milk. I make mine with hot oat milk and the little electric frother that comes in the starter kit, and it turns into something close to a creamy mocha. It's become a small ritual I actually look forward to.

My one gripe: it's sweeter than I'd choose, because it's sweetened with stevia. The first cup caught me off guard. By day three I'd stopped noticing, but if you're sensitive to sweeteners, start with more milk than you think you need.

What three weeks actually felt like

Week one was the hardest, and I don't think that was Spacegoods' fault — it was my caffeine habit complaining. I had a dull headache on day two and genuinely missed the smell of coffee. I nearly quit.

Week two is when it clicked. The thing I noticed wasn't a rush of energy — it's the absence of the crash. My usual 3pm slump, the one I'd been treating with a second coffee and a biscuit, just... didn't really show up. Work afternoons felt flatter in a good way. Steady.

Week three, the sleep difference became obvious. I'm dropping off faster, and I wake up less groggy. Which makes sense — I've cut my caffeine intake by probably 80% without feeling like I'm white-knuckling through withdrawal.

I want to be careful not to oversell this. Rainbow Dust didn't turn me into a productivity machine. Lion's Mane and ashwagandha are the kind of ingredients where the research is promising but the effects are gradual and subtle — this is a "notice it after weeks" product, not a "feel it in 20 minutes" one. If you're expecting a pre-workout style kick, you'll be disappointed.

What I didn't love

• The price after the honeymoon. The starter kit is great value at £29 (you get a 30-serving pouch, a storage tin, a scoop and the frother), but the standard price afterwards works out to just under £1 per cup. Cheaper than a coffee shop, pricier than home-brewed coffee. Worth it to me for the sleep alone, but it's a real consideration.
• The stevia sweetness, as mentioned. I got used to it; you might not.
• It won't fool a coffee purist. If you love a proper bitter espresso, this is a different drink, not a clone. Treat it as a replacement ritual, not replacement coffee.
• Check your order settings. Like most of these brands, the discounted route is a subscription. It's easy to pause or cancel in your account, but be aware of what you're signing up for.

Verdict: who this is actually for

If you're the "one nice coffee a day, sleeps like a baby" type — honestly, keep your coffee. You don't need this.

But if you recognised yourself in the first paragraph — the multiple daily coffees, the afternoon crash, the wired-but-tired evenings — Rainbow Dust is one of the few things I've tried that made a difference I could actually feel, and it made cutting down on caffeine weirdly painless. Three weeks in, I haven't gone back to my second coffee, and I'm not planning to.

The £29 starter kit (down from £94) is the sensible way to test it, since it includes everything you need for a month: grab the Spacegoods starter kit here. If it's not for you, they do a 30-day money-back guarantee, which is how I talked myself into trying it in the first place.

Full transparency: the links in this post are referral links, which means I may earn a small commission if you buy through them — at no extra cost to you. I only recommend things I've actually used, and everything above is my genuine experience.