Taiga Folk Brew · Birch Fungus Tea
Chaga Tea
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It's brewed not from a leaf but from a fungus — a hard, charcoal-black growth that Siberians chip off living birch trees with an axe.
Chaga tea is steeped from chunks of a dark, woody fungus that grows on birch trees, simmered slowly into a dark, earthy, faintly bitter brew often sweetened with honey. Market stalls and taiga villages across Siberia sell dried chaga chunks by the bag for brewing at home.
Why it's made this way: Siberian and Northern Russian communities have brewed chaga as an everyday folk drink and cold remedy for generations, long before it caught on internationally as a health trend.
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