Chaga Tea Recipes

Chaga tea has been used as a folk remedy for centuries in Siberia, Alaska, and other northern lands, and for good reason. Made from chaga mushrooms found naturally on birch trees, chaga is rich in antioxidants and other nutrients, making it a superfood in its own right. But how do you make chaga tea?

Due to chaga’s unique, chitinous structure, making tea is by far the most efficient way to harness its health-giving powers. Here’s how you can make chaga tea the easiest and simplest way with a number of different recipes.

Keep in mind that when it comes to chaga, if you use a bad product, you’ll get bad results. You should only use the purest, highest-quality chaga you can find. Research chaga suppliers carefully and avoid sellers that purchase chaga in bulk or from dodgy pickers. Bad chaga can contain dirt, bacteria, and other impurities and toxins that can make you sick and ruin the nutritional content of any tea you make. Always stick to trusted suppliers to ensure you get the best results.

Simple Chaga Tea Recipe

As far as beverages go, chaga tea is very simple to make, as all it requires is chaga itself. Chaga can be in chunks, in powder form, or raw, though in the latter case, you should dry it out for at least a month before using it to make tea.

Once you’ve gotten your hands on some chaga—regardless of what form it’s in—you’re ready to make chaga tea. Here are three easy ways to do it.

Making Chaga Tea in a Cup

This is by far the easiest and fastest way to make chaga tea, particularly if you’re just brewing it for yourself. If you've never made chaga tea before, we recommend the cup method in order to acquaint yourself with the process. Here are the steps:

1. Get a tea cup with a filter or infuser.
2. Put one spoonful of chaga powder into the cup. Note that if your chaga is not already in powder form, you will need to grind it up.
3. Pour boiled water on top of the chaga.
4. Cover the cup and let the chaga steep for five to ten minutes.
5. Optional: add maple syrup, honey, milk, sugar, or any other natural ingredient if you would like your tea to be sweet. Honey in particular will give your chaga tea a very smooth feel, while ginger will make it taste much stronger. Afterwards, you can serve the tea.

The advantages to this chaga tea recipe are easy to see: it’s fast, simple, and also allows you to reuse leftover chaga powder for future brewing. However, you need a filter in order to avoid getting chunks of chaga in your teeth, and this method also doesn’t maximize the nutritional value of the chaga because it doesn’t affect its chitinous structure. Additionally, you can’t use this method with anything other than chaga powder, requiring you to grind up your chaga if you don’t already have it in powder form.

As mentioned above, the cup method is best for chaga newbies as well as those who need some chaga tea in a pinch. However, there are other methods that allow you to get the most out of your chaga as well as brew it more efficiently. As you become more familiar with chaga, you will likely want to use more advanced recipes.

Making Chaga Tea in a Pot

This method is ideal if you need to brew chaga tea for a large group. Additionally, this method of brewing chaga tea is reputed to be healthier because it cracks the chaga’s chitinous interior, releasing more of its nutrients into the tea proper. Here’s how to prepare chaga tea in a pot:

1. Get a wide-bottomed pot.
2. Place your chaga powder or chunks at the bottom of the pot. (Note that chaga chunks should be no more than one inch in size.) For each person you are serving, use one to two spoonfuls of powder or one to two chunks.
3. Add water and begin heating the pot with the cover off. When the water begins to boil, turn the heat to low.
4. After thirty minutes, turn off the heat and allow the tea to cool off for a few minutes.
5. Optional: add maple syrup, honey, milk, sugar, or any other natural ingredient, then serve.

If you’re looking to maximize the nutritional content of your chaga tea, this method is highly recommended due to the long heating dissolving the chitin within the chaga’s cell structure. The pot method is also ideal if you need to serve a large number of people, and it also doesn’t require you to grind your chaga into a powder like the cup method does. You can also reuse the chaga afterwards to make more tea. However, making chaga in a pot is time-consuming and may also require you to break your larger chaga chunks into smaller ones.

As mentioned already, the pot method is the best method to make chaga if you need to prepare it for a large number of people, but it may be overkill if you are just making it for yourself.

Making Chaga Iced Tea

This method of preparing chaga is ideal if you enjoy iced tea, dislike hot tea, or simply want to make a large amount of chaga in advance and then save it instead of having to prepare it every time you want some. To make chaga iced tea, you first need to prepare tea using either of the two aforementioned methods, excluding the steps where you add sweeteners. Once you’ve prepared the chaga tea, follow these instructions:

1. Leave your chaga tea to cool down for thirty minutes.
2. Place the tea in your refrigerator for one to two hours.
3. Add ice cubes, lemons, and other sweeteners, then serve.

Chaga iced tea makes for a great, refreshing drink on a hot day, and it also stays good in your fridge for quite a long time. However, this method is the most time-consuming of all when it comes to making chaga tea. Additionally, you may have to use additional sweeteners to give your chaga a taste that you will enjoy due to the nature of refrigeration and its effects on the drink.

Making chaga iced tea is ideal for individuals who want to preserve their tea over the course of a few days. As a refreshing drink on sweltering summer days, it can’t be beat, and it can also be a good way to surprise friends or family who are visiting you with a delicious treat. For chaga tea drinkers who don’t want to have to brew tea every time they want a drink, creating chaga iced tea is a great option.

Preparing Chaga

If you have raw chaga instead of chaga chunks or powder, you will need to prepare your chaga before you can use it to make tea. To prepare raw chaga, take a cleaver or hatchet and chop it into smaller pieces of no more than two inches in size. Preferably, you want your chaga chunks to be around one inch in size to make them easier to grind up or brew. You should do this before drying it out because that makes it easier to slice the chaga up. Remember that you need to dry chaga for at least a month before using it to make chaga tea. All chaga purchased from AlaskaChaga has already been dried.

While you can use the pot method to make tea from chaga chunks, if you want to get the most out of your chaga, you’ll need to grind it into a powder. To do this, you can use any coffee bean grinder. Place the chaga chunks into the grinder (if you can make them smaller, do so), then grind until you have a fine chaga powder. Note that grinding the chaga is easier if it’s already dry. Chaga powder can then be used to make tea with either the pot method or the cup method depending on your preferences.

Either way, these methods will allow you to prepare your chaga for use in making tea.

Summary

Chaga mushrooms are some of the best means by which you can improve your life. They are scientifically proven to improve your immune, heart, and liver health with their antioxidants and other nutrients. Because of the chitinous nature of chaga mushrooms, making your own tea with a chaga tea recipe is the easiest way to consume them, and has been done in northern regions of the world for generations.

Making chaga tea may seem daunting for newcomers, but follow the directions and you’ll have an easy time of it. Whether you want to create a small cup of tea for yourself, make a pot of it for friends, or create some iced tea to store in the fridge for hot weather, there are numerous ways to prepare chaga tea according to your needs.

Have fun and enjoy your chaga tea!