Chaga (Inonotus obliquus) is a medicinal mushroom that grows on birch trees in the forest around us, here in the Finnish archipelago. In Asia, Russia and Siberia the mushroom is well known for its health benefits and have been used as a folk remedy for cancer, digestive system diseases, and various ailments for centuries (https://www.mskcc.org/cancer-care/integrative-medicine/herbs/chaga-mushroom). More recently, it has gained popularity also in the Western World and is now widely accepted as "Super Food" by many health gurus.

The gift from heaven

With an ORAC- score of 146700 (https://www.superfoodly.com/orac-values/) it makes very much sense why the native Siberians call Chaga “The gift from heaven”. ORAC, short for “Oxygen Radical Absorbent Capacity” is basically a measurement of antioxidant potency, and the higher ORAC- value, the more free radicals that certain substance is capable to destroy. This is the reason why Chaga is such a good Immune system booster.

For more information on all health benefits Chaga can provide, we recommend you read Dr. Edwards´ excellent article here (https://www.globalhealingcenter.com/natural-health/chaga-mushroom-the-immune-boosting-superfood/).

Hidden danger

Do NOT consume a Chaga that grows close to any traffic or pollution like the ones on this picture.

If you are able to, then we strongly recommend that you harvest your own Chaga for consumption. It´s a relatively easy process but most important it is the only way you can assure the quality and origin of your Chaga. These is something which should be of highest concern for anyone consuming Chaga as all pollution, toxics, and contamination which the mushroom is exposed to, accumulate and becomes stored inside it forever! Thus, harvesting a Chaga that grows anything near traffic (or any other possible pollution) could have an inverse health effect and should be avoided to all cost.

Harvest & prepare your own Chaga

Best time of the year to harvest Chaga is during winter when temperature falls below five degrees Celsius. Be aware that you need permission from the forests´ owner before you start harvesting your own Chaga (at least here in Finland but don´t know about other countries and their law).

Chaga is quite rare and grows on approximately one of every 5000 birches so you need to put in some time and effort in order to find any. However once you find one, it´s well worth the effort as you can harvest multiple times from the same mushroom. Simply make sure you don´t cut off the whole chaga from the birch, but leave some 20 - 30% of the mushroom, as it will then grow back again within a few years.

In order to separate the mushroom from the tree you might have to use an axe, a saw, or a knife, as the chaga can be quite robust and stick hard to the birch. Just make sure you are gentle to the tree and don´t hurt it (no matter if the mushroom breaks into smaller chunks as it only speeds up the drying process).

Once the chunks are dry you can start enjoying your chaga. The easiest and most common method is to make “Chaga Tea”, whereby the chunks are steeped in hot water for a period of time, strained and then drunk as a tea. When using this method, all the water-soluble components, such as the polyphenols and beta- glucans, will be present in the resulting extract. If you don´t like the taste of Chaga Tea you can grind the chunks into powder, and use it in smoothies or on the porridge for example.

The second method is an alcohol extraction, also known as tincure. This method extracts some of the water-insoluble components, such as betulinic acid, and phytosterols that the hot water extraction won´t do. However, it´s a little bit more complicated process and takes two month to complete. We were thinking of create a step by step guide, showing you how we make our tincure if that is something you steemians out there would be interested in?

Hopefully this post has inspired YOU to go out and search for your own chaga. However, if you rather would like to buy high quality chaga we have some good news for you! We are soon about to harvest and we will have some spare packages of powder and chunks for sale at Openbazaar (https://www.openbazaar.org/) where you can pay with your steem dollars or other crypto currencies! We will post a link in the comments below as soon as we have listed the products.

All the pictures are original and taken with a good old Olympus E-420.

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Peace and Love from team @happychaga