Chaga tea with nettle leaf and warming spices

A walk in the woods

There are few things more soothing to the soul than getting out in the great outdoors. A trip to the woods is one of our favourite pastimes.

Pulling on weathered old wellington boots and strolling down the sun-dappled footpaths, discovering tiny mushrooms poking up from the deadwood, or hearing the cheerful chirp of the birds. In our hectic lives, the woods represent a place of stillness and a profusion of natural life.

But the woods are more than a place of sanctuary when we need a break from modern life.

They’re also home to an enormous variety of plants and animals. We enjoy them for aesthetic reasons now, but our wiser ancestors knew them far better than we do. They sourced food and ingredients for their medicines from the forest, knowing just where to look to find the perfect specimen.

The soul of the woods is in our soothing chaga tea. It is made from ingredients which previous generations would have pulled from the soil or taken from the bark of a tree.

While you don’t need years of foraging experience to enjoy our tea, we hope it takes you back to a simpler and a wiser time, when we were able to love and respect our precious woodland and it, in turn, would nurture us too.

Chaga mushroom tea

Chaga is a mushroom which grows predominantly on birch trees. In that way, it’s a bit different from what you might expect. While we often think that mushrooms all have that distinctive toadstool-like shape and pop up from the ground, as chaga demonstrates they come in all shapes and sizes!

Instead, chaga emerges from the bark of its tree host looking almost like a ball of brittle charcoal.

In Eastern Europe, people have been using chaga medicinally since the 12th century.(1) It is particularly well-suited to growing in cold, northerly climates. This perhaps explains why it is also so popular in Russia and the Baltic countries.

Our chaga mushroom is sustainably wild-harvested in Finland.

Traditionally, chaga was used as a medicine to treat all sorts of ailments. It was thought to have anti-inflammatory and anti-parasitic qualities, and was used to treat diseases of the digestive system, heart and liver.(1)

Nowadays, we know that medicinal mushrooms such as chaga contain special polysaccharides called beta-glucans. These are associated with supporting your natural immunity.(2)

A sting or a salve?

Most of us probably have a memory of tramping happily through the woods and suddenly pulling up with a painful tingling in our ankles. Yes - of course, we had wandered into a patch of nettles.

Luckily, some nuggets of woodland wisdom have been passed down through the generations, and we always knew to look for dock leaves straight away!

What few of us knew back then is that nettles are edible, and are actually very good for us. The most commonly found species around the world is Urtica dioica, the common nettle.

Like chaga, nettles have a long history of traditional medical use. They are commonly used for ailments such as an enlarged prostate or urinary tract issues.(3)

Combining these two special woodland plants in a warming tea is the perfect example of how the power of plants can be transferred into modern life, too.

A soothing woodland brew

The most traditional way of consuming both chaga and nettle leaf would have been to simply steep them in hot water and drink as an infusion.

And indeed, part of our recipe involves steeping both of these ingredients in hot water for around twenty minutes. This is especially important for chaga, as hot water helps to draw out the beta-glucans from the mushroom.

You can stop the process there if you like, and enjoy a simple chaga and nettle infusion.

However, if you’d prefer a warm drink with a few added touches of comfort, read on.

Our recipe adds coconut milk for a decadent creaminess, while vanilla, nutmeg and cinnamon provide comforting warmth.

This is the perfect drink to warm you after a long, autumnal walk among russet-coloured leaves. When we drink it we like to think that, in a small way, we’re bringing the soul of the woods home with us.