ChagaChaga mushroom (Inonotus obliquus) guide

Meet the mushroom

Chaga is not a typical mushroom at all. What people harvest is a sterile mass called a sclerotium, a dense knot of fungal tissue that bursts through the bark of living birch trees. The outside is black, cracked and crusty. The inside is a corky orange-brown.

It grows in cold northern forests across Canada, the northern US, Scandinavia and Russia, almost always on birch. A single conk can take many years to grow, and the tree it lives on is slowly being colonized the whole time.

A little history

Chaga has been brewed as a tea for centuries in northern Russia and Siberia, often as an everyday drink rather than anything special. Communities across the boreal forest have their own uses for it too, including carrying fire, since a smouldering piece of chaga holds an ember for a long time.

Its popularity has grown fast, and that has a cost. Wild chaga grows slowly and is easy to over-harvest. Growing it indoors means no birch forest gets stripped to fill a pouch.

How ours is grown

Grown in BC

Cultivated indoors by our partner grower in British Columbia, using solid-state fermentation on certified organic grain.

The whole organism

Each powder contains the fruiting body, mycelium, stroma, natural fibre and the compounds the mycelium releases as it grows, together with the organic grain it grew on.

DNA verified

Every lot is identified by DNA (qPCR) and must match an authenticated reference sample of the species on the label.

Made to last

Water activity is kept under 0.6 so the powder stays dry and stable for three years from production.