Chaga

Lately I have realized that quite many people are taking chaga from public forest.  For what I understood from the regulation, you are not allowed to take anything from live tree as it is considered as a part of the tree and by taking it, will damage the tree.
But because have seen so many chaga have been picked, I have checked the regulation carefully again. Then I have found the comment posted by ministry official saying that the “chaga is a mushroom and even though grows on the tree, by taking it will not damage the tree itself. Therefore, it is allowed to pick as considered as usual forest mushroom picking”.

So I did go back to the forest, where I know the location of chaga and picked some.

(This is about 600g chunk of chaga when dry.)

I have dried it on the fireplace for about 2 weeks and now ready to make tea out of it.

Chopped it in smaller pieces

Then milled it in coffee mill.

Boil 2 tea spoons of chaga in 1 litter of water for about 15 min. then I have got nice chaga tea.

It taste more like coffee than a tea, quite nice in flavor. Also tried mixing it with normal coffee, I found it this way is much nicer. When boiling, it has aroma of birch smoke, very present.
Since this is called “True tinder fungus”, I have also tried lighting it by Firesteel and traditional flint & steel. Took little doing to get hang of it, but once get it, it is as easy as using char cloth.  Just need to cut out small thin piece from the chunk. Once it gets the spark, it is surprisingly difficult to put it out. Pinching it with finger or stepping on it did not put the amber down. I needed to pour enough water on it to make sure that the amber is out.
Also the aroma of the smoke is very present and somehow, it does not hart eyes as bad as usual smoke does.. 

Perhaps I will try using this as bug repellant next summer.