Chaga Harvesting
We harvest chaga from live healthy birches at a 2 meter. The map shows that the main birch forests in the West of Siberia, where Chaga Laboratories harvests chaga are far from industrial cities. It takes 10-15 years from chaga to grow. Professional chaga hunters pick up chaga without damaging trees. We check the harvested chaga for contamination in the laboratory, and only after that we chaga for processing and drying.
Tools for chaga harvesting are ax, hammer and ladder.
Chaga is harvested all year-round; chaga hunters may walk about 20-30 km per day.
Three layers of chaga and processing.
Chaga has three main layers, which differ from each other in density and color. The outer layer of the true chaga is always black (sclerotium). Sclerotium is the hardest and most dense chaga layer. It contains the largest number of biologically active substances. Then comes a hard and less dense layer of dark brown color called fruiting body. It is also rich in healthy substances. The third layer has no special name; it is light brown, sometimes even yellow. This layer is where chaga touches with the tree trunk. It is loose, porous and soft. The first two layers are known to contain more than 80% of the healthy properties of chaga. The third loose layer does not have any useful substances. Therefore, Chaga Laboratories cuts out and simply throws away the useless part of the fungus to ensure the highest possible concentration of nutrients. However, it is rather hard to remove the third layer at home. One should not assume that all manufacturers of chaga products do the same, because by using whole chaga they can get a larger amount of the final product still at lower price.
Chaga photo or infographics