Fireweed tea! A thread 🍃

This plant appears in areas after clear-cuts and forest fires to repair disturbed soil. The leaves can be transformed into a fermented, cured black tea. No caffeine, good for the kidneys. 

I'll document the process over the coming days as replies to this thread.

Inspired aspirer attempting to find a way back home.

Amazing thread Joely🥳

We've got leaves like the bitter leaf over here, we use it to make soup or just drink it normally, the leaf helps in kidney problems too

We would normal squeeze their juices out too

Quite bitter i might add

Project Manager|| Biotechnologist|| Art|| Photography|| Memes. I shall stand before kings, not before mean men.

I guess they want people to buy more drugs instead of taking natural herbs lol (you didn't hear anything from me)

The plants are probably related in a way, but definitely don't look alike.

This one is a little bitter if you stop the process too early. It takes 3-5 days before you have to dry it completely (to stop fermentation) and then it goes airtight for at least 3 months to develop flavour. Curing it 6 months makes it even better in my experience. But if you go past 5 days in the moist phase at the begining, you risk mold getting in there, and that ruins it. But the longer it can go at the start, the less bitter it is.

I'm not sure what would be a comparable plant 🤔. Even weirder, when I discovered/researched in way back in 2015, it was developed in Russia in like the middle ages and they made a killing on selling it right up until the late 1700s when England enforced an embargo on imports.

Now I can't find any reference at all to all the stuff I read back then.

Weird.