(bright music) - [Bret] While winter in Minnesota offers plenty of recreational opportunities, it can be a restless period for mushroom foragers.

- [Mike] I think most people are, yeah, they're waiting for morel season come April.

And especially, this time of the year in Minnesota where we can almost see the light on the horizon, right?

- [Bret] We're in Northern Minnesota with Mike Kempenich, who is known as - The most interesting man in the woods is Gentleman Forager.

(Mike chuckling) - [Bret] Amidst this winter wonderland, he searches for a distinctive mushroom renowned for its medicinal benefits.

A rare fine that can require a lot of time in the woods.

- [Mike] You got snowshoes, you got cross-country skiing, you got ice fishing, you got snowmobiling.

So there's plenty to do up here.

And it's very active area if you get around the towns, especially for the snowmobile crowd.

But I'm left alone in the woods for the most part on the chaga hunt.

(Mike chuckling) (cheerful music) (gentle music) My partner up here in the Northwoods, Larry Krachowski is a very accomplished trapper.

So this was one of his that he made himself.

And, yeah, it keeps you incredibly warm.

It's my go-to winter foraging garb, yeah.

Always a conversation starter at the bar too.

- [Bret] Mike's mission today is to find some chaga.

- [Mike] Chaga is super interesting.

I mean, it's a fungus, it's a mushroom but it doesn't have a classic stem and cap.

It's what's called an asexual fruiting body.

It doesn't look at all like a mushroom.

It basically looks like a piece of burnt wood growing from the side of about 1 in every 10,000 birch trees.

And it's also something that's killing the birch tree.

It's a parasite.

(light cheerful music) 'Cause it usually enters through some wound in the tree and starts there.

It takes 5 or 10 years for that conk to grow.

But birch has a compound called betulin in the bark of the birch tree.

And that is consumed by that piece of chaga.

And those had a lot of beneficial compounds that have shown great promise.

And really it's a widely used mushroom for its medicinal benefits.

People use it to brew a tea.

It's referred to as an adaptogen.

So it helps regulate a lot of different body function.

And it's also shown that it has some ability to help fight cancer.

It's absolutely not a cure-all, which I do see a lot of people sort of putting it in a category that doesn't really exist.

But it's a very, very healthy routine you could get into.

(cheerful instrumental music) - [Bret] Chaga, a term originating from Russia describes this burnt charcoal-like fungus.

Unsurprisingly, Russians and other Eastern European countries were the first to utilize chaga for its medicinal benefits during the 15th and 16th centuries.

Historical records from that era suggest chaga could combat infections, ulcers and tumors among other ailments.

Russian author, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn further elevated chaga's profile by featuring it in his novel, "Cancer Ward".

- [Mike] And that really popularized it.

It was very, very well known in Russia and a lot of eastern European countries.

I think here in the States, again 15 years ago, I really didn't talk to many people who had much knowledge about it.

(water bubbling) It's a very small amount.

Really like about a teaspoon of ground chaga could be used to brew probably two or three cups of tea.

A piece maybe half the size of my fist I can use to brew probably 10 or 15 gallons of tea.

- [Bret] Finding chaga starts with locating birch trees.

Birch trees are predominantly found in the northern hemisphere.

And the further north you go, the more you'll find.

Minnesota being no exception.

- Well, I mean birch first.

And it's sometimes a little bit difficult for some people to tell the difference between birch and poplar or aspen.

And really it's the paper that you see.

That sort of papery bark and the aspen is always gonna be completely smooth.

But they can be very light colored and looking an awful lot like a birch.

I'm also looking for like trees that are pretty mature.

I'm not really looking for eight inch diameter trees.

And so that's about, and that's a good looking, you can tell that these trees are already compromised.

They're already either dead or dying.

And that's kind of a good candidate.

So when I see groupings like that, I wanna take some extra time to look around them.

And the other thing you gotta wanna make sure too is that you're checking behind the tree.

I can only see what's in front of me right now.

And often you'll go around the tree and sure enough there'll be a nice honk on the backside of it.

- [Bret] And when you do find chaga, you may need to get some height on it.

- It can be anywhere on the tree, right?

I mean, sometimes it's really nice and they're right there and it's easy to harvest.

Sometimes it's 40 feet up in the tree and it's taunting you and you have to get a little creative.

And frankly, I would say probably half of the time you find chaga it's out of reach.

So yeah, I'll just carry a foldable collapsible ladder that fits in my trunk.

And I've got a 15 foot reach I can get to anyway.

And that gets put into use quite a bit.

(Mike chuckling) (upbeat guitar music) (light guitar music) - [Bret] While many forages can be done with a small knife, chaga requires a stronger touch.

- [Mike] You need really a hatchet or some blade that's very, very, or that's not flexible rather, it's very firm.

Yeah, it's a very sort of tough deal to get out of there.

A hatchet honestly is the best thing.

The face of the tree, the mushroom is actually growing in part of the tree.

So you kind of have to get behind it and kind of pop it out that way.

But it's not something that you do delicately.

You really gotta get in there and get at it.

It's one of the things that I want people to be aware of is, you know, everybody gets excited when they find something like that.

Because it's fairly rare and they're excited about the properties, they've read about it.

And so when they do come across it, they tend to over harvest it with the idea that it's valuable.

But if you hop on eBay, you can buy chaga all day long for a very cheap price.

And it's not really something you're gonna get rich at.

So I just encourage people to take what you need.

If you're going to use it and you're gonna drink the tea then absolutely, I think that's perfectly fine.

- [Bret] Once a part of the chaga's harvested, it won't grow back.

So it's best to harvest the entire growth from the tree.

- 'Cause after you've harvested that chaga it needs to dry.

It's gonna probably weigh three or four times what it ultimately will weigh after you've dried it.

So make sure that you're putting it in a place that has a lot of air circulation, not any kind of closed container or it will mold.

If you're just sort of letting it take its course can take many, many weeks.

Or you can speed it up a little bit, use a dehydrator of some type.

Or break it up into smaller chunks would make it a lot faster as well.

But you definitely wanna dry it as soon as you're harvesting it.

- [Bret] For making a chaga tea, Mike recommends grinding it.

- Boy, you really have to have a serious grinder or you'll break your grinder.

It's very, very hard.

But it also contains a lot of the nutrients you're after.

So you kind of want that blend of that hard black exterior and that golden interior together.

I've picked up like an, it's literally an industrial grinder.

I don't think anything at the store is probably gonna hold up very long.

And that works great.

And I think this was meant for rocks or something.

(Mike chuckling) So it hasn't broke yet anyway.

(light charming instrumental music) - [Bret] Now while chaga tea is a long established tradition, Mike hopes to incorporate these medicinal nutrients into other food and drinks.

- [Mike] I'm excited because I'm doing some top secret talks right now with a beverage company.

I don't probably wanna go further than that but a very interesting beverage that chaga would be an ingredient in.

I really like to think in terms of, well, how can we, you know, people might know about it.

But it may not be something that they're really gonna introduce into their normal routine 'cause it's not part of their normal routine.

But if we can deliver it in something that's very normal, you're drinking a soda every day you might as well drink this healthy one.

And the same I think is true of mushrooms.

We use Lion's Mane in a peanut butter because if you're taking Lion's Mane because you need help with memory.

probably a great thing if you eat peanut butter toast every day.

You don't have to remember, you're already doing that.

(light piano music) - [Bret] As our time with Mike came to an end, we found ourselves empty handed.

Mike wasn't able to find any chaga during our Northwoods adventure but that's not surprising.

After all they say chaga's found on just one in every 10,000 birds trees.

(light instrumental music)