Alaskan Fireweed Tea

Fireweed tea is made from the leaves of Chamaenerion angustifolium, the tall pink-flowered plant that colonizes burned and cleared ground across Alaska. The cup is mildly sweet, green and flowery. Brewed in a covered mug at 95°C for six to eight minutes.

Origin & Story

Fireweed is named for what it does: after a forest fire or a clearing it is often the first plant to come back, filling black ground with tall spikes of magenta flowers. Chamaenerion angustifolium, called rosebay willowherb in the British Isles, grows across northern Europe, Asia and North America, and in Alaska it is the flower of the summer.

Alaskans read it like a clock. The flowers open from the bottom of the stalk upward, and the saying goes that when they reach the top, winter is close. Bees love it too: fireweed is the plant honeybees on the Kenai Peninsula feed on most, and its honey is pale and mild.

As a tea, fireweed has a longer history in Russia, where the leaves are wilted, rolled, fermented and dried into ivan chai, also called Koporye tea after a village near St. Petersburg. Ivan chai was one of Russia's major exports and was sent to England, Denmark, Germany and France until Indian and Chinese tea took over toward the end of the nineteenth century. Alaskan fireweed tea is usually the simpler kind: dried leaves, steeped like any herb.

The taste is mild: meadow flowers and green stems, a little honeyed, with none of the bitterness of black tea. If you want a darker, maltier cup, the Russian method of fermenting the leaves is the way, but it is a project. Dried leaf and a covered mug will do for a start.

Steep 3 g of dried fireweed leaf in 240 ml of water at 95°C for six to eight minutes in a covered mug.

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