What is koporsk tea? Not many people know the answer to this question. Ivan tea has been widely used in the practice of traditional healers. Thanks to the leaves and flowers of the plant, you can improve digestion, increase immunity, lower blood pressure and regain a cheerful mood. In the scientific community, Ivan tea is called narrow-leaved fireweed, and a drink made from its fermented raw materials is the famous Koporye tea. Contraindications, useful properties, methods of preparation and preparation - all this in our article.
Healing flower grows very close
From the end of spring, shoots of fireweed begin to appear throughout Russia. The plant has a tall stem, covered with narrow leaves, and on top flaunts an inflorescence of purple flowers. Grass fell in love with deforestation, glades, conflagration, as well as roadsides. It was from ancient Ivan that raw materials were harvested in Russia from ancient times in order to prepare an incredibly tasty and healthy drink. Traditions are returning, and herbal medicine offers to prepare such an inexpensive, but effective Koporye tea.
History of occurrence
As far back as the 12th century, Alexander Nevsky stormed the impregnable fortress of the Teutons, and the small village of Koporye arose at the scene of the battle. Locals noticed bushes of narrow-leaved fireweed and brought the art of preparing and preparing the drink to perfection. Merchants came here from all around to buy valuable tea, named after the area. Then the fragrant drink was overgrown with other names: Russian and Ivan-tea. Guests were treated with fragrant tea during the time of the founding of Moscow, as mentioned in ancient Russian chronicles. Great Britain bought thousands of tons of Russian tea, although it already had impressive tea plantations in South Asia. But they started a rumor that unscrupulous merchants add clay to Koporye tea, so the demand for it fell, and Koporye went into oblivion.
The composition of willow tea
Almost 70 microelements have gathered in the narrow-leafed fireweed, among them the maximum amount of manganese, iron, copper, slightly less - calcium, titanium, potassium, boron, molybdenum, boron and nickel.
Also in the composition of the healing plant there are many useful compounds:
- tannins have a hemostatic and anti-inflammatory effect;
- alkaloids stabilize the state of the circulatory and nervous system, act as an anesthetic and participate in the metabolism;
- flavonoids are known for their urinary and choleretic properties;
- pectin brings harmful substances out;
- chlorophyll localizes malignant cells, stimulates the rapid healing of wounds;
- Vitamin A is involved in the growth of epithelial cells;
- B vitamins are important for enhancing biochemical reactions, regulate the normalization of the nervous system;
- fireweed contains a huge amount of vitamin C, but it is mostly destroyed when brewing leaves with boiling water.
Useful properties of Kopor tea
If you regularly drink a narrow-leaved fireweed, you can permanently get rid of headaches, migraines, and normalize sleep. Tea will be a salvation for tired people, it will cheer up and give strength. It is worth noting that the plant lacks caffeine, so the beneficial components of willow tea act gently and gently. Koporye tea is recommended in the following cases:
- During the rampant viral infections. Ivan tea strengthens the walls of blood vessels, prevents flu and SARS. At elevated body temperature, they not only take the drink inside, but also make compresses on their forehead to bring the temperature to normal levels. Drink hot tea to thin the sputum with a dry cough.
- With a strong solution of tea, rinse the mouth with stomatitis, with bleeding gums and diseases of the oral cavity. Thanks to tannin, damaged gum tissue regenerates faster. When rinsing, pathogenic bacteria are washed away, so an antibacterial effect is immediately noticeable.
- It is useful to drink medicinal tea during lactation. It promotes the production of milk, strengthens the ducts, saturates milk with all useful components. Koporye tea manifests itself as a folk remedy for dysbiosis. The kid receives all the healing substances with milk, so he has less gas and colic.
- In case of anxiety-depressive state, it facilitates the condition of patients, normalizes the nervous system after stress, improves performance in the treatment of mental disorders, and makes life easier for epileptic diseases.
- Used for the treatment of inflammation of the respiratory and genitourinary system, due to unsurpassed anti-inflammatory properties.
- Tea helps to recover with anemia, because it contains a large number of minerals and trace elements.
To quickly fall asleep in the evening, just drink a glass of herbal tea and combine it with a relaxing massage of the temporal region. So, fatigue and irritation are quickly removed, and sleep will bring relaxation and peace. The recipe for making Kopor tea will be presented to the reader further.
Time to Harvest Raw Materials
Harvest time begins in July and lasts until September. Leaves are collected very carefully, it is advisable to choose and not to sweep away all the plants in a row. After flowering, it makes no sense to harvest fireweed, it becomes unsuitable for processing. The collection begins in the morning on a sunny day, so that the material remains dry. There are several ways to collect:
- With the leaves and peduncle break off the upper part of the plants (this method is chosen when they will not engage in fermentation).
- Break off green leaves, but do not touch the inflorescences (for subsequent fermentation). With this method, plants are plucked selectively, so there are stems with flowers on which the seeds ripen.
- In the first half of May, the upper parts of the stems are cut, with this collection the most vitamin tea.
Attention! For fermentation, only leaves are harvested, flowers are harvested and dried separately, added to the finished tea for flavor.
Secrets of cooking at home
Making Kopor tea at home is not a complicated process. The most important thing when preparing medicinal raw materials is to properly ferment, during this process, insoluble substances are converted into a soluble form, which allows the body to easily absorb all the natural gifts of fireweed. These substances give tea unique taste, but you need to act in stages to get the most healthy drink from raw materials.
Withering - the initial stage
To extract liquid from the leaves, they are wilted. Inspect plant material, throw damaged leaves. Washing is not necessary so as not to wash away the substances involved in fermentation. In a thin layer of five centimeters, the raw materials are laid out on a linen cloth in the room, not forgetting to regularly stir up the leaves. The sun's rays should not penetrate the leaves, so as not to dry them. Also, you can’t sag on the street, you get a completely different result, and the tea will be of poor quality. Withering on average takes about 12 hours. The readiness of the leaves is checked by squeezing them in half, if they are still crunching, then they are not ready for further processing. If you take raw materials into a lump, it should not crumble.
If you don’t have time to deal with leaves, you can facilitate the process. Take an old thick sheet and distribute a ball of leaves on it, then tightly twist it so that the fabric absorbs excess moisture.
We prepare raw materials for fermentation
Now you need to destroy the structure of the leaves to stand out the juice. If it appears too little, then the fermentation will be bad, and tea will not show the best characteristics. You can choose the most suitable preparation method:
- Manually twist the raw materials. Take a few leaves and pump in the palms until the leaves begin to darken from the secreted juice. Sausages should be obtained, with a thickness of up to 1 cm and a length of about 10 cm. After the sausages are cut, to subsequently turn into small-leaf tea.
- Kneading leaves. For 20 minutes, the leaves are kneaded in a deep bowl, like dough. Thus, the structure of the leaves is destroyed, as a result of which the raw material for large-leaf tea comes out.
- Twisting the leaves with a meat grinder produces granular tea.
Leaf fermentation
Before you start making Kopor tea at home, you need to ferment the leaves. Prepared raw materials are placed in a 10 cm layer in a plastic or ceramic container, covered with a damp linen cloth and set aside for fermentation in a dark place. Do not exceed temperature indicators of 22-26 degrees of heat. The mass begins to heat up, which is enough to start the fermentation process. If the room is cool, it is better to cover the container with rugs. At the end of the process, the mass will change color from green to brownish and acquire a fruity-floral aroma. The process lasts from 6 to 36 hours, depending on the preferences in the tea, because one likes a drink with a light floral aroma (3-6 hours), while others like tart tea with almost no smell (20-36 hours).
Drying after fermentation
They cover the baking sheets with parchment paper and lay out the finished mass in 1 centimeter. The oven door is opened and dried at a temperature of 100 degrees for about two hours, then the heat is reduced and finally dried. And how to make Kopor tea? We will talk about this further.
How to drink tea
How to drink Kopor tea? Recommended twice a day, but you can and when you like. Do not throw out the tea leaves, if tea has just been drunk, it will still come in handy. From one serving you can still get five servings of aromatic tea. You just need to add boiling water to the tea leaves. Each of the servings has healing properties. The tea is delicious even when cooled, and it’s better not to add sugar to it, but to taste the nature itself. For sweetness, tea can be supplemented with dried fruits, honey or halva.
The easiest way to prepare Kopor tea: for 0.5 l of boiling water, it is enough to take 2 teaspoons of fireweed. First, fill the kettle with a third, wait a few minutes and add boiling water. To enhance the taste of Kopor tea, you can add several dried flowers of willow-tea, mint leaves, strawberries or black currants. It is not necessary to wrap the kettle, and after 10 minutes you can already try real Koporye tea.
But besides all the above beneficial properties, Koporye tea also has contraindications. True, there are not many of them, but they must be taken into account.
Koporye tea: contraindications
If you drink the drink continuously for a month, then there may be interruptions in the work of the gastrointestinal tract. Koporye tea has contraindications for problems with blood coagulation (thrombophlebitis or varicose veins). With caution, they suggest giving a drink to children under 2 years of age, but this statement has no basis, on the contrary, if you take it in a dosage, then it will only be useful.
The joy of taste
When you can try the first portion of Kopor tea, do not try to balance its taste with other famous teas. The drink has no equal, it does not look like anything, has its own magical aroma and a gamut of unique harmonies of taste. It's time to give yourself a real pleasure and at the same time strengthen your health with a cup of Kopor tea!