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Tea leaf from Koporye near St Petersburg

Koporye tea / Ivan-chai (fermented fireweed leaf tea)Копорский чай

Fireweed leaves picked at flowering are cut or crushed, packed tight in jars and left warm for one to three days (the studies' conditions), then dried into a tea that modern makers sell as caffeine-free. It is a boundary entry, since the papers credit both the leaf's own enzymes and microorganisms for the "fermentation" and measured neither.

Fully documentedTea leaf34 h – 3.4 days

Recipe

Koporye tea / Ivan-chai (fermented fireweed leaf tea), a photo from Wikimedia Commons
Photo: uploader, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
No fixed amounts recordedThe 2023 study fermented 0.300 kg of cut leaf for each of three replications; the 2020 study divided its leaf into 0.600 kg lots.
Fresh fireweed leavesCollected in July at the beginning of mass flowering[lasinskas2020]
Nothing elseThe 2023 study says no additional water is used in solid-phase fermentation[lasinskas2023]

Total time across the recorded steps: 34 h – 3.4 days

Start
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What changes: Starting material: fireweed leaves picked when the plants start to flower

Step 1 of 4
Pick leaves at the start of mass flowering
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactic acid bacteria
Yeasts

Output: fresh leaves.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
green

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Fireweed leaves picked at flowering are cut or crushed, packed tight in jars and left warm for one to three days (the studies' conditions), then dried into a tea that modern makers sell as caffeine-free. It is a boundary entry, since the papers credit both the leaf's own enzymes and microorganisms for the "fermentation" and measured neither. Made in 4 steps over 34 h – 3.4 days. The longest step, pack tight and leave to ferment, takes 24 h – 3 days (Lasinskas M 2023) and runs at 29.5–30.5 °C (Lasinskas M 2023). Eurotium cristatum INA 01267, a fungus from Fujian dark tea, added to sterilised fireweed tea for 14 days at 28 °C in a Russian lab study of an inoculated variant does most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step24 h – 3 daysReported[lasinskas2023][lasinskas2020]Pack tight and leave to ferment
Temperature29.5–30.5 °CReported[lasinskas2023]Pack tight and leave to ferment

What makes this one different

Koporye tea began as a copy of Chinese tea making on a different plant. The papers credit its "fermentation" to both enzymes and microorganisms (lactic acid bacteria, yeast) and did not measure either, so it is unclear how much is a microbial ferment. Packing it tight in a closed jar for 72 h gave the highest oenothein B and flavonoids (Lasinskas 2023).

Related ferments

Variants

  • Eurotium-post-fermented fireweed tea (experimental)A Russian lab study took ready-made fermented fireweed tea, sterilised it by autoclave and inoculated it with Eurotium cristatum, as in Chinese fu brick tea. In lab culture the strain made none of the four mycotoxins tested (aflatoxin B1, patulin, deoxynivalenol and zearalenone), Efimenko 2021.
  • Aerobic Ivan-chaiFermented with an air-passing lid. Antioxidant activity rose by 5.64 to 17.63 % over unfermented leaf; the highest value in the study was in the closed-jar 72 h sample (Lasinskas 2023).

Safety

In the studies the dried leaf was stored in a dark, dry, cool, ventilated room (Lasinskas 2020).

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Russian Wikipedia, whose history section carries a reliability warning, says a household servant of the landowner Savelov, who had lived at the Russian embassy in China, set up production of a cheap fireweed tea near the village of Koporye. It was widely sold as Chinese tea. A regulation of 6 June 1816 banned passing it off as Chinese tea, and an 1839 police statute for state peasants banned its use and gathering.

Starter
The sources we found do not say how its fermentation begins.
  1. [lasinskas2023] Lasinskas M., Jariene E., Vaitkeviciene N. et al. 2023, The impact of solid-phase fermentation on flavonoids, phenolic acids, tannins and antioxidant activity in Chamerion angustifolium (L.) Holub (fireweed) leaves, Plants 12(2):277paper
  2. [lasinskas2020] Lasinskas M., Jariene E., Vaitkeviciene N. et al. 2020, Effect of different durations of solid-phase fermentation for fireweed (Chamerion angustifolium (L.) Holub) leaves on the content of polyphenols and antioxidant activity in vitro, Molecules 25(4):1011paper
  3. [efimenko2021] Efimenko T.A., Shanenko E.F., Mukhamedzhanova T.G., Efremenkova O.V., Nikolayev Y.A., Bilanenko E.N., Gernet M.V., Grishin A.G., Serykh I.N., Shevelev S.V., Vasilyeva B.F., Filippova S.N., El-Registan G.I. 2021, Eurotium cristatum postfermentation of fireweed and apple tree leaf herbal teas, International Journal of Food Science 2021:6691428, doi:10.1155/2021/6691428paper
  4. [wp-ru] Russian Wikipedia, Копорский чай (history only), read 2026-10wiki