Kombucha

Kombucha (pronounced properly Kom BOOO Ka I'm told) is a delicious healthful slightly fermented beverage made with black (or other) tea and sugar.   It requires a live culture called a scoby (Symbiotic Culture Of Yeast & Bacteria) to brew, and takes some days to prepare a good finished product.  It can be made with green, white, and other caffeinated/herbal teas, and flavored with just about anything.  I have good luck using black tea, ginger, and a very unprocessed raw sugar as the sweetener.

I love the stuff!  What a great drink!   It's not wasted on me that it was a prefered drink of the Samurai.  I include a link at the end with some wonderful history.  It made it’s way all over the East including Russia.  

For the tea drinkers in the crowd, how easy and wonderful to convert an already awesome ancient beverage into this probiotic powerhouse.

I started making it just over a year ago.  A friend gave me a culture the year before.  It sat in the fridge in a jar because I was intimidated by the process.  When I finally opened it to try it out, there were 2, and that was the beginning.  My favorite beverage in the wintertime has traditionally been hot ginger or chai tea.  But this winter, I’ve continued to drink kombucha all day and into the night.   With lots of ice, “like a scotch”. This would ordinarily be unthinkable to me but I’m not feeling chilled at all by it and continue to want it over hot ginger tea.  This tells me that it is indeed contributing to my inner fire.  

Okay so you gardeners out there know about compost piles, and how you can innoculate them with various beneficial strains of bacteria to speed up and enhance the decomposition process.  This is exactly what Kombucha does in your gut.  You are innoculating it with beneficial organisms that enhance the digestive fire and absorption process.  Truly this is creating an upward spiral of health and well being.  It helps with detoxification, it boosts the immune system, and depending on how you flavor it, it also provides additional nutrients.  

Personally I’m just thrilled to not only be drinking this delicious probiotic, but to be buying and eating more pineapples and mangos.  Since they are needed for flavoring kombucha batches, it also has me consuming more of them in the process, yum.

In order to succeed with Kombucha it does have some basic needs.  There is a range of temperature and pH that it requires -- go outside these parameters and the scoby will die and/or the batch will mold.  But once you can give it the right environment, and you monitor it every other day at least, success will happen.  Monitoring it is critical as Kombucha continues to develop and ferment even when it’s not being looked at. 

Store bought Kombucha is a much inferior product (in my opinion) to that made by an experienced home Kombucha maker.  What you get in the store has been heated, killing off most of the beneficial organisms.  Better to get a scoby and some tips from someone you know; that way you can tweak your recipes exactly to your tastes, quantity and needs.

I started making Kombucha with the following ingredients -- including ginger from the start, right into the tea mix.  That seemed to work very well, in fact the inclusion of ginger speeded up the fermentation process.

Kristine Lavender Love’s Recipe

13 cups water (to fill my favorite size pot)

9 or 10 good quality tea bags

1 cup raw sugar

2“ knob fresh ginger, chopped

Make Tea:  Put water, ginger and sugar in the pot and bring to a boil.  Add tea bags, remove from heat, brew and cool down. A faster method is to use half as much water to brew the tea, then when it’s brewed fill the pot with cold water to cool it all down.

Combine:  Strain and add to your kombucha brewing jars that contain your scobies.  Make sure the liquid is not too hot!

Cover and Brew:  I like to cover glass jars with a paper coffee filter affixed with a rubber band.  Kombucha needs to breathe at this stage, and the covering keeps out bugs and dust.  I also wrap the jars in different colored cloth, affixed with a clothespin, as it also likes to be kept dark and my brewing place is well lit.

Temperature:  I brew my jars on top of a Wedgewood stove (in the center).  The pilot lights underneath give it exactly what it wants, a range of about 75 to 90 degrees depending on where I put the jars, and I can move them around on the stovetop to more or less heat as needed.  I highly recommend bottom heat.  Kombucha mats are available commercially that provide exactly the right consistent temperature.

Monitor:  The strength of desired fermentation is up to each individual.  For many months I kept 2 2-qt jars going, and would decant one off after 5 or 6 days and drink it like that.  The ginger speeds up and enhances the fermentation process so it had a little bit of fizz at that juncture.  However you do it, it simply requires monitoring at this stage.  If it goes too long and continues to ferment it will become very acidic.  Too acidic for the scoby even, and your nice live culture will swoon (if you catch it in time) and/or die.  And added ginger will definately hasten the process.

Scoby Health:  A healthy scoby will regenerate some after every inclusion of fresh sweetened tea, there should be a whitish shiny layer on the top.   I have since read that you are to discard the bottom part of the scoby.  I have never done that, and all seems to be well.  Underneath the shiny new growth it tends to look like a yucky dish rag. That’s okay, as long as it still floats, bubbles and froths.  

Sometimes they go into a swoon  and linger on the bottom.  If you see this  
happening, especially early on, make sure your jar is warm enough.  Give it more heat and another 12 hours to float up; if it doesn’t respond with additional warmth, either dump the whole works out, or take the scoby out, rinse it and give it a new starter liquid.  If it doesn’t come up in a day it’s probably dead.  Hey, the great thing is these things regenerate, and making mistakes is part of it.  Turn your friends on to making Kombucha and you’ll always have scobies!

2nd Brewing:  The proper way to make Kombucha is, after about a week brewing with the scoby, you decant that off into a nice bottle, then let it sit for another week or so in a warm place to continue to ferment -- capped this time -- and it will produce this wonderful champagne-like fizz.  Take care to check your bottles every day to release excess pressure lest they start bursting in the night.  Yes it can happen.  Mango, peach and pineapple are real culprits.

Kristine’s Deviations

After I had so much success with ginger in the scoby I decided to experiment with other things.  Elderberry came next, then pineapple, mango, blackberry, cherry, strawberry, blueberry, raspberry, and a bunch of others that I found out I like less.  This is flavoring I put directly in with my scoby and brew it like that, then decant it off into a corked bottle for a few days to fizz up.

My method is simple.  You prepare the flavoring exactly the same way, whether adding it directly to the scoby jar, or at the time of decanting into the bottle to brew a second time. 

All my brewing jars are 2 quarts.  To flavor that quantity I use about 1/3 cup chopped fruit (I keep a stash in little baggies in the freezer) plus an additional heaping teaspoon or 2 of raw sugar, depending on the sourness of the fruit.  Place in a teacup, add a black teabag and fill the cup with hot water.  Stir, cool and strain into your appropriate brewing jar.  Then fill the jar with sweetened ginger black tea to replenish.  Carry on brewing!

Every third or 4th time I decant from a brewing jar I usually remove the scoby into a bowl and rinse it if there was a lot of sludge  (pineapple really produces this) and wash the jar.  They get yucky over time.   Then return the scoby and replenish with tea.

Now that I’ve discovered what fun flavors are I went crazy for awhile and had just too many going.  Some didn’t work as well.  What I’ve pared down to now as staples (and also based on how much I and others consume of it) on the stove brewing are the basic Ginger Black Tea, Elderberry, Blackberry, Pineapple, Mango, Cherry, and Strawberry-Blueberry.   And I also now decant them all off into nice bottles, which then go to a second brewing station by the woodstove, all covered up.   There I monitor them daily, taking what is ready for consumption.   I like to bring my traveling kombucha bar around with me.

Other Good Flavors:  At this time the way I play with new flavors is to add it to the Ginger Black Tea I decant off, rather than flavoring new scobies which is a risk.   If I find a flavor I really like and it seems to have the right pH, I might create a new, say, dragon fruit scoby.  However I’ve found that 7 brewing flavors on the stovetop is enough to work with, based on my consumption.  One also has to have a set of bottles to put it in.  Hey it’s a fine finished product, I don’t want to use mason jars, especially since I bring a travelling Kombucha bar around with me to Yoga Class, the Rec. Ctr., and music practice.  


I want folks to see a fine beautiful finished product complete with labels.  

People are less apt to try some strange fermented brew right out of an unlabeled mason jar than they are an array of beautiful clean clear bottles of different sorts filled with the various brilliant colors, with a nice label...... Just sayin’, know your audiences.

And by the way, if you have gotten a bottle of Kombucha from me, which I'm totally glad to do - please bring me the bottle back, it's very disconcerting to have bottle crises when there is a lot ready to decant and I've got them bursting in the night.  

A couple last flavoring tips -- one flavor that has become quite a hit in my world is Mango Cannabis.   You Medical Marijuana people, add the cannabis to your scoby-brewed Mango Kombucha at the time of decanting.  I used about a third of a cup crumbled bud to 2 quarts of liquid.  Also a couple spoonfuls of sugar.    Be aware that mango makes it very very fizzy.  This is a great, delicious, champagne-like adult beverage and a total hit with the musician crowd, which is usually the only place I have it.  


It’s party fare for Music Night for sure, with none of the gnarly side effects of either smoking it, or alcohol. 

Why Mango?   

pot-smokers-eat-mango-before-lighting-up

Other flavors I’m working with are Cherry Vanilla (add a qtr. inch piece of vanilla bean to the decanted bottle of Cherry for 2nd brewing); Ginger Peach, plus Cardomom; Cran Elder Orange Spice; Pineapple Horehound Chai Spice; and various combinations of Blackberry, Elderberry, Strawberry, Raspberry and Blueberry.

I’m also contemplating some very VERY herbal Kombuchas that target specific illnesses.  It is a carrier medium par excellence, not to mention very elevating to the immune system.  More to come from that direction.

Here's some very interesting info on the origins of this wonderful beverage.

http://www.kombuchacultures.com/kombucha_history.html

Kombucha History

It is thought that Kombucha mushroom, a fermented yeast enzyme tea, originated in Asia during the Chinese Tsin dynasty in 212BC. This Eastern Tea was referred to as the Remedy for Immortality or the tea of Immortality. With the extension of trade routes it spread to India and Russia through travelers and traders. Kombucha resurfaced in Japan between the Wars after a Japanese visitor to Kargasok (Russia) found this fermented tea drink responsible for their astonishing health, longevity and well-being. It may have been introduced to Japan by a Korean physician by the name of Kombu around 415 AD. Today the tea - once routinely used by Samurai - is widely used again in Japan. Kombucha appeared in Germany about the turn of the century from Russia. This fermented tea drink became quite popular across Europe until World War II with the shortage of tea and sugar.

For hundreds of years a tea has been made from Chaga (a birch-tree mushroom) by the Russian peasants of the Alexandrove district near Moscow to cure cancer. There is speculation that the Kombucha mushroom is related to the Birch-tree mushroom.

Wherever this tea originated from it is now known throughout the world.  Kombucha Mushroom tea has been known by many names in many cultures. In 18th century Russia it was known as Cajnyj Kvas, in China as Cha Gu, in Germany as Heldenpilz.

Over all these years many stories have been told of how this fermented tea beverage, Kombucha has appeared to have performed miracles. Hence names such as miracle fungus, magical fungus, elixir of life and gout tea.

There are reports from several different countries of the use of Kombucha tea. The fungus is given local names in various countries such as: Russian Fungus, Japanese sponge, the Divine Tsche, Mongolian wine, Indian wine, Fungus Japonicus, Pichia fermentans, Cembuya, Orientalis, Combuchu, Tschambucco, Volga Spring, Mo Gu, Champignon de longue vie, Teekwass, Kwassan, pseudo lichen and Kargasok Tea, Scoby, kochakinoko.

Kombucha Scoby Candy ??!!

Yes you can actually make candy out of what looks like a yucky thing!  More to come on that front!!

If anyone is interested, Autumn Andahl and I are giving a workshop up in RRFlat this weekend that will feature Kombucha, Fire Cider and home made laundry soap.  Autumn does it the traditional way and has great product.  We'll both be presenting our methods, contact her to register.

Happy Brewing!