Kombucha

I got into drinking kombucha when I discovered that I had acquired an overgrowth of candida after taking a round of antibiotics. (Candida is a whole other blog post - google it. Your doctor will look at you like you're bananas if you ask him about it, but do yourself a favor and take some acidophiles and drink some kombucha after you take a round of antibiotics.) Kombucha is a special drink.

This is what the American Cancer Society web page has to say about kombucha:

Kombucha tea is promoted as a cure-all for a wide variety of conditions including baldness, insomnia, intestinal disorders, arthritis, chronic fatigue syndrome, multiple sclerosis, AIDS, and cancer. Supporters assert that Kombucha tea can boost the immune system and reverse the aging process. Kombucha tea is said to contain antioxidants, compounds that block the action of free radicals, activated oxygen molecules that can damage cells. For people who have cancer, proponents claim the tea can improve the body's defenses (especially in the early stages of cancer) by detoxifying the body and enhancing the immune system. After the body has been detoxified, the tea is said to help repair and balance the body and fight off disease.
Often it is mistakenly called mushroom tea because the SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast) looks a little like a mushroom. You make kombucha by brewing tea with sugar and then adding a SCOBY. (I got my SCOBY from Kat over at www.fastfoodgardens.com. Check out her website. She has a great blog about gardening is Austin, Texas.) After you add the SCOBY to the tea, you allow it to sit and ferment aerobically, covering the top of your container with a piece of cloth and securing it with a rubber band. You should keep your kombucha in a dark temperature controlled location - you don't want it to get too much hotter than 75 degrees. It is important to use a glass jar - no plastic, no ceramics - as the kombucha is quite acidic and you don't want any toxins leaching out of your container into your tea. After letting the tea ferment for 10-14 days a new SCOBY should have formed on top of the original. They look sort of like biscuits to me and are easy to separate. You'll want to set aside about half a cup of your kombucha for each SCOBY so that you will continue to have a healthy environment for your SCOBY to live in when you make your next batch.

Next, the anaerobic - or bottled - fermentation. This is the time when you have the opportunity to be creative and flavor your kombucha any way you desire. You take the remaining tea that you have and funnel it into a sealable container. Kat recommended IKEA for their stopper bottles, but I didn't feel like making the drive all the way up to North Austin. Instead, I just bought some beer from the Whip-In that came with a resealable stopper top. You can use any container you want - as long as you can seal it up. (But, I totally recommend going to the Whip-In. Hello, wonderful beer selection. And, did you know that they serve Indian food there and have live music now? http://www.whipin.com/) The bacteria and yeast feed off of the sugar that you added to the tea during the first fermentation. When you add some more sugar in the second sealed fermentation all those bacteria and yeast happily eat it up and create a natural effervescence. The sugar that you add can come from a variety of things. My favorite combination that I have used so far is strawberry/ginger/blueberry. You want to cut up the fruit into small piece. More surface area is better. After you have added some sort of sugar to your kombucha, bottled and sealed it, then you let it sit again for around 3 to 4 days. You don't want to let it sit unrefrigerated and sealed for too much longer than that as the bottles can explode. When you refrigerate the bottles, you slow down the fermentation rate and lessen the possibility of a glass and kombucha filled explosion in your kitchen.

I've only been through about 3 cycles of kombucha making. I haven't quite gotten my recipe to the deliciousness of Buddha's Brew http://buddhasbrew.com/ , but I'm working on it. I'll share all my tips with you. If you're nice - maybe I'll give you a SCOBY.