Home-Brewing Kombucha

I was recently introduced to Kombucha, a refreshing, sweet and sour fermented tonic, at a raw foods party we hosted here at Le Roost Lorane. Marlyn brought a bottle to drink and Aaron gifted us with a bottle of their home-brewed Kombucha. Aaron also gave me some of his culture, also referred to as "mother" or "scoby".

Tuesday, I purchased a gallon glass jar at Bi-Mart and used the black and green tea and sugar I had on hand to started fermenting my own batch of Kombucha with the recipe Marlyn gave me and the mother from Aaron on Wednesday. I found liter-size glass bottles at Down to Earth and bottled my brew on Sunday. My Kombucha may have turned out better had I waited one more day, but I'm very happy with my first batch. It's a sweet-sour fermented drink that has a unique, delicate sweet and sour flavor - a great flavor!

Ingredients:

1 gallon of water (non- chlorinated (let tap water sit out until chlorine evaporates or use distilled)
2.5 cups of sugar
6 black tea bags
6 green tea bags (one can be green-ginger tea)
1 Culture start - from a Mother (3/16-inches thick, is normal)

Directions:

1. In a large stainless pot, bring a gallon of water (free on chlorine and minerals) to a boil with the sugar.
2. Add the tea bags and steep for 15-minutes, and remove.
3. Cool the mixture to room temperature.
4. Pour into a gallon wide-mouth glass container.
5. Add the culture to start the fermentation process.
   
6. Cover with a cloth (needs air) and rubber band to keep bugs out.
7. Leave out on a counter or table in a warm spot, ideally between 70-85 degrees F.
8. After a few days to a week, a skin will start to form on the surface of the kombucha scoby.
9. A harmless bacteria or white mold may form on top. That is fine.
   
10. Sample the liquid, and depending on how acidic you like it, strain into glass liter bottles with tight lids, store and refrigerate. If the kobucha is too acidic you will have vinegar - no real loss, as you can use if for salad dressings, etc.
11. The skin that forms on the kombucha creates a new mother. Start a new batch with one of the kombucha mothers and store the other one in some of the liquid in a glass jar in the refrigerator. It will continue to thicken with layers of bacteria.
    
12. Share your extra kombucha with a friend.

There's so much more I could say about Kombucha and its history, but I'm simply going to recommend that you gather more information about brewing your own fermented kombucha from the books like Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz and visit the World Wide Kombucha Exchange, where you can order a mother of your own.