Kombucha. If you don't know what it is, it's a fizzy, sweet, slightly sour drink made from fermented sweet tea. It's supposed to be an ancient drink and is hailed to have innumerable health benefits due to it's high probiotic content. Maybe that's true, maybe it's not. I like it because I think it tastes good and has drastically less sugar and overall calories than soda (to which I am addicted).
There is however one major problem with kombucha - it is EXPENSIVE. In my opinion $2.50 is way too much money to pay for a 16 oz bottle of soda replacement. So, I figured I'd try my hand at making it myself. To start brewing your own kombucha, you need what is called a SCOBY or symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast (also called a mother, starter culture, or mushroom). This is a gross looking jellyfish-like thing that floats at the top of your tea and eats up the sugar and other compounds turning them into acids, a tiny amount of alcohol, co2, and magic pixie dust. There are two ways to start brewing your own. First is to try to grow your own starter, second is to get one from somewhere else. This could be a friend who has an extra or a commercially available culture. I don't know anyone nearby who brews and I didn't want to spend in the neighborhood of thirty bucks for a commercial SCOBY, so that left option 2, try to grow my own.
As a warning, some sites say things from "you won't end up with a good starter" to "you'll poison your entire family if you try to make your own!" Coincidentally, all those sites have links to purchase commercial SCOBYs. Thanks to some encouraging words from a friend from college who authors the blog Milly Becoming Wilder and Seeing as how this drink was supposedly brewed from the dawn of time (a little before online SCOBY sales) I decided to risk it. Nevertheless, try at your own risk, YMMV, disclaimer, disclaimer.
Step one, try a few bottles of kombucha from the store. Select one that you prefer the taste of from which to grow your starter. Use something that says something like "raw" and "unfiltered" on the bottle. My favorite ended up being GT's Gingerade. Whichever you choose, you'll need to save about half the bottle.
Step two, brew sweet tea. I use kroger brand English breakfast tea because that's the tea I typically drink anyway. I've heard it's best to start with black tea and then advance to green tea. Whatever you do, don't use Earl Grey or other teas that have added oils or ingredients that can kill your bacteria. After looking several places online, the general trend is 1/2 cup of sugar, 4 tea bags, 1/2 gallon of water. I boil all of the water, add tea and sugar, and then wait until it cools on the counter.
if I'm in a hurry I'll run the whole thing in a water bath to bring the temperature down to roughly body temp. If you don't wait until it's cool, you'll kill off the yeast and bacteria from the bottle of Kombucha that you want in your starter.
After it's cool, add to a clean glass jar (not plastic or metal), Add the leftover kombucha along with all the sediment in the bottle, cover with a cloth or paper towel and wait. and wait. and wait. The process will take a few weeks. Some people add some lemon juice or vinegar to up the acidity of the tea to provide a little insurance against unwanted bacteria. I didn't and mine turned out fine.
It's not a pretty process, by any stretch. It starts out as a goopy little slime ball and grows into a large slimy puck with tentacles that string down into the tea. Don't worry, that's what it's supposed to be like.
By the time you have a decent starter floating on top, what you're left with from the tea tastes more like vinegar than that fizzy sweet drink you're going for. But that's ok, you can use it like vinegar. You can also add it to juice to get the probiotic benefits. Some people use it as hair wash or to a bath tub. I used mine in a stew in place of apple cider vinegar and added a little to my next batch which was a little sweeter than I wanted.
once you have your mother it's time to brew your first batch that you'll want to drink. Drain most of the super sour first batch and do what you want, but leave about a cup per half gallon that you intend to brew.
Then brew your tea, combine and cover. The recipe I follow is: 1 cup kombucha from previous batch, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 gal water, 4 tea bags. You'll end up with about a cup of sweet tea left over. I'll let you figure out what to do with that. Next, wait about a week, pour out a little and taste test. If you like it bottle it. If it's a little too sweet, wait a few more days and try again. I found that my first batches took a little longer because of the smaller starter but as your SCOBY grows, the process goes a little faster. Eventually, you can peel half of your mother off and start another batch if you want. I use the same ratio for a whole gallon but some people use 6 tea bags instead.
When your kombucha is to your liking, bottle or pour in a clean jar and refrigerate. If you bottle or jar and refrigerate immediately, you'll stop all the action and what you tasted is exactly what you'll get. I like to bottle mine with no head space and let it sit for a few days at room temp before refrigerating. When you do this leaving no oxygen in the bottle the yeasts will overpower the bacteria so the sourness will stay the same but the alcohol level will increase slightly as will the carbonation level. I like it fizzy.
If you leave air space in the bottle and do not refrigerate it, the bacteria will continue to thrive and it will continue to sour. Plus you'll end up with little jelly SCOBYs in your bottle - which can be an unpleasant surprise if you're not paying attention while you drink it.
All this seems like a lot of work at first just to get a batch of healthy soda. But once you get the ball rolling, it's easy to maintain.
If you need to go on vacation or something, just make a batch right before you go. If you're only gone a week, you don't need to worry about over souring. If you're going to be gone longer, you might want to refrigerate the whole thing to slow the SCOBY's metabolism down. If you don't, it's not a big deal, your SCOBY will survive for a month or so, you just might not want to drink the vinegary result.
science, it's tasty.
