I have a "thing" for kombucha. I just like it. It's fizzy, like soda, but without all of the sugar. It's fruity, or gingery, depending on what flavor I'm in the mood for. It's fermented, and fermented food is good for you. I've been drinking the stuff for years, long before cool kids made it chic and Lindsay Lohan made it notorious.
Kombucha is often referred to as a tea, but it's actually a cultured drink made by fermenting sweetened tea. It's not just bacteria that are responsible for the process, but a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast--a SCOBY--most commonly referred to as the mother. When momma meets sweet tea under optimal conditions, kombucha is born. Is it a miracle drink, a panacea for all health ailments, as its most rabid fans would like to think? Probably not, but there's good evidence that cultured and fermented foods are teeming with all sorts of fun stuff that's good for you, beneficial bacteria especially.
It's also, so they say, fairly easy to brew your own. At $4+ a bottle that seems the obvious path to take here. But brewing my own kombucha is something that even my die-hard, inner do-it-yourself-er hesitates and stutters over. This SCOBY business...that's like an entire mini-ecosystem or something! Brewing? Fermenting? Culturing? Daunting. Aside from a few mediocre attempts at making yogurt, fermented foods are something I've otherwise left up to others. A simple Google search for "brewing kombucha" has done nothing to encourage me. There's thousands of hits, all touting how easy it is to brew. But everyone seems to do it a little bit differently, so exactly where do I start? Over the past couple of years, I've made up my mind to try brewing my own dozens of times only to quit before I even start.
Except this time, I actually did start the process of brewing my own, and I'm going to share my experience with those of you who are interested. I'll write my experience as it occurs as a series of diaries. Below the fold you'll find the first part of my adventure--the steps I have taken to start my very own SCOBY/mother from which to brew my own kombucha. If all goes well, I'll share the next steps in the process as I use (hopefully) my own home-grown kombucha mother to brew my own.
If you want to brew your own kombucha, you have two choices: either obtain a kombucha mother (you can buy them online) to start your brew, or culture your own SCOBY to start with. Being the cheap frugal gal that I am, I decided that I wanted to try to start my own mother. This also appealed to my inner control freak. By starting my own SCOBY, I could start with something more my own (ok, more specifically, something more GT's, my favorite brand of kombucha), and not some random SCOBY from goodness-knows-where.
The players and the method.
Part of my hesitation with starting my own SCOBY was the multitude of differing instructions and the seeming complexity of them, but understand that I am famous for over-thinking the most simple of tasks. So I was happy to discover that setting your own kombucha mother to culturing really isn't all that daunting of a task, and in fact it pretty much boils down to three simple steps:
One.
Obtain the starter for your starter! You'll need one bottle of raw, unpastuerized kombucha. Key words here: raw and unpastuerized. Heat processing kills the good stuff. GT's is a good brand, High Country is another. Of course, there are likely other good choices.
Raw and original. Just how I like it.
What you're looking for, aside from raw and unpasteurized, is a bottle that has sediment and/or those fabulously goober-ish "floaters" in it. This is the yeasty, bacteria-filled beginning to your new kombucha mother.
There's the good stuff! See that jelly-like, opaque substance floating on top, with the long strands streaming underneath? No, it's not a deadly box jelly, it's the beginnings of a kombucha mother.
Two.
Brew your sweet tea. You'll need one tea bag, preferably good quality stuff, either black or green.
I obviously have high hopes for a real classy batch of kombucha. Could I get any more pretentious that the very reincarnation of tea, from the misty mountains of southeast china?
Boil one cup of water. Remove from heat; add two tablespoons of sugar and one tea bag. The sugar is essential, as this is what will feed the yeast. Let steep and cool 'till room temperature.
Three.
Marry your kombucha and your sweet tea. Once your sweet tea has cooled to room temperature, discard the tea bag and pour it into a clean, wide-mouthed mason jar. (I used a 24-oz jar that I had sterilized in boiling water.)
Add about half of the contents of your bottle of commercial kombucha to your sweet tea in the jar. Most important is that you get as much of the floating bits and strings in the kombucha into your tea as possible (I poured my bottle into a large measuring cup, fished out all of the "floaters" with a spoon, then poured half of the liquid in). Cover tightly with a cloth and a rubber band to keep out any unwanted visitors.
Now set your covered jar of kombucha and sweet tea in a warm place to culture, and you're done--'till it's ready to use to actually brew your own kombucha, that is.
Notes
75 to 80 degrees seems to be the optimum temperature at which to grow a SCOBY, so if you don't have a place quite that warm, it will take a little longer to grow. It will take at least a few days, probably longer, to see the beginnings of the mother. What you are looking for is a flat, opaque disc to form across the surface of your kombucha/sweet tea liquid. When this disc is approximately a 1/2 inch thick, it's ready to use.
Shown below is a photo (photo from Wikipedia) of a mature kombucha mother, one that is actually producing additional SCOBYs. Kept properly fed, a thriving kombucha mother will reproduce, giving you a supply of SCOBY babies that you can use or pass along to friends.
If at any point mold, or anything resembling mold, appears on the surface of the SCOBY or in the liquid, throw it all out and start over. This is obviously common sense, but I feel it bears stating. If the liquid mixture is sufficiently acidic--and it should be, with the tea and kombucha liquid--you shouldn't have any problem with mold. But keep an eye out, anyway.
Photo of mold-contaminated SCOBY (again, photo from Wikipedia).
I have also seen suggestions to do a second culturing of the SCOBY as it grows, before you use the finished mother to brew an actual batch of kombucha. This is simply a repeat of the above directions, using what you have started (vice bottled kombucha) and using a larger jar and greater volume of tea to give the mother more room to grow. I will be sure to chronicle this step, if and when I get there. In the meantime, wish me and my fledgling SCOBY luck!