When I heard about Kombucha I wasn’t that excited. “Just another craze to hit the fitness industry alongside coconut water”, I thought. But I tasted Kombucha at a local market and thought it tasted pretty amazing. The sales pitch was claiming almost no sugar and a variety of health benefits.
I decided to look up how the drink was made and it turns out its not a new craze at all. Kombucha has been around for thousands of years and is believed to have originated in China.
So what is it? Basically it is an effervescent fermented tea. But how the drink is made is the extraordinary part. Picture an off-yellow jelly blubber that floats around in sweetened tea for around two weeks, consumes the sugars, and converts them into an effervescent probiotic sweet and sour beverage. I’ll admit, the first time I saw the SCOBY, (that’s the gross looking jelly thing), I thought there was no way I was drinking its bath water. Short for Symbiotic Colony Of Bacteria and Yeast, the SCOBY is truly magical. With every batch of Kombucha you brew, it grows a little larger, until eventually you can split it in two and start another batch!
So why drink it in the first place? Kombucha is a great natural alternative to fizzy drinks, since all it contains is tea, water and some sugar. The sugar however, gets mostly consumed during the process until you are left with something that contains much less sugar than an average soft drink, with the added health benefits of probiotics.
Kombucha is easily made in your own home and costs next to nothing to brew once you have your SCOBY. If you’re interested in having a go, simply buy a SCOBY from an online auction site or better yet, a local market. Why not give it a try?
My recipe:
130 grams of caster sugar
3 black tea bags
1 green tea bag
2 litres filtered water
1 SCOBY
Method: Heat the water and sugar until the sugar is completely dissolved and the water is warm, but not hot. Steep the tea bags for around 20 minutes, and then remove. Once cooled to body temperature, pour the liquid into a wide mouth glass jar. Place your SCOBY into the jar, and cover with some paper towel and an elastic band, so it can breathe.
Leave for two weeks, then have a taste. If too sweet, leave for a few more days. If too sour, try a few days less next time.
When it tastes right, remove all but 200ml of the liquid, place into a drinking container and refrigerate.
Brew another batch of tea using the recipe above, and add it to the SCOBY and the 200ml of saved liquid and you have your next batch ready for fermentation!
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