Kombucha on Command!

Kombucha brew with my pet scoby named Selkie!

We, the general collective, have been buying kombucha (a healthy fermented tea that uses a particular kind of culture called a scoby) at the health food store for a few years now...you and me...or a neighbor of yours or a hippy dippy friend. Anyway, it's a bit pricey and not always convenient. This popular drink is alive and very good for our gut health because of the probiotics, so it's worth starting a brew at home that will sustain you, fill your happy-hour glass when you want an alternative that looks and feels a bit like champagne, and entertain you and your visitors with the way it grows like a pet and changes as a live culture in your kitchen.

Today, I loved helping a fellow teacher with the awesome North Florida School for Holistic Living, establish her new brew and routines with a sweet visit to her kitchen. We collaborated on the following instructions that I hope you will find helpful when you get ready for your own kombucha...

What you need:

• A large glass container with a dispenser spout
• Two large glass mason jars
• Organic black and/or green tea bags
• Organic, high quality sugar from sugar cane. (I like sucanat.)
• A scoby, transferred to you in a glass jar with enough of its previous brew (familiar environment) to cover the scoby. 

What you do:

• Clean your large glass container with hot water and soap.
• Clean your mason jars with hot water and soap.
• Put one cup of sugar in one of the mason jars
• Put four tea bags in the other mason jar (2 black & two green or 4 black)
• Pour boiling water into each mason jar, filling them to the top.
• Stir the sugar water with a wooden spoon to ensure that it dissolves.
• Give several hours for the two jars of liquid time to cool completely to room temperature. Leave the tea bags in the jar until cool.
• While the tea and sugar water are cooling, prepare the new environment by dipping the edge of a clean paper towel into the existing scoby brew then wiping the inside of the large glass container (your scoby’s new home) down with it to “cure” it.
• Then dump the scoby and it’s existing brew into your large glass jar to get comfy while it’s new brew is cooling.
• Once completely cool, remove the tea bags and pour both the sugar water and tea directly into the large glass container over your scoby.

In a few days, start taste-testing your brew. When the flavor suits you (tartness, fizz, balance), jar and refrigerate your kombucha. You may also enjoy your kombucha at room temperature straight from your tap, which is in alignment with the principle’s of traditional Chinese medicine.

When your brew is depleted approximately to the spout level, brew more tea and sugar to replenish. You can add as frequently as you need to, because your scoby will grow stronger and continue to eat the sugar faster and faster. As it grows stronger, you can increase the amount of tea and sugar for larger brews. The taste will always vary all the way from simply sweet tea to very tart kombucha, pending environment and feeding routines. Experimenting with this alive culture will teach you the subtleties of how to nurture it. Once you get to know your scoby, I suggest naming it! Mine is named Selkie, after a lovable and talented acoustic musician we met on a Disney cruise.

A healthy scoby will not only provide you many delicious and probiotic-rich drinks. It will also grow scoby babies! New layers of scoby will appear, which can be peeled off and given to friends, added to smoothies, dehydrated for snacks or simply donated to a compost pile!

If you'd like a bit of supportive hand-holding, I have scobies to share and will provide a 30 minute tutorial in your kitchen or mine, by Skype or in person, for $30.00 to get you started. Drop me a line at heatherdiamondhealth@gmail.com if you're interested.

Happy health to you and yours!

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