Kombucha Kombucha.....

I finally did it.

I made kombucha. What is kombucha?

Good question. A month ago I had no idea either.

Kombucha is  a fermented sweet tea health drink.

Weird? Yep. Tasty and good for you? Yep.

Kombucha is known for its pro-biotic and detoxifying qualities. There are many other health claims, but as to how accurate they are that is up to you to decide. I personally enjoy it. It keeps you, ehem.... going. You know, regularly....

And it is not sweet. I enjoy a good bubbly beverage but get tired of sweet stuff. This , like my husband said is good if you are a beer drinker.

It is not an alcoholic drink. Even though the process is very similar to that of beer making. (According to wikipedia it has an alcohol content similar to that of a non-alcoholic beer. Which is less then you get from your morning mouthwash).

My quest to make and try kombucha started when I first heard of it here...

Seeing as I prefer to make things myself, and can not see spending 3.50$ for a 16 oz bottle every time I want to drink it I had to go about making my own, which includes growing my own scoby.

S-C-O-B-Y- Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria and Yeast.

Here is the scoby. Icky looking, huh?

The baby scoby

The scoby is necessary to make kombucha. I did have to buy a bottle of raw, organic commercially produced kombucha to first of all, try it and make sure I would drink it. Then to get the strands of the culture to grow my own scoby.

How to grow a kombucha scoby-


Buy, or inherit a "baby" scoby from someone who just made a batch of kombucha (there is a new one every time)

Or like I did, buy some commercially made kombucha, raw and organic, original flavor. Pour into a jar, add some sweet tea. Cover with a  cloth and leave at room temperature until its grown. Its neat to watch the process.

How to make Kombucha-


Now that you have your scoby, you can begin making kombucha!

Brew a gallon of tea (black tea, or maybe green. Stick with the basics first).

Sweeten with 1 cup sugar. Allow to cool completely.  Put in a food grade container (A very clean, sanitized container). I used my 2 gallon crock. A large thermos could work also. Then add your scoby. Cover with a cloth to keep out dust and other undesirables. Do not cover air tight. The fermentation process produces gas with could cause it to bust if covered air tight.

Let ferment somewhere undisturbed for a week or two.

Gather together some bottles. Glass or plastic, but make sure they previously held a carbonated beverage. Or else..... no explosions of stickiness please :)

Make sure the bottles are clean too,  by the way.

Pour liquid in bottles leaving in about an inch of head space. Move the scoby to a cloth covered jar with some fresh sweet tea in it. That will feed the scoby until you are ready to brew some again.

Add either a teaspoon of sugar (no more) or a tablespoon of your preferred juice (I used grape and much preferred it to the plain. It just turned out better) for a 1 liter bottle. More for larger bottles, less for smaller.

Leave bottles to the secondary fermentation in room temps for a few days. Then stick in the fridge, cool and enjoy! I usually strain mine when pouring it from the bottle through a fine metal strainer to filter out any baby scobys that are floating around. They wont hurt you, but I prefer not to drink them.

It takes a few sips to grow accustomed to the vinegary bite of the drink, but I have come to really enjoy it!

Hopes for Hops

I made beer this weekend!!!

Well, I started to make it anyway. This is not my first experience with fermenting to create an alcoholic beverage, however I am still a complete novice.

I received a Mr Beer kit for Christmas from my parents. It was a bit of a gag gift, and yet they knew I would get a kick out of it! And I have been!

I finally had the time to give it a go yesterday.

It was great fun! Although not the natural approach that I am learning from John Seymour's book The Self Sufficient life and how to live it , but its a great introduction. I think this is a good way to become familiar with the processes of making the beer before moving on to more advanced, natural ways.

This came with the Mr Beer kit

First everything has to be sanitized, so no unexpected spoiling occurs. Next, you mix the "Booster" with water and bring it to a boil.

The "Booster" that came in the kit is really just sugar. The more sugar you have the higher alcohol content in the brew. They included recipe variations that included using honey or molasses instead. Since this is my first attempt, easy and basic is the way I went. I will experiment more next time. 

Remove it from heat and stir in the hopped malt extract. This is something you can grow and create for yourself. However since I used a kit, mine came from a can. 

There is enough sugar in the HME to give you an alcohol content of about 3.7% alcohol by volume with out the booster. With the booster it makes it about 5.8% abv which is about the standard for most american beers. 

Pour the Malt and sugar mix into the handy dandy keg ferment-er they provide with the kit...

Mix with more water and then sprinkle the yeast they provided on top. Let it sit there for 5 minutes before mixing it in.

Stick it somewhere out of direct sunlight and with a consistent temperature between 68-76 F for a week (or two).

Which for me means a top cabinet in my kitchen (the kind that is hard to reach and there for expendable).

In two or so weeks I will check on it, and if all has gone well I will "rack" it into bottles, add a small amount of sugar and let it ferment a second time for a week or two. The second fermentation is what creates the carbonation in the brew.

Pretty neat, huh?

I have previously made a extremely basic version of hard cider.

Have you seen the movie Fantastic Mr Fox? It is one of my dads favorite movies. I happen to enjoy it as well and thought he would get a kick out of having some home made hard apple cider to sip on while watching it (if you have seen the movie you'll get that).

The recipe I followed can be found here .

I realize most real brew enthusiasts will cringe when they read the recipe, but I think it turned out pretty great. The best part was it was not intimidating, which made it a good way to get started.

Ingredients:
Apple cider in the glass jar
Sugar (white and brown, preferably)
A balloon
Yeast (not brewers, just regular old yeast)

Basically you just pour a bit of the cider into a pan, pour in the sugar and mix until melted. Return the cider and sugar syrup to the jar with the rest of the cider, Then mix in the yeast. Poke a tiny hole in the balloon with a pin. This hole will be small enough to let out gas created by the yeast, but too small for bad bacteria to get in.  Let it ferment for 2 weeks, rack it, and then let it sit 2 more weeks. Its ready to drink but gets better with age :)

I'll make another batch soon and document it here for you!

Hopefully someday soon I will make some pear cider with the pears off my pear trees, and can give it a try with pear cider! Yumm