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The Chalkboard Editorial Team
Food and Nutrition, Healthy RecipesNutrition Tips from Wellness Pros
Kombucha, anyone? This satisfying cultured drink from ancient times is getting quite a lot of good press! Boasted as being anti-aging, pH balancing, an excellent energiser, as well as being absolutely chock full of good bacteria (literally millions of organisms per serving) – no wonder it’s quite the rage amongst celebrities! It is truly a living food, bursting with enzymes!
The Kombucha ‘SCOBY’ is actually a fungus (like a mushroom) which thrives in black tea and a room temperature environment. I have used organic Ceylon, green, white and even Chai teas with success, but the SCOBY is quite a creature of habit and generally tends to prefer the standard black tea. It also devours sugar, as it’s what the living SCOBY eats. When you see the amount of sugar in the recipe below, remember that most of the sugar will be eaten up by the time the Kombucha is ready to drink.
Next time you’re at the organic/farmers’ markets, see if you can find stalls with bottles of fresh Kombucha for sale. You should be able to pick up a ‘SCOBY’ from the grower – you will need this living creature to make your very own fresh Kombucha at home. Here’s everything you need to know:
Home-Brewed Kombucha
Ingredients:
Baby kombucha ‘SCOBY’ in 100ml mother culture
2 litres sweetened organic black tea (read below)
Directions:
Put the baby kombucha ‘SCOBY’ & the ‘mother liquid’ into a 2 litre glass jar.
Prepare 2 litres of black tea with 3 organic tea bags and 185g raw organic sugar and allow to cool.
Combine kombucha mixture with cooled black tea.
Cover with a paper towel and rubber band. Leave for 8-10 days, strain and store in the fridge until desired.Fresh ginger juice may be added before storing or serving over ice. You can also try the following flavour variations: lemon, lime, pomegranate, mint, cinnamon.
From our friends
Comments And if you don’t have a local kombucha-seller? Is there another way to obtain the culture? I have been longing to try this… gluttonforlife | 02.03.2012 | Reply Hi I’ve just had a quick look online. Good news! You can buy Kombucha fungus & have it shipped to you, which sounds pretty cool 😉 Depending on where you live you may want to have a look at different sites to compare quality/prices, but if you can get your hands on a bottle of pure, ‘raw’ Kombucha (good health food stores) you can simply ‘feed up’ the ‘mother culture’ within! It will grow & you’ll soon see a waxy scaby growing on top. T Abigail xx abigail | 02.05.2012 | Reply One quick thing – Kombucha’s not a fungus. It’s a culture of yeast and bacteria. Joe Mac | 07.29.2012 | Reply I’m new to the organic process; though i am longing to see if its for me. Can you write an article about the transition, persay? Sydney Aston | 12.15.2012 | Reply You said “Put the baby Kombucha ‘SCOBY’ & the ‘mother liquid’ into a 2 litre glass jar” what is the Mother liquid? The black tea? Rachael | 08.17.2013 | Reply The scoby will likely come in a plastic bag and have liquid with it so it doesn’t dry out. This liquid is the mother liquid. tazan | 09.26.2013 | Reply This may be old news, but I wanted to share that you can grow your own SCOBY (or “mushroom”) in about 10 days with a bottle of GT’s or Synergy original or raw. Dump the entire bottle into a larger glass container, and cover with paper towels, seal with rubber bands. Happy brewing 🙂 Jeanna | 03.06.2014 | Reply Lol now I see what my eyes must’ve skipped 😉 Jeanna | 03.06.2014 | Reply Jeanna-I did exactly that! It took a few weeks to get it large enough, but it definitely worked. I made the tea/sugar brew, allowed it to cool and added a bottle of GT’s Kombucha. I changed the brew weekly until the scoby was large enough where I felt comfortable to use it to bottle my kombucha. It actually was more fulfilling knowing that I grew my own scoby! Lea | 07.28.2014 | Reply Gosh! Why do you write Ginger Kombucha and this is no ginger kombucha recipe:( maya | 02.13.2018 | Reply Leave A Comment
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