Farmer Mac, ready to eat pick berries.
Look at those shiny pretty li'l rubies.
AND THE BERRIES AREN'T BAD EITHER!
Later that day I got to wash what seemed like 87 pounds of berries to freeze for later. What, may you ask, was I going to do with those berries? Well...have you ever tried kombucha before? Come-BOO-cha.
I remember buying it years ago, paying $4 for a small bottle, and liking it. It's becoming more and more popular, billed as a health drink. Kombucha contains probiotics. A probiotic is a bacteria believed to be beneficial to your gut. As a dietitian, after my patients would have a colonoscopy I'd always recommend they eat yogurt and have kombucha to help repopulate their gastrointestinal tract with healthy bacteria.
When my brother in law mentioned he'd started making his own, my husband and I were curious. Could we figure it out as well?
Turns out, it's pretty simple. You do need a way to start the fermentation process- this is done using a SCOBY- an acronym for symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast. The SCOBY is also called the mother- the mother will help grow the probiotics and you can store and re-use it again and again and again. This thing is BEYOND WEIRD, as you will soon see. We got a SCOBY from my brother in law, but there are articles online like this that teach you how to make your own.
Step One:
Get the right container. In the first photo you can see I used a glass jar with a spigot. Not a great idea, as I learned mine had a slow leak. I transferred into a glass punch bowl, which took up too much space on my countertop, but did work just fine. For our second round of kombucha, currently in process, I went to Hobby Lobby and bought this glass jar.
Step Two:
Bring 13 cups of water to near boiling. Turn off heat and add 4-6 plain green teabags or black tea bags. Do not use flavored tea. Let brew for 5 minutes. Add 1 cup sugar, stir to dissolve. Pour into your glass container, as plastic is not a good idea for fermenting things. Let cool completely (I covered mine and left it overnight).
Step Three:
Add 2 cups of store bought kombucha (OR 2 cups of reserved kombucha from previous batch- my brother in law's SCOBY was swimming in about a cup already, so I added a cup of store bought). Add your SCOBY/mother, cover with cheesecloth and a rubber band, and set aside for 7-10 days. You want to avoid it being below 68 degrees. I kept mine in a corner of my kitchen. This is the FIRST fermentation.
Step Four:
After 7 days, taste the tea- it shouldn't taste sweet anymore- it'll be more like vinegar. The SCOBY is going to look like something that came out of a uterus. For real. I'm warning you. This picture is naaaaaaaaasty.
Because I used a wide punch bowl, the SCOBY grew to the entire width and basically looked like a peach placenta. And four kids deep, I KNOW PLACENTA.
I cut around the mother, which you can still see is the darker more raised area, and set it aside in another mason jar, along with 2 cups of the 7-day old kombucha.
Step Five:
So! Onto prettier more appetizing things. I took the frozen strawberries and some purple basil from my garden. I read online that the best ratio for fruit : tea is 1 tablespoon per cup. I added the chopped fruit to these bottles for the SECOND fermentation.
The probiotics in the 7-10 day old kombucha tea will now use the fruit sugar and give off carbon dioxide as a result. This creates the fizziness of kombucha. You can let it ferment for an additional 1-3 days, depending on how fizzy you like it. It's recommended that you "burp" your kombucha bottles every day or two, to prevent a dangerous buildup of air. I found that after just one day with the fruit it was fizzy enough for us.
Step Six:
To stop the fermenting, simply place the kombucha in the fridge. That explains why you don't find shelf stable kombucha tea- it's always refrigerated in the grocery store.
Step Seven:
Convince yourself that it's safe to drink, haha. Seriously, that placenta, I mean SCOBY, still gives me the creeps. The outcome is a really tasty drink though! I dig the strawberry basil. It's not too basil-y at all- just really fresh tasting, and I love how the strawberries made it such a vibrant red.
I mentioned that I reserved my SCOBY for a future batch- next up is peach kombucha and cherry kombucha.
So yes. Super WEIRD, but a fun project to try making at home!
No comments:
Post a Comment