So yesterday I began my kombucha experience/experiment by preparing myself with plenty of youtube videos on how to make a mother mushroom SCOBY. Like anything on the internet, everyone has an input on what you should and shouldn't do. Some websites say you can start a SCOBY from scratch while others tell you to get it from a friend or look in your local seven days for someone willing to share. Yikes if you ask me. There are places where you can purchase fresh or dried SCOBY. So what is a SCOBY? By definition a SCOBY is a symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast. This culture begins to digest the sugars in the sweet tea to produce various acids that are beneficial to you.
http://www.seedsofhealth.co.uk/fermenting/kombucha.shtml
The process I used was by getting pint sized mason jars because I read that you need to grow your SCOBY from small jars to larger ones to have them be healthier. I started with four experiments from various kombuchas that I purchased from health food stores. My first mission was to wash the jars with soap and water, dry them and them sterile them in boiling water for a few minutes. My next step was to brew my tea. I chose two different types: a organic green tea that prepared the old fashion way of brewing tea and a Celestial Black tea that I made with my Keurig machine. I decided to use two different types of sugar: regular white table sugar and an organic raw turbinado cane sugar. My store bought kombuchas were: KIS kombucha Jasmint flavor made in Morrisville, Vermont, GT'S organic raw kombucha multi-green and original flavor, and Aqua Vitea raw organic probiotic kombucha made in Bristol, Vermont.
In two of the mason jars I used the regular sugar, roughly about an 1/8 of a cup. In the other two jars I used the cane sugar and again it was an 1/8 of a cup. I filled two jars (one of each type of sugar) with green tea and two other jars (again using one of each type of sugar) with black tea.
In the picture to the left, you will notice that both jars contain this brand of kombucha in it. I found that both bottles had a nice looking strand of living culture in it that I hope will give me a better chance of creating my starter SCOBY.
In the other green tea jar, I added the GT'S kombucha multi-green. I strained most of the liquid off to get to the layer of "sludge" on the bottom of the jar. This will be my pure green tea kombucha hopefully although the kombucha itself didn't seem like it had a nice strand in it like the previous two bottles. The last jar of black tea, I added a combination of the GT'S kombucha original and the Aqua Vitea mainly because the Aqua Vitea bottle didn't appear to have a whole lot of sediment or strand in it as did the GT'S kombucha. So there you have it all four starters have begun and now I will check them daily and blog the results with pictures. All four of the jars do have a coffee filter on top that is kept in place by a rubber band. My one concern is that my house may not have a suitable temperature for creating my mother mushroom due to the season.
No comments:
Post a Comment