back on the booch; homemade kombucha

over a year ago, a friend shared some kombucha tea with me.  at this point, i should mention that my friend likes it plain-pure kombucha with nothing else in it.  she also likes to let it ferment for a full 10 days.  it is pungent to say the least.  when i didn't flinch or spit it out, she offered to bring me a baby so i could brew my own.  that is how my kombucha habit got started.  

all through the summer and into the fall, i brewed it and i drank it.  to make it more palatable, i mixed it into iced tea or juice.  then the awful thing happened, i neglected my tea as the weather cooled.  my poor scoby lived in the fridge and after a while, he just couldn't make fermented tea.  this spring, i decided to get another batch going.  my search for a scoby led me to countless websites.  needless to say, i was not willing to fork over the $30+ dollars for a package of culture.  there had to be an alternative.  and there was!  while going from website to website, i stumbled upon the blog, bonzai aphrodite and a detailed post on how to grow a scoby from a store bought bottle of kombucha.  

the following week, i found myself standing in front of a cooler full of kombucha drinks in whole foods market.  after purchasing a bottle of original kombucha, i set up my bowl and began growing my own scoby.  it took the full 2 weeks and it has worked beautifully.  so well that i now have 2 separate scobys, one plain green tea and the other green tea mixed with peach and hibiscus tea.  

the peach-hibiscus kombucha is on the left, the plain green tea is on the right.

when you look at bottom of the scoby, it doesn't encourage an appetite.  it can be a bit slimy too if it sits too long.  the texture of that slime is not something i enjoy-i always remove the slime before drinking it!

my bottles of finished tea, ready to drink.  the amber one is the peach-hibiscus, the pink one is plain kombucha flavored with northlands superfruit juice, a blend of blueberry, blackberry and acai berries.  every day, i make it a point to drink a full glass of the tea.  there are many claims that it boosts your immune system.  whether or not this is true, i cannot say and many health experts are warning against it's use due to the possibility of toxic bacterial contamination.   however, i still enjoy it and when i mix mine, i use glass containers and gloves to handle the scoby.  more importantly, during last winter's horrific flu season, i never even had a sniffle.  just sayin'...