Kombucha is a fermented probiotic tea that the hipster community raves about. Personally, I'm not super sure about the health benefits they proclaim because there's not enough scientific studies to back it up, but we enjoy the beverage! It's fizzy and not a lot of sugar in it while still tasting slightly sweet. After it's done "brewing" I can flavour it with frozen fruit ,fruit juice, herbs, or just drink it straight etc and we always have a bottle or two in the fridge! No need to lug cases of pop/beer home frequently because the sweetness and fizziness replaces it most of the time.
All you need is sugar (the generic white sugar), tea (I use black tea bags, you can go fancy quality tea but the generic breakfast tea is a great basic to start with), a SCOBY (a weird looking rubber-like thing. I got mine from a bartering app in Toronto.) I got a 100pk of black tea on sale for $5, 2kg of sugar for $2 and each batch (1.5L) ends up costing around $0.30. You'll also need a brewing container, which I used an old glass water jug and in another container I used a coffee pot (machine broke, we held onto the pot though). The process takes ~5 days and takes 5 min of actual work (brew tea, wait for it to cool, dump it in pot with scoby+starter tea).
If you're interested, r/kombucha has a master recipe there and a great place to troubleshoot!
July 07, 2018 at 03:29PM
