Good morning all!
As I am stuck in a chair holding a sick, clingy toddler, I've chosen to do an update for you all on my latest adventures with "kombucha". Strange stuff that...
I was first introduced to it in my mid-teen years by my cousin. I didn't care for it at her ferment level. Too bitter/tart for my liking, and as a teenager my mindset was still that of invincibility, so I just wrote it off in my mind as to whether I would ever get into it or give it a chance as far as health benefits go.
Fast forward about 15-years, and here we are. Everyone is older and wiser (we hope), some of us are showing signs of health issues, and I have begun to feel the lower levels of my own mortality. Funny how having children, and wanting to be there for them, then having several close calls when you KNOW that God was watching over you will do that to a person...
I've not hidden the fact that I am not in the utmost health and have had some close calls from our close friends & family, so in an effort to help, one such friend offered to split down her SCOBY and give me a starter for my own batch. At first I refused, continuing to hold to my initial judgement of this fermented tea, but after thinking on it, and reading about the benefits of this strange concoction, I told her I would give it a try. That was 3-months ago, and we've had some adventures along the way! 😁
Since then, I've brewed a new batch every day. My sons, mother & father are drinking it regularly, my sister has given it a try but is less than impressed. (I believe she would also drink it if I found the right flavor combination for her taste preferences.)
** My husband has also tried it, but he did not really give it a genuine taste since he seemed to have made up his mind prior to the taste test as to whether he would like it or not so I do not really think too hard on his opinion of my fermentation adventures. 👀
When I first embarked upon this adventure, I still didn't EXACTLY care for the taste, but I thought "this isn't so bad, I can just power though this". What I did NOT know, was that there are so many different variables involved!
- You can drink at first ferment, between days 7-10. [My preference is day 7]
- You can brew that first ferment with either black or green teas [Didn't know that until I started experimenting]
- You canNOT do the second ferment under an airlock (like the type used to make wine). [It will fizz & fizzle itself right into a frenzy & dribble out the top of the airlock].
- You can do the second ferment with pretty much ANY type of fruit, including home canned, dried, fresh etc.
- You can do that second ferment in either a wire top bottle or an open air container with a coffee filter over it. [Did not realize this through online research, instead found this out through trial and error on my own]. The ONLY notable difference between tightly sealed vs. open air, was:
- It formed its own SCOBY, encompassing the fruit, which you just throw away.
- It was less fizzy [which didn't break my heart really]. Which is not to say the fizz was non-existent. That isn't true. There was fizz. It was just LESS intense.
- It was not such a high risk during the fermentation process. AKA I didn't have to worry about it EXPLODING in my kitchen and creating a BOMB with glass shards in it!
- I didn't have to "burp" the bottle once per day to prevent that bomb effect.
** You don't HAVE to burp it every day, but one of the first weeks that I was experimenting with the second ferment process, I didn't touch it for all 7 of the 2nd ferment days, and when I finally did open it, the wired down cork had so much pressure behind it that it literally shot off the bottle, put a dent in the ceiling, and I had to later locate it and repair the wire so that it could be reused again.
** Not only all of that, but the kombucha itself (which happened to be the 4-berry brew), and all of the fruit in it that was being used to flavor the concoction, went shooting out of the bottle and all over the wall. I had red kombucha, with fruit, running down the wall behind the stove, all over the stove, down the sink... it was incredible how big of a mess this stuff became in less than 5 seconds.
The multiberry brew, freshly frosted from the night before. 👇
So far the flavors I have experimented with have been:
- 4-berry/multiberry (red & black raspberries, blueberries & strawberries)
- Pineapple ginger
- Apple pie
- Pina Colada
- Cherry; which we didn't get to try because I did not use fresh, frozen or dried fruit. Instead I used a "pie filling", and it was a major flop. It had artificial sweeteners in it that I wasn't aware of and it tainted the entire thing.
- Blueberry ginger
- Blueberry pineapple
So far, the multiberry is the family favorite. I can LITERALLY not make enough of this stuff. The last batch I made resulted in 3 full size wine bottles, and they were gone within 24-hours.
On all of my fermentations, I never let the ferment go past 10-days. If it does, I add more sweet tea in to balance out the "tart", with the exemption being to one batch that I did not realize had gone too long, got my days mixed up, and ended up bottling for second ferment on day 14. However, since it was being bottled for second ferment, it did not make a big difference in the grand scheme of things and actually turned out to be a pretty solid brew with good flavor interactions.
The jar on the left is my "first ferment" jar.
The jar in the middle, is a half gallon pickle jar, second ferment, doing a pina colada brew. Haven't tried that one yet, just started it yesterday.
The one on the right, is the apple pie.
Obviously these are all quite happy where I've plopped them. 👍
