About six weeks ago we went to see the vicar to talk about the wedding plans, and he mentioned that his brother lived a self sufficient lifestyle, lived in a caravan in a field and grew his own food. Not only this, but he had a
YouTube channel called Rob's Discovery. One of Rob's videos is about him making kombucha, which I'd never heard of. A couple hours of reading later, and I decided it was weird and unusual enough that I wanted in. This is my first batch!
Kombucha is a fermented sweet tea drink that's supposedly got a lot of health benefits. It's usually carbonated, is quite sweet to taste but has a sharp tang to it as well, and is often flavoured with fruits and herbs. A SCOBY (symiotic culture of bacteria and yeast) is used to ferment the tea, and the same SCOBY is used for each batch you make. It's a gross looking off-white coloured rubbery layer about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick.
It took me about a month to grow a SCOBY using a small bottle of ready made kombucha poured into a large container of cooled sweet tea. After that, the SCOBY can turn a jar of tea into flat plain kombucha in about a week, and then it's carbonated in bottles with extra flavours for a couple of extra days.
I've only had a few sips so far when bottling for secondary fermentation, but it's quite an usual taste! I have one bottle of plain fizzy kombucha and another bottle of cherry flavour.
Home grown SCOBY
Using the SCOBY to ferment my first batch.
Bottled kombucha going through secondary fermentation to carbonate. They're not as pale in normal light, the back lit sunlight in the garden makes them look a lot paler than they are.
Hasselblad 500cm with 80mm f/2.8 and 21mm ext tube for close ups. D&S by Filmdev.
More info here!
http://www.carlhall.co.uk/entries/2019410-home-grown-part-ii-kombucha