{"id":120,"date":"2007-02-26T06:54:16","date_gmt":"2007-02-26T14:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.taodekitchen.com\/2007\/02\/26\/kombucha-re-visited\/"},"modified":"2007-02-24T17:58:52","modified_gmt":"2007-02-25T01:58:52","slug":"kombucha-re-visited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/taodekitchen.com\/tasty\/general\/kombucha-re-visited\/","title":{"rendered":"Kombucha re-visited"},"content":{"rendered":"

Quite awhile back I wrote of my adventures with a quickly multiplying mushroom<\/a>. We cut back now to one batch every 10 days or so which is much more manageable – we even have a few jars to pass on to our BIL who swears that it helps him power through his bike rides.<\/p>\n

I thought I would post a few helpful hints on successfully fermenting your own with a few pic’s on the process…<\/p>\n

First – cleanliness is a must. You want to make sure you wash your hands (remove rings) and clean all work surfaces so that you do not contaminate your brew with who knows what.<\/p>\n

Of course you will need a kombucha mushroom and a bit of kombucha tea as a starter. If you know of anyone who ferments their own tea you can probably ask them for a ‘baby’ (most will be more than happy to pass one along) or you can order them online.<\/p>\n

Equipment you will need:<\/p>\n

a 3 quart clear glass bowl<\/p>\n

a fine woven towel to cover the bowl (flour sack towels work great)<\/p>\n

masking tape and a few rubber bands<\/p>\n

Now, make a batch of tea – boil 3 quarts of water. When it comes to a boil, add 1 cup of granulated sugar – plain old sugar. Bring back to a boil and put in 4 tea bags – you can use any unflavored black or green tea. I use 2 spoons each of organic green and black tea in a giant tea ball. Bring back to a boil. Cover the pot and turn off the heat. Let the tea steep for about 20 minutes, remove the tea bags (or tea ball.)<\/p>\n

Let the tea cool to room temp. I find this usually takes all day so I make the tea in the morning and do the next part in the evening.<\/p>\n

Pour the un-fermented tea into the bowl and lay the mushroom light side up:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Pour about 2 cups of fermented tea on top of the mushroom. This is the starter to make sure things get fermenting along.<\/p>\n

Put masking tape on the bowl to keep the towel from dipping in:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Make a big round rubber band by connecting a few together. I use a twist tie to connect them into a big circle:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Using a flour sack towel, cover the bowl and fasten the rubber bands around the rim:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It’s important to use a tightly woven towel (NOT cheese cloth) to keep fruit flies from entering.<\/p>\n

Now just set the bowl in a safe out of the way place for 7-12 days to ferment away. With the cool winter weather, it’s been taking about 10 days for our batches to brew to our desired puckeriness. You can scoop out a bit with a clean shot glass for a taste after about 7 days until it has fermented to your tastes.<\/p>\n

The mushroom will make a baby with each batch. For the next batch I use the ‘mother’ and either give away the baby or put into the compost. For the starter, I just use some of the newly fermented tea.<\/p>\n

Have fun!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Quite awhile back I wrote of my adventures with a quickly multiplying mushroom. We cut back now to one batch every 10 days or so which is much more manageable – we even have a few jars to pass on to our BIL who swears that it helps him power through his bike rides. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-recipes"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/taodekitchen.com\/tasty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/taodekitchen.com\/tasty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/taodekitchen.com\/tasty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taodekitchen.com\/tasty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taodekitchen.com\/tasty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/taodekitchen.com\/tasty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/taodekitchen.com\/tasty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taodekitchen.com\/tasty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taodekitchen.com\/tasty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}