What is Kombucha and how do I make it?

     I make a new batch of Kombucha every week. My husband and I LOVE kombucha. I brew a fresh batch every week and, although my batches aren't the biggest, we go through the entire batch within a day or two of it being ready to drink. To supplement not being able to keep up with my kombucha I have even started to learn how to brew pop with a ginger bug! Don't worry, there will be recipes coming for that soon, but today I am going to tell you how I make my base kombucha and how to flavor it. At the bottom I will also link a few of my favorite flavor combos. 

    Kombucha is actually extremely easy to make. It is a very "love it and leave it" kind of thing and it is hard to mess up. Any kombucha starts with a SCOBY. That stands for a Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast. Sounds gross but its where all of the magic happens. It eats the sugars in your sweet tea and makes an amazing fizzy drink filled with probiotics and antioxidants. 

    People talk about all of the things kombucha can do, some people even say it can cure cancer! Although I am not so sure about that one, it is hard to deny the benefits of kombucha. Because of the high amounts of antioxidants and probiotics, it can help with immune support, indigestion, cholesterol, gut health, and more. Some of these benefits fluctuate a bit if you use green tea vs black tea. The benefits are supposed to be better with green tea however I think that when its brewed with black tea, it tastes way better. 

    The kombucha brewing process consists of two parts, the first ferment, and the second. The first ferment is when you let your SCOBY sit in a container full of sweet tea for 10-2 weeks or until all of the sugar in the sweet tea has been eaten up by the bacteria and yeast in the SCOBY. You can tell when your kombucha is done both by taste and the way it looks. It shouldn't be sweet anymore but if it tastes super vinegary you may have let your kombucha ferment a little too far. You have to be careful with letting it go too extremely far because it can cause the kombucha to have a very acidic flavor and potentially even develop alcohol. That being said, to make your kombucha alcoholic you would have to let it sit for months and even then, the ABV would probably still be too low to be something you really have to worry about. It should also be lighter in color compared to when you first started fermenting. 

    Once the first ferment is over you can either enjoy your kombucha plain or add flavors and perform a second ferment. If you are drinking it plain, pour it into sterilized bottles and pop them into the fridge until they are nice and chilled. Some of my favorite kombucha flavors are strawberry lemonade, orange creamsicle, or cherry almond, but you can really do any flavor. All you have to do is add some kind of fruit, vegetable, juice, or extract along with some sweetener and let it sit on the counter for another 3-7 days until it is fizzy. To check the fizziness, crack your bottles open after three and five days to release any extreme pressure and gage how fizzy it is. Once you have reached your desired fizz level, place your bottles in the fridge for at least a day and enjoy! You can drink you kombucha with all of the chunks and even sometimes a little baby SCOBY. All of that is actually very good for you. However, many people don't like the texture so they strain it out before they drink it and that is also just fine!

    What did you think of this recipe? Questions? Comments? Concerns? Use the comment section below!