Kombucha is a health drink made from sweetened tea. To start you need 1 cup of kombucha and 1 “scoby” (a kind of mushroom thing that grows on the top of the tea, which you can get from any kombucha brewer. Then you just add sweetened tea and water, and wait a couple of days for a refreshing, non-alcoholic drink.
For 1 quart jar (preferably widemouth)/Bama jar kombucha:
Put 1 (black) teabag and 1/4 cup sugar in a saucepan. Cover with water, bring to the boil, stir to dissolve sugar, off the heat and leave it to cool. When it’s cool, add it to the scoby and starter kombucha tea and top up with drinking water. Cover with a cloth (it needs air, so not a tight lid) and leave it on a counter for 2/3 days until fizzy. Drink all but a cupful from the bottom which you need to keep for the next batch.
If you’d like to flavour it, pour into another jar and add flavours. Cover with an airtight lid and leave for a day or two. Check once a day to see if it’s building up pressure, you may need to j ust open and close the lid quickly to “burp” it.
Suggested flavours: cloves, cinammon, ginger, tamarind, mint………………
Over time the scoby will grow. When it gets thick you can peel off layers to give to other people. Or, you can dry them to use on wounds, I believe they are particularly good on burns, just soak them when you need them. Or, you can eat them, or slice them up in stir frys, or put them in the compost or feed them to your (my?) chickens.
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