over a year ago, a friend shared some kombucha tea with me. at this point, i should mention that my friend likes it plain-pure kombucha with nothing else in it. she also likes to let it ferment for a full 10 days. it is pungent to say the least. when i didn't flinch or spit it out, she offered to bring me a baby so i could brew my own. that is how my kombucha habit got started.
all through the summer and into the fall, i brewed it and i drank it. to make it more palatable, i mixed it into iced tea or juice. then the awful thing happened, i neglected my tea as the weather cooled. my poor scoby lived in the fridge and after a while, he just couldn't make fermented tea. this spring, i decided to get another batch going. my search for a scoby led me to countless websites. needless to say, i was not willing to fork over the $30+ dollars for a package of culture. there had to be an alternative. and there was! while going from website to website, i stumbled upon the blog, bonzai aphrodite and a detailed post on how to grow a scoby from a store bought bottle of kombucha.
the following week, i found myself standing in front of a cooler full of kombucha drinks in whole foods market. after purchasing a bottle of original kombucha, i set up my bowl and began growing my own scoby. it took the full 2 weeks and it has worked beautifully. so well that i now have 2 separate scobys, one plain green tea and the other green tea mixed with peach and hibiscus tea.
the peach-hibiscus kombucha is on the left, the plain green tea is on the right.
my bottles of finished tea, ready to drink. the amber one is the peach-hibiscus, the pink one is plain kombucha flavored with northlands superfruit juice, a blend of blueberry, blackberry and acai berries. every day, i make it a point to drink a full glass of the tea. there are many claims that it boosts your immune system. whether or not this is true, i cannot say and many health experts are warning against it's use due to the possibility of toxic bacterial contamination. however, i still enjoy it and when i mix mine, i use glass containers and gloves to handle the scoby. more importantly, during last winter's horrific flu season, i never even had a sniffle. just sayin'...
The same thing happened to me. We had lots of kombucha brewing for quite a while and then took such a long break that I need to grow a new SCOBY or get one from a friend. It's so warm in my new kitchen though, I'm not sure whether to attempt any this summer or just wait til it cools down.
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