Kombucha

Warning: the images in the following post are not for the faint of heart.

A few months ago I went to a skill share about kombucha (a.k.a. fermented tea.) This is supposed to be wonder-working for your health and digestion. Last week I finally got free starter (scoby) via Craigslist, so I decided the time for this experiment had come.

1. First I brewed three plain green tea bags in like...oh, say 6 or 8 cups of water. I can't remember. I let it sit until it was cool, so as to not scald my scoby and kill it.

I put the tea in a big, glass bowl. Supposedly, the larger the surface area exposed to air, the quicker the fermentation process occurs. Here's a picture of me lifting the scoby into the tea. I know, it looks gross. It is. There is just too much resemblance to an internal organ. I didn't really like touching it.

There she is--floating in the tea, ready to do her job. I added 3/4 cup sugar. The scoby will eat the sugar as it does it's work on the tea. So you can kind of control how sweet it is by how soon you remove the scoby. Then I covered the bowl with a tea towel to keep out foreign stuff and deter fruit flies. I used sewing elastic to make a stretchy band to keep the towel secure.

Ready to sit in a dark cupboard for 5 days!