When our friend, paediatric dental hygienist and GAPS nutritionist-pal Katalin recommended drinking 1 daily cup of Kombucha for all of it’s nutritional properties and it’s ability to help maintain a digestive system healthy with good flora and bacteria,  I went to Whole foods and bought a few un-flavoured bottles (at $3.99/bottle – GT’s Kombucha 16 oz).  Our daughter drank it up.  It tastes like apple cider.  It’s refreshing….and you can make your own for the cost of 1 cup of sugar and 4 tea bags.  The key is obtaining the “mother” or “scoby”, which is short for “symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast.”  If you believe in synchronicity, and symbiosis, then you won’t be surprised that I met an acupunturist who made her own kombucha since the 80′s with the same lineage of mother scobies.  She offered me one from the next batch.  We’ve been making it and it is tasty!

~ Recipe ~

boil 20 cups of watersteep 4 tea bags for 4-5 min (we use good green tea, hey it’s good    for you right?)

let cool

pour into 1 gallon glass jar (wide mouth) or whatever food-grade plastic tub you may have, taking into considering that plastic, being a semi-permeable material, will leach into whatever is in it

add 2 cups starter from previous batch (given to you with your mother scoby)

gently lower in mother scoby

cover with non-metal, paper towel, cheese cloth, even the lid from a yogurt tub – to keep dust and whatnot from falling in and contaminating the batch

watch in amazement as over a couple of days a white layer forms on top and our symbiotic culture goes to work, keep out of direct sunlight

keep aside 2 cups for your next batch.  you will find you may want to have a couple batches going at once

using new mother every time is great however I am also experimenting with continuing to use my original in the other batch

once you have too many new mother scobies, Marlene says they are great fertilizers for your plants…Isn’t nature amazing?

Tips:

If you can use a large 1 gal glass jar, you are off to the races.  You can order them for $4 a jar at uline.ca or uline.com.  Get the 4″ opening w plastic lid

see the glass mason jar with the glass lid (metal hinge mechanism is ok) I kept from bulk dijon mustard (Loblaws)

green tea is good for you, we use 4 good quality green tea bags

once the mother scoby is involved, right to completion and bottling of kombucha, never use metal of any kind

so for lifting out the mother, use a wooden spoon (try keeping one only for these purposes and wash in dishwasher)  I don’t like to use my hands, no matter how clean

and to sample while brewing, use a take out plastic soup spoon

it may take up to 14 days for your first batch to reach its perfection if you start with not enough “starter” from the previous batch.  I think a med-sized yogut container’s worth, approx 400 ml or 2 cups is sufficient.  From then on you can figure out if your mother scoby family is best at 7, 8…10 days

add your flavouring at the bottling stage ie piece of mango, bag of chamomile etc

after bottling, leave the bottles out of the fridge for 2-3 days for the bubbles to form

Here’s a great site on which I learned a few key tips: http://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-kombucha-tea-at-home-173858

All this typing about kombucha made me pour a glass