Kombucha Tea

[brendanos]

When the subject of homebrewing came up with a coworker, he asked me if I knew where he could find some moderately sized glass jars for a drink that he makes, which I was previously unaware of, called Kombucha Tea.

I've done a little reading on it (wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kombucha) and it sounds like a very interesting and healthy venture for the homebrewer interested in personal health, and that is also comfortable dealing with some wild yeast strains/bacteria. From my as yet shallow understanding of the drink, it's basically a sweetened tea, fermented with various yeasts and acid producing bacteria including a weizen yeast, brettanomyces bruxellensis, and many other bugs i am less familiar with. I also believe the Kombucha mixed culture is what is used to make the Russian Rye-bread based beverage Kvass.

I thought I'd throw this out there while I'm learning about this drink, as I'm sure at least some of you know something about it, and can push me in the right direction, and hopefully teach me a thing or two.

So, fellow AHB'ers... tell me everything you know.

 

[Adamt]

I know next to nothing about it... but konbucha is a Japanese seaweed tea of some description. Maybe some of the Japan-dwellers could be of help?

 

[neonmeate]

This stuff is the first thing I ever brewed ... years before I made beer. Back in 2nd year uni I had really bad glandular fever. After trying antioxidant pills, various weird powders to no effect, someone put me onto this stuff. Every day I brewed up a saucepan with 10 teabags in it and sugar to feed this thing. It looks like some blind slimy primordial thing that lives 3000m under the sea next to a volcanic vent. You peel off a layer every day, drink the stuff it's left behind and feed it again. It wouldn't stop drinking tea this thing.
Anyway after two months of this every day I was cured! I really do recommend it for health. However it tastes like binjuice.

 

[Adamt]

However it tastes like binjuice.

You just made me dry reach. Thanks!

 

[brendanos]

From a Kombucha tea website...

You have probably heard people say that "anything that is good for you tastes bad." Well, Kombucha doesn't fit into that category.

It is a very pleasant tasting drink, so much so, that many people use it as a drink for guests and special occasions.

Sparkling and a pleasant taste, you can even change the flavour to suit yourself.

NM, maybe with all your homebrewing experience you'd be able to make something a little more appetizing? I guess it depends on the dominant organisms at work in yr batch.

It sounds pretty nice to me (the tea, not the binjuice), though I don't see how the brett would play much of a part in it if it's to be drunk fresh. I guess it behaves differently in tea.

Can you explain the pealing thing a bit more NM? Do you keep the fresh layers and dispose of the old? Where did you get yr info from when you were brewing it?

Cheers

 

[neonmeate]

ok well this was 1995 and i dont think i knew about sanitising the jar i did it in. i followed the instructions in some pamphlet they gave me with the creature.

it looks like a big slimy disc, though i guess it was only disc shaped cause it was in a round jar? every day (i think) it selfpropagated an extra layer. i used to peel off the fresh layer and reuse it for the next lot, and throw the rest away. if you just let it go it will keep growing and devour your entire suburb.

perhaps if i used quality tea and sanitised stuff it might have tasted better. i guess chinese tea of some sort would be appropriate. some szechuan or keemun or yunnan.
i would be interested to have at it again seeing as i am partial to pedio and brett and lactobacillus these days. still havent really reconciled myself to acetobacter and strepicoccus faecalis etc though.
could you feed it wort and tea instead of just sugar and tea i wonder?

 

[neonmeate]

just read the mad fermentationist's stuff on it (madfermentationist.blogspot.com) . sounds interesting. perhaps i will throw some in wort and see what happens. perhaps my next berliner weisse could be a kombucha-weisse. dunno how it would cope with alcohol levels even that high though.

 

[brendanos]

I think the composition of the tea would play a role in how the culture behaves, so i guess it would be quite different in a different medium ie wort (but then having said that, there is Kvass). With the variety of tea readily available nowadays i'm sure there'd be a kombucha tea for any taste. One of the naturally fruit flavoured tea's would be interesting... cassis kombucha anyone?

 

[neonmeate]

fruit tea bah... eat fruit, drink tea. nothing natural about how they get fruit in teabags!

 

[brendanos]

Teabags? There are stores such as T2 offering tens possibly hundreds of teas, including naturally flavoured black and green teas, tisanes (blends of tea and dried fruit) and many other options. I'm not affiliated with T2 nor can I confirm that they are all completely natural, but to me chunks of dried fruit and tea seems pretty safe. I'm sure there are many other purveyers of fine tea out there also, this is just an example. We don't limit our homebrew purchases to what we can buy in a coles or a woolworths, need we do the same with tea, or anything else for that matter?

 

[Karhunkynsi]

A mate of mine got me into kombucha a while ago, and I can assure you the QUALITY of the tea does not change the taste. The TYPE of tea/fruit/herb/vegetable DOES.

 

[benno1973]

I just noticed that there's a thread on Kombucha (if a little old); thought I'd add my 2c.

Back in the early 90's my mum gave me kombucha and I ran with it for a while. I don't remember thinking that it was that delicious at the time, and I don't really remember what happened to the scoby, but it must have died at some point. It is considered a health tonic, but there's some debate over exactly how healthy it is. It's not in dispute as to how ugly it is.

I recently started doing it again, and either my tastes have changed or I'm doing it better, as I love the stuff and am totally addicted. I try and have 3 AFDs a week this helps me get through them, otherwise I would have to drink water (*cough* *ack*). Anyway, it tastes a bit like a sour apple cider, somewhere between cider and cider vinegar. It's complex and delicious.

Anyway, if any Perth brewers out there want to experiment with Kombucha, send me a PM and I'll divide off some of my scoby. Might take a few weeks, as I already have a couple of people organised to take some. I have just put a blog post up on what is required for care and maintenance.

 

[Muscovy_333]

I just noticed that there's a thread on Kombucha (if a little old); thought I'd add my 2c.

Back in the early 90's my mum gave me kombucha and I ran with it for a while. I don't remember thinking that it was that delicious at the time, and I don't really remember what happened to the scoby, but it must have died at some point. It is considered a health tonic, but there's some debate over exactly how healthy it is. It's not in dispute as to how ugly it is.

I recently started doing it again, and either my tastes have changed or I'm doing it better, as I love the stuff and am totally addicted. I try and have 3 AFDs a week this helps me get through them, otherwise I would have to drink water (*cough* *ack*). Anyway, it tastes a bit like a sour apple cider, somewhere between cider and cider vinegar. It's complex and delicious.

Anyway, if any Perth brewers out there want to experiment with Kombucha, send me a PM and I'll divide off some of my scoby. Might take a few weeks, as I already have a couple of people organised to take some. I have just put a blog post up on what is required for care and maintenance.

I drove around Australia a decade or so ago, and on my mission bumped into a few hippies in a state forest in South Australia who gave me a chunk of that dreaded fungus. I used to love it!

I ditched the culture which i kept for a couple of years after my mission and have always been curious. I have a publication that relates to Kombucha, but also did some research a while back that yielded mixed results about the health/hazards of Kombucha.