Make it or buy it: kombucha, pt. 1

I take back the mean things I said about kombucha. Debra brought over a bottle this morning and I actually tolerated -- even enjoyed -- a small glass. It was fizzy and tangy, much tastier than remembered. Maybe my early bad experience was due to the the shock of kombucha when I was expecting Snapple. Deb pays less because she buys in bulk, but a 16-oz bottle of Synergy Kombucha costs $3.99 from Organic Direct, a price I'm sure we can beat with homemade. That is, if it doesn't kill us.

We made kombucha according to Robin's recipe. First you boil 4 quarts of water, mix with 1 cup of sugar and 4 tablespoons of loose tea and steep for 15 minutes. (We used green tea, although Robin recommends black.) Strain. Cool to room temperature. 

At this point, you add 1 cup of prepared kombucha (bottled or homemade) and a so-called "mother" to the cooled tea. The "mother" may also be called a "scoby" which is the acronym for "symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast." I don't know how I feel about that. There's a video here about how to grow your own mother from scratch; now I'm worried because we used tap water in our kombucha and these guys say you shouldn't. So does this story. Shoot. Anyway, we were lucky enough to have a mother donated by Robin,  which was flat, shiny, and slippery, like a large squid without tentacles.

 Here is the mother lurking just beneath the surface of the cooled tea:

We covered the whole bowl with a cloth, put it in the back of the pantry,  and will reconvene next Friday to see what has developed. If we did everything right and the tap water didn't screw us up, the tea should be "tart and zingy" and there will be two mothers in the bowl. 

Here's the ingredient list on the Synergy Kombucha bottle: 95% G.T's. organic raw kombucha, blueberry juice, fresh pressed ginger juice, and 100% pure love!!!