Kombucha -- who's a fan?

[naf]

@Ttrockwood is knowledgable on this subject. She brews her own Kombucha. I think she probably buys a lot too.

Just digged up an old conversation from WFD, for anybody who wants DIY:

@Ttrockwood

Yes, I’ve been making my own kombucha for a few years now! Honestly has made my tummy LOVE me, and I think the probiotics are part of why I just don’t get sick. My favorite flavor is lemon/ginger which is kind of boring but I perfected that flavor combo and get great bubbles with it (some flavors it is hard to get the second ferment carbonation)
The NOMA book had a lemon maple combo that sounded interesting so I played with that a little to flavor the bottles for the second ferment (didn’t want to waste so much maple $yrup on using it for first ferment which needs a lot of sugars to feed the scoby)

@naf

Thanks for your explanation. I’m reading the Noma book now, it’s quite fascinating how all those microbes are working.

Sorry, a bit more questions. How do you keep a scoby in standby, for example if you need to go away. Is it possible to keep that alive for a month?

Since you make the drink regularly, how many copies of scoby do you keep for different flavors?

@Ttrockwood

I have had some trouble when i travel and the scoby is left alone a while - mostly in winter it gets too cold and can “die” which happened to me at the holidays this year. If you leave the scoby in a small amount of the kombucha tea at warm-ish room temp it’s fine a month alone.

My method differs from noma method- i make a big batch of “basic” kombucha first, just the tea/sugar/scoby mix to ferment. Then i introduce flavor when bottling for second ferment, so i could make 12 different flavor bottles if i wanted. I haven’t tried to introduce flavor at the first ferment, just not how i learned to make it- and i think also that scoby is limited in the future since it will absorb that flavor? I am tempted to make the apple kombucha recipe, may try that with some of excess scoby i have since now mine is healthy and reproducing a lot