Recipe: Make Your Own Healthy Pop....Kombucha!

Most of us know that pop is bad for us... regular, diet... it doesn't matter. So what do you do if you are addicted to sweet, caffeinated, carbonated drinks? Well, try kombucha! Don't feel like paying $4 a bottle at Whole Foods? Make your own!

Kombucha, is a fermented tea originating in China, making its way to the US through Russia (which is why it is sometimes referred to as "Russian mushroom tea"). It tastes like bubbly apple cider and although it's made with sugar, much of the sugar is converted in the fermentation process and turned into healthy acetic acid. The fermentation process is actually rather unique, combining two fermentation processes you are probably familiar with: yeast turning sugar into alcohol and aceto-bacteria turning alcohol in vinegar.

To make kombucha you need:

a clean wide-mouth quart jar

3 tea bags of non-flavored tea

1/4 cup sugar

boiling water

1/4 cup of prepared kombucha

a kombucha "mother" or SCOBY (a "symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast")

WHERE TO GET A SCOBY: if you know anyone who makes kombucha, ask them. SCOBYs increase in size with each batch and have to be separated periodically. If you do not, search the internet, there are many reputable companies that sell starters including kombucha SCOBYs. I got mine off of Ebay years ago.

Step 1:

add 1/4 cup sugar to the bottom of the quart jar, pour in boiling water until it's within a few inches of the top. If the sugar doesn't appear to be dissolved, stir to dissolve. Add the 3 teabags.

Use any combination of black and green tea. I like 2 green teas and 1 black. Here I'm using 3 oolong tea bags. Oolong is an intermediate between black and green tea. Don't use flavored tea. The oils in flavored tea can damage your SCOBY.

Step 2:

After this has cooled to room temperature remove the teabags. Add the SCOBY and 1/4 cup of prepared kombucha to your jar.

adding 1/4 cup of kombucha from the last batch

moving the SCOBY from the old batch to the new jar - make sure your hands are super clean

Step 4. Cover the jar with paper towel, coffee filter or clean piece of fabric and rubber band. Place somewhere warm for 3 - 7 days. It should get fizzy and you will see little bubbles all around the SCOBY, especially when you bump the jar. After 3 days, taste the liquid with a clean straw or spoon. It should be a little sweet, a little sour and a little bubbly. If it is too sweet and not bubbly let it sit and taste again after another day. In the summer it can be done in as little as 3 days and in the winter it can take a week or longer.

Always check you SCOBY for mold. It will grow stringy parts and have bubbly parts, but if it grows any hair patches or grows colorful patches, throw it all out and get a new SCOBY. There is no safe way to clean mold out of kombucha. Also, don't use aluminum or plastic, only glass, wood or stainless steel. Kombucha is acidic and can react with aluminum and leach plastic.

Step 5. Your kombucha is pretty good to drink at this point, but if you want something extra delicious you need:

a bottle that seals - fliptop bottles are the safest

grape juice - be sure it doesn't have preservatives, these can prevent fermentation

Fill your bottle 2/3 of the way with kombucha and 1/3 of the way with grape juice. During the fermentation process, stringy clumpy things form in your kombucha, these are perfectly safe to drink, but if they gross you out, either pour the kombucha through a strainer or to get every trace out, pour it through a coffee filter lining a funnel.

Step 6.

Every 12 hours check your bottle to see if it is carbonated. Do this by flipping up the top. If there is a hiss, it is carbonated, The bigger the hiss, the more carbonation. If you are re-using a plastic pop bottle, squeeze it. If it is really hard, it is carbonated. THIS IS IMPORTANT: if you leave a sealed bottle fermenting too long it can explode and injure or kill you - or make a huge mess.

When it is ready to drink, it takes like delicious fizzy grape pop!

Plain kombucha contains no alcohol (possibly trace amounts) because all of the alcohol is converted to acid by the aceto-bacteria. However, aceto-bacteria requires oxygen to function so the only fermentation occurring in the sealed bottle is the yeast converting sugar to alcohol. This means that there is a small amount of alcohol present in the grape flavored version. This amount compares to the amount naturally occuring in unpausturized apple cider or fruit juices.

If you leave your kombucha fermenting too long it will get too sour to drink. No worries, just use it in place of apple cider vinegar.

This batch may be a little too sour!

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by Sara Swanson

Sara Swanson is an editor, writer and founder of the Manchester Mirror.