So I’ve been told I’m a little bit of a hippie, and while that may be true, the one thing I know for sure is that I am obsessed with kombucha. Now when kombucha first came to my attention, I was kind of stressed out by the whole thing, but as someone who has an extremely cranky stomach, I thought maybe it’s probiotic powers could help. The rest was history; I got totally hooked and began spending ridiculous amounts of money on it every day. Then everyone started talking about home brewing, and telling me how easy it was, and my curiosity was piqued. So when my friend Kelly told me one of our students at the yoga studio, Michelle, had given her a scoby and some lovely hand written brewing instructions, I knew I had to join!

Here is Kelly with our batch, ready to go into a dark place for two weeks so the magic can happen!

The instructions are simple enough, brew tea with a gallon of filtered water, and 8-10 green or black tea bags, whichever you prefer. Add one cup sugar, and then let the tea cool completely. The scoby doesn’t like metal or being refrigerated, so make sure to keep that in mind. Once the tea has cooled completely, remove the tea bags and pour into a gallon glass container sterilized with vinegar. Make sure you have clean hands, and remove your scoby from its original jar and place into your brewed tea (it’s gross, but not nearly as gross as taking it out, I promise you.) Then place a paper towel over the top of your jar, secure with a rubber band, and place the covered jar in a dark place for 7-10 days. This can vary a bit from brew to brew, we allowed ours to sit for 14 days, which added the fizziness often associated with kombucha and were very happy with the results.

Then comes the second stage of brewing, which is the flavoring process, and that’s where the real fun starts. We had initially decided on lemon-ginger-blueberry but then changed course and settled on strawberry-mint. This was a killer flavor combo and I highly recommend it, it’s sweet and super refreshing and definitely worth a try. To flavor, add your flavors to a new separate airtight jar (or two if you’re sharing with a friend) and pour the tea in, leave about one inch of tea in the original jar, along with your original scoby and the “mother scoby”, and save for your next brew!

We let our flavors brew for one week, until the tea was super fizzy and had a nice amount of sweetness to it, and then removed the flavors by hand. The whole process was so easy and something I can see myself continuing to do over and over again, the best part is that after every brew, you have a new scoby ready to go for the next one! Our next flavor combo will be peach-basil and we are so excited about it!

If you can get your hands on a scoby, give it a shot, get crazy with flavors, and pour yourself a glass!

 

Cheers!