Simply Kombucha E-Book

Stacey Wilson

• Herausgeber: Stacey Wilson
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Welcome to the exciting world of kombucha! — What is kombucha? Where did it come from? Why do people drink it? Is it as healthy as people claim? And how exactly can you make it yourself? Simply Kombucha answers all those questions and more. Just starting out? You will find detailed step-by-step instructions on sourcing your ingredients, setting up and bottling your brew, and a range of easy recipes to give you the confidence to get well under way. Are you an experienced kombucha brewer? You will find a discussion of kombucha’s origins, an up-to-date summary of what the latest scientific research says about kombucha’s benefits as a health tonic, a long list of FAQs and troubleshooting questions, and some more unusual recipes to stretch your kombucha repertoire. This e-book edition has been designed with your e-reading experience in mind. All pictures are simple line-drawings — easy to see on all reader devices, regardless of screen size or color settings. No fuss. No frills. Simply complete. Simply Kombucha.

Leseprobe

SIMPLY KOMBUCHA

SIMPLY KOMBUCHA

Stacey Wilson

© Stacey Wilson 2016

All rights reserved

[email protected]

kombucharesearch.wordpress.com

Table of Contents

Introduction

Basic Kombucha Recipe

Part 1: All about kombucha

What is kombucha?

History

Health claims

Kombucha is an antioxidant

Kombucha is a probiotic

A word of caution

Part 2: Making your own kombucha

Gathering your ingredients and equipment

Scoby

Tea

Sugar

Water

Vessels (glass only)

Other equipment

Making kombucha

Batch brew

Bottling the brew

Continuous brew

2nd fermentation

Troubleshooting and FAQs

Mold

Not brewing

Not producing daughters

Not fizzy

Fruit flies

It is too vinegary and nobody wants to drink it!

Exploding bottles

What if I am making a different volume?

How long do I leave it?

Are those squishy brown strands OK?

How do I know it is working?

How do I store a scoby for back-up?

How do I split the scoby?

The scoby is sinking, is that OK?

What do I do with all these daughters?

I don’t feel well, is this normal?

My scoby is trying to escape

I spilled the kombucha…

Do you get baby scobys in your 2F?

Do I REALLY need to use white sugar?

Part 3: Recipes

Basic Kombucha Recipe

First ferment (1F) recipes

Apricot

Berry tea (pink scoby!)

Ginger-bucha

Rooibos

Coffee-bucha

Jun

Second ferment (2F) recipes

Berry ferments

Feijoa and apple

Pear and cinnamon

Christmas pudding-bucha

Kombucha vinegar

Hot vinegar and honey

Salad dressing

A note about pickles

Simple Kombucha Sourdough

Enjoy!

About the author

Disclaimer

Acknowledgments

Endnotes

Introduction

It seems that everywhere I look someone is talking about kombucha. Celebrities are drinking it, the local newspaper has a write-up in their lifestyle column, and my social media feed tells me that friends of friends are brewing it in their own homes.

You can buy it in dozens of flavors from the organic grocery store. You can brew it yourself. In many cities you can even order a glass poured straight from the tap at the local kombucha bar. Kombucha tea is enjoying a huge burst of popularity around the globe.

But just what is kombucha? Why do people drink it? Is it as healthy as people claim? And how exactly can you make it yourself?

Well, those are exactly the questions that this little book hopes to answer.

We’ve been drinking kombucha in our family for several years now. We brew it ourselves, and our kids love it so much that we have five gallon-sized jars brewing continuously to keep up with the demand. We also regularly use it to make a delicious sourdough crust for our family pizza nights. In this book I’ll tell you all you need to know to make kombucha in your own kitchen, and how to experiment with lots of delicious flavors. I go into the details of making your own kombucha in Part 2, and give some fabulous starter recipes in Part 3.

But before we get into that, Part 1 looks into the history of kombucha, and the health claims that are made about it. I have a Master’s degree in Biochemistry which has been very useful in deciphering academic texts and the medical jargon involved. I’ll look at the main conclusions that we can get from the current research, and briefly touch on what that means for us as kombucha drinkers.

I’ve been excited to find that quite a few research groups around the world are investigating kombucha’s effectiveness and usefulness as a probiotic and so-called ‘functional food’. Although it is still early days in terms of the progress of the research, it is pretty clear that kombucha is both an effective antioxidant and a probiotic, both of which are beneficial to human health.

In short, kombucha is a delicious drink that is easy to make at home and is not only not bad for you (unlike other popular fizzy drinks), but could even be considered a health food.

A fizzy drink that could actually improve your health?

Indeed.

Come on a journey of kombucha discovery.

Basic Kombucha Recipe

This is my basic kombucha recipe. Don’t panic, I’ve just placed it here for those of you who like to see where you’re going before you get there. I go into every step in greater detail later in the book.

For more information about what you need, see the Gathering Equipment section. For the nitty-gritty details of how to do all this, see the Making Kombucha section.

Makes about 1 gallon (5L).

Ingredients

1 gallon (5L) of drinking-quality water (you’ll actually use slightly less than this)

1 1/2 cups white granulated sugar

6 – 12 teaspoons (or teabags) of black or green tea

1 healthy scoby

1 cup kombucha liquid (or you can substitute 2 tablespoons of vinegar for your very first brew, if the scoby didn’t come with enough liquid)

Method

1. Brew the tea in about 4 to 6 cups of hot water. Let steep for about 10 minutes. Remove the tea bags

2. Add sugar and stir to dissolve

3. Tip the sweet tea into a large glass or pyrex bowl, or a wide-necked jar, 1 gallon capacity

4. Add cold water until the liquid is a generous inch or so from the top of the jar and stir to ensure sugar is completely dissolved

5. Add kombucha liquid and scoby

6. Cover jar with a finely woven cloth to allow air to get in and keep vinegar flies out (who will love it, by the way)

7. Let sit at room temperature for a week or so