It started out innocently enough – I loved Kombucha and was drinking about £10-15 daily! Because I am not an independently wealthy woman, I thought I should investigate how to make it myself….if not a rocket scientist, I have my moments of practicality.
I got myself a SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacterial yeast – that white thing to the left!), a recipe and some basic ingredients, and voilà! My days as a Kombucha brewer began. Of course, it began before that. For the past 43 years I have lived with a digestive disease, and my state of gastric-normalcy was a very temper mental gut, at best. I seemed to crave this slightly sour, punchy drink and I felt like somehow it was neutralizing long-stemming inflammation in my digestive tract. So, along with liking the taste, my belly felt more normal than it had for a long time.
The other aspect of brewing Kombucha is that it is alive. Not unlike a liquid garden, the SCOBY grows with each brew as it eats the sugar and creates yeast. I enjoy the process of observing the culture grow (no two ever look the same!) and noticing the difference in its changing taste. What was one gallon quickly multiplied to two, then four, and now I have about ten gallons brewing at any one time.
As with most things in life, I am an experimenter, so have been having fun trying different teas (like white, silvertip jasmine, lapsang souchang, and china rose) and also second fermentation flavors (PIMMs, blueberry lavender, strawberry rose, cherry basil, pomegranate). The possibilities are endless, it truly makes a good beer replacement mid-week, or morning coffee replacement, as it has caffeine due to the tea. It is also packed with anti-oxidants, probiotics and B12, among other things. As my SCOBY family expanded I found a suiting name and logo, and I’m now selling on a small scale to people I know. If you are interested in staying up to date on weekly flavor offerings and all things booch, please subscribe to booch news alert (announcing what’s on offer, different than my yoga and rolfing newsletter!…and maybe try some booch!
