Kombucha!!!! -Scoby update

Im totally jumping on this bandwagon! My good friend took on the task of making a scoby (symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast) from scratch. A Scoby is like the mother of all Kombucha drinks. It's what is used every time to brew your drink! Well, every time you brew a batch of Kombucha with your mommy scoby, you get a wee little baby. How cute is that!! I guess in a weird scientific way. It's like a little science experiment every time you brew. I think this is why I love this type of cooking so much!

So I'm going to only touch on how to mature your baby scoby, then brew your Kombucha.
I may have to have my friend guest blog on the making of the mother scoby!
This is a work in progress, so I will come back and update as I go along.

Here is a little info on the many health benefits of Kombucha. Someone posted this in a FB group I'm in and I thought it was great.

http://www.kombuchakamp.com/health-benefits-of-kombucha

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Kombucha has been consumed for over 2000 years the world over. It has been extensively studied and applied for several medical uses in Russia, Germany, China and many other places. It is naturally carbonated and is purported to have a host of healing properties that may include:

*Probiotics – healthy bacteria
*Alkalize the body – balances internal pH
*Detoxify the liver – happy liver = happy mood
*Increase metabolism – rev your internal engine
*Improve digestion – keep your system moving
*Rebuild connective tissue – helps with arthritis, gout, asthma, rheumatism
*Cancer prevention
*Alleviate constipation
*Boost energy – helps with chronic fatigue
*Reduce blood pressure
*Relieve headaches & migraines
*Reduce kidney stones
*High in antioxidants – destroy free-radicals that cause cancer
*High in polyphenols
*Improve eyesight
*Heal excema – can be applied topically to soften the skin
*Prevent artheriosclerosis
*Speed healing of ulcers – kills h.pylori on contact
*Help clear up candida & yeast infections
*Aid healthy cell regeneration
*Reduce gray hair
*Lower glucose levels – prevents spiking from eating

Simply put, Kombucha is an all natural health beverage chockfull of probiotics and other healthy amino acids. Probiotic literally means “for life”. Unlike antibiotics, which kill ALL of the bacteria in your body, even the good stuff, probiotics re-establish the natural ecology of the intestinal flora. Probiotics are said to boost immunity, enhance mood, fight allergies, detoxify the body and rid the body of disease. The Kombucha benefits you experience may vary.

However, Kombucha is NOT a panacea – it doesn’t cure ANYTHING! It brings the body back into balance so that it may heal itself naturally. That is how it is able to do so much – because it works with your body’s natural immune system.

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Step 1

Ok, so step one. WASH YOUR HANDS. really well. Wash everything that comes in contact with your scoby well. You dont want to introduce any bad bacteria!

So, My sweet friend has already done the labor intensive work for me. Here is my wee scoby in the bottom of a glass bottle.

Step 2

Next step. We need to mature our scoby. Take her from a baby to a mother in just a few weeks. We must feed the baby, and the baby likes tea and sugar!

Boil 3 cups of filtered water. Add 3 black tea bags, and 2 green tea bags and 3 TBS of raw sugar. Let it sit for 10-20 min, take the tea bags out and let it sit for a few hours until it is room temperature. If the tea is too hot, it will ruin the scoby and kill all the good bacteria and yeast. LET YOUR TEA COOL!

Step 3
Add the tea to a large glass bowl. Do not use anything but clear glass. No pottery or anything painted or glazed. Also make sure that the glass is unleaded. The last thing you want is lead in your kombucha. Gently put that sweet little scoby in there on top of the tea.

Cover with a very clean kitchen towel. Secure with an elastic.

Put up in a cupboard in a warm dark place for at least 2 weeks. Don't check on it until the two weeks are up. Let me admit something, I checked, it's so hard. But my friend said no, no, no, don't do it. So now I feel guilty haha!

Ok this is where I'm at. Ill update in another week!

I transferred my scoby after a week to a larger bowl. I felt like my other one was too small. Snapped a few pics of my little darling!

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UPDATE 1/27

I checked on my scoby to see if I should feed it. I think it's been about 2 weeks. I made about 3 more cups of tea with some sugar and put it back in my cabinet. It's crazy how much it has grown. The part that is more dense in color is the original size of my scoby before I transferred it.