Kombucha tea, anyone can make it

Last time I wrote about starting to brew kombucha tea at home. I am very excited to share that my first brew was a success!! I was prepared that it might take some trial and error but it was surprisingly easy!! Here's how it looked along the way...

Scoby sal on Day 1 - 11/09/14

Day 4 - you can start to see the new
scoby forming on the top.
Sal is floating somewhere at the bottom.

Day 7

Day 7

Day 15 - the new scoby is looking strong,
he has been named Gary :).
Who needs pets when you can have
a culture?!

Day 15

At day 15 I tasted it and decided I wanted to start drinking it. The longer you leave it the more sugar the scoby "eats" and the more vinegar-y it tastes and it already tasted quite sour. 

Now, I'll tell you that in the last few days the tea was so dark that I could not see Sal anymore. I presumed she was happily sitting at the bottom while the new and bigger scoby Gary took all the limelight at the top. I thought I would see her when I poured the tea into a glass bottle for storage. But  guess what?! She wasn't there!!! I'm not sure if she attached herself to the underside of Gary because apparently that can happen. 

Scoby's can be handled, however, you need to clean your hands with vinegar first. I didn't have any vinegar so I just moved it with a wooden spoon. I guess I'll never know what happened to Sal but I like to think her and Gary have become nicely acquainted ;).

Removing Gary to start
the second brew.

Gary on the left waiting to go in the second brew
and the tea ready to drink on the right. 

I've been drinking about half a glass of tea a day. I think I'll play with flavouring next brew because it is not that easy to drink. It'll take a few weeks to notice health benefits although I already feel my stomach doing things straight after I drink it.

On a side note - kombucha tea makes for some wonderful conversation starters. A few nights ago I was explaining all about the tea to my housemate and her boyfriend. A few hours later they were completely shocked to see a man on his bicycle in the street carrying a giant jar with 3 scoby's in it!!! "It's Laura's dealer" they said! They couldn't believe it and said they would have thought he was carrying black market livers if it wasn't for seeing my brew set-up a few hours earlier! 

Has anyone been inspired to try making kombucha themselves? I'd love to give you a starter scoby so just let me know. As you can probably tell, you can become quite attached to the little cultures and it is a lot of fun AND a great sense of achievement. I'll be the dealer ;).

xx