Its been more than a year of stopping regular alcohol consumption for me. I've drank occasionally in the last 15 months; overall about a dozen times which I would consider non-regular.
I quit regular alcohol drinking in May 2023 after almost two decades of consumption. The thing with alcohol is it creeps up on every occasion; meeting a friend after long, listening to good music, playing music, finishing a long run, finishing a big assignment/job/project, having a big dinner, and even sometimes when there are no occasions at all! It was burning my time and my pocket too; good beer and other booze are not cheap. There was the emptiness though, what do you fill up those occasions with?
I found two alternatives; home-brewed kombucha and cold-brewed coffee. Both taste way better than any alcohol! In this post, I write about my experiences with making kombucha at home; the tea, the sugar, the starter, and the bottles used.
I started making kombucha at home during the pandemic time when the booze shops were closed for weeks. It started as a fad and then became a culture we keep alive till date. A good kombucha after a meal tastes like champagne!
 |
| My first kombucha, brewed in March 2020 |
The recipe is quite simple; brew some tea, add sugar, add kombucha culture (the best one here: https://bombucha.in/pages/kombucha), leave it for 3 - 4 days depending on the weather, and its ready. There is the option of storing kombucha in air-tight bottles for another 3 - 4 days to develop the fizz. Overall, good kombucha takes a week to prepare in Goa. It may take longer in other places; the culture does well here.
For a litre of kombucha, I add four 1/4 cups of leaf tea and four 1/4 cups of sugar in 900 ml boiled water. Brew for three minutes and separate the leaves. The best tea in my experience is Darjeeling tea, or Assam tea if you like more tannins in the flavour. Korakundah organic tea (https://www.chamrajchai.com/index.php?route=product/product&manufacturer_id=10&product_id=60) works well too and is very affordable in comparison with Darjeeling and Assam leaf tea. I use organic uncoloured sugar. Once the water cools down, add 100 ml of kombucha and thats it.`
The myth of a scoby-starter - A lot of companies sell what they call 'scoby starter' or a 'kombucha starter kit' for a steep price. But scoby is actually 'Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast' and kombucha itself is that. What the companies sell is a pellicle, something that is formed on top of the kombucha every time you brew. This is a byproduct and is not needed for the next culture. This can be disposed as organic waste; some folks also collect these and produce kombucha leather. Overall, you basically need a bottle of store-bought kombucha, drink some of it and keep the rest as starter for your kombucha. No need to bother about the pellicle or what is being sold as 'starter'. Kombucha is the starter!
Fermentation - The one litre of tea prepared with the kombucha culture needs to be kept in a bottle with a cloth tied or rubberbanded; the fermentation is aerobic, so we don't need an airtight lid. We need that for the next step. After two to three days, if you see a thin layer being formed on top and some bubbles on the side of the bottle at the top layer of the tea, all is going well!
Carbonation - Pour out 900 ml of the kombucha in an airtight bottle. I have used various types of bottles and the best ones that work are the bottles with swing-top caps (https://www.kromebrew.in/product/flip-top-bottle/?attribute_qty=Pack+of+6&attribute_capacity=1000ML). The 100 ml leftover can be used for the next brew. I was lucky I found 36 old Grolsch beer bottles from 1984 (https://www.etsy.com/in-en/listing/740649875/vintage-grolsch-beer-bottle-with) in an antique store in Goa, which I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned and replaced the rubber stoppers on top and they work like clockwork. The bottles pop each time opened and that is the beginning of the excitement of drinking the kombucha brewed.
Bonus tips! Recently, I have started using cold-brewed tea for the kombucha. I leave tea leaves in water in the fridge overnight for about twelve hours and then add sugar and the culture the next morning. This kombucha has less tannins and tastes even better.
The next post will be about cold brew coffee. Happy brewing!
Comments
Post a Comment