Today, a baby was delivered to my doorstep. A kombucha baby that is! The past few months I have been an avid kombucha drinker. The taste of kombucha is one of umami, meaning “delicious” in Japanese. There are many theories about how many tastes our tongues can detect–ayurveda says there are six (sweet, salty, sour, butter, pungent, astringent) while science says we have five: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami.
Over a hundred years ago, French chef Auguste Escoffier and simultaneously half way across the world a Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda were toying with the same idea– there is something more to this dish than just salty, sweet, bitter, or sour. Escoffier was the inventor of veal stock (opening his own restaurant in Paris and only used his stock as a basis for most dishes…it was wildly popular…delicious maybe?). Ikeda used his laboratory to find out what the ‘delicious’ taste was he was finding in so many of his favorite foods; he soon found out it was glutamic acid but he decided to rename it. He called it “umami,” which means “delicious” or “yummy” in Japanese.
Fermented foods have the umami property as well–kombucha is a fermented drink. Unlike beer or wine, the alcoholic properties are slight; rather it is better known for it’s amazing effects on the digestive and immune systems. “Much like yogurt, a cup of kombucha can be reserved to make the next batch. This is because it is a living brew, with microorganisms that are beneficial to our digestive tract and others claim help other internal systems. The culture is not a fungus, as some report, but a mixture of bacteria and yeast that forms a gelatinous, yellowish substance.”
Sounds kind of gross, doesn’t it? And it doesn’t exactly look all that pretty either. However, when I was told that I sat up in the middle of the night and said clear as day “I can’t wait to make Kombucha!” only to promptly lay back down and have absolutely no recollection of this the next day, I knew I had to act. So I got on craigslist and a lovely woman dropped off a kombucha mother and it’s baby right to my doorstep today. Amazing!
I’ve been doing some reading and found this, this and this if you were interested in reading more. There is so much out there on how to brew it, what it is, best methods, and how best to drink it, this is only the tip of the iceburg. Time to get fermenting!
Salud!
Kombucha recipe:
1 kombucha mother (if you need one and are in the Portland area, I will certainly have one for you in a few weeks, just let me know!)
4 -6 cups distilled water–boil it to purify
1 cup white sugar
4-6 bags organic black or green tea–you can use flavored teas here too, except Earl Grey, apparently the bergamont oils in that tea are not good for the mother.
In a sterilized wide mouth glass jar (the one I am using in the pictures above has a bit of a small mouth, this will just make fermenting time take longer), pour the boiled water, sugar and tea bags into. Let steep until the tea mixture is room temperature…if it’s too hot, you will kill your culture. Stir with a wooden spoon, metal is not all that great for the cultures either…those finicky cultures! 
Pour your kombucha culture and the left over kombucha brew it’s sitting in, into the large jar/tea mixture. Use a tea towel, cheese cloth, or ripped t-shirt to cover the mouth, and use a rubber band to secure; apparently fruit flies like to get into the brew and lay their eggs if it is left uncovered.
Then, let sit 7-14 days, start tasting after about 5 days until your desired sourness/sweetness is reached! Keep in a warm, dark place like your basement or a kitchen cupboard, the less light the better!
This is an experiment and my first time brewing, so if you have any advice, feel free to leave it!
Related posts:
