Saturday, September 1, 2012

The Art of Fermenting

Gregg finds this very strange. I probably used to think it was strange too. But I will try anything once! I have made batches of sauerkraut from scratch before, and my latest craze is kombucha tea. It costs about $3 for a 16oz bottle of kombucha so it is much cheaper to make your own.
So you purchase a SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria & Yeast) that is alive and feeds on the sugar in the tea, which ferments the tea. It is full of probiotics, detoxes, high in anti-oxidants, improves digestion, boosts energy, and supposedly is cancer preventing, as well as many other things!

Here is a picture of the SCOBY on top of the tea. Usually when you add the "mother", it produces a "baby" on the surface of the tea, like the one pictured here.
Pretty gross looking, right?

Anyway, Gregg still thinks I am out of my mind for making and drinking this stuff, but I actually like it! You can also double ferment it with fruit juice and after bottling it, leaving it out to ferment some more will make it have a little more fizziness! 

I made another batch of sauerkraut tonight, which will be ready in about 2 weeks. I used cabbage & carrots in this one. Should be interesting. Well that's my exciting blog post on my obsession with probiotics.

1 comment:

  1. I used to make water kefir all the time. Lost one culture when we moved here, and the second went bad when we went on our annual trip to PA. ... so if you go that route at some point I want some fresh water kefir grains. hmm.... maybe I should post on facebook?

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