Brewing some healing at home.

Getting back to my homesteading interests, I want to talk about my new favorite hobby, Kombucha Brewing and my motivations for it's consumption.

First off, what is Kombucha? It's fermented tea that you can flavor almost any way you can imagine. It's also carbonated, which is a huge plus for those trying to kick soda habits, or just generally get tired of only drinking water all the time.
I am about to finish up my third batch of Kombucha and I'm super excited about it. So far I've had Mango Ginger, Blueberry, and Cherry Cream Soda flavors,
Those might sound pretty involved but for some perspective, in all of my batches the only ingredients I've used are Water, Sugar, Tea, SCOBY, Mango, Ginger, Blueberries, Cherries, Vanilla Bean, and Honey.

About as natural as it can get. Wait, what was the weird word in the middle there? SCOBY. That sounds weird. It is weird! HaHa. It stands for Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast, which is a really long acronym for saying Bacteria and Yeast work together to eat sugar and churn out fermented tea. It casually floats around at the top of the jug, or falls to the bottom, or hangs out in the middle. This weird thing floats around the jug of tea, and 7 days later you have a healthy probiotic drink that's bubbly and tastes a little vinegary but is good and 2-3 days later it can taste like bubbly blueberries! Crazy.

No one wants to deny that our current culture and country are way over medicated. A lot of us suffer from disorders that have at least some roots in the amount of chemicals that enter our bodies. Maybe it's the Antibiotics we take, the pesticides on our food, the chemicals our meat eats, the preservatives we use to store the "middle of the store" food, the chlorine in our public water. There are a ton of ways modern life is seeping into us. These chemicals are depleting the stores of healthy bacteria in our bodies. We can combat this depletion by avoiding some of the causes, but a great way to start re-stocking our healthy gut bacteria is to ingest fermented foods. Eat Food That's Alive!! Sauerkraut, Kimchi, Yogurt, Kefir, Miso, and of course, Kombucha!!

I know a lot of these foods seem strange, and you might not know what they are. I'm in the same boat! I've never enjoyed Sauerkraut, never tried true Kimchi, and had never heard of Kefir or Kombucha until recently. But, new things are not new!! Eating Fermented foods has been a thing for thousands of years, and it's high time they come back into our daily doses of yum.

There are multiple reasons for gut health but I want to focus on my biggest one. Auto-immune Disease. 

A little over 2 years ago I began having really bad problems with my skin. Small blisters on my feet and legs, and severely itchy skin all over my extremities (arms and legs) but really no other symptoms. I went to multiple urgent care type facilities and little clinics and no one could diagnose me. Finally I found a Dermatologist who diagnosed it as Lichen Plantus which is an auto-immune disorder, before he even sat down on his stool. A shave biopsy (they shaved a blister off my arm with a razor), and a punch biopsy (used a very tiny cookie cutter looking thing) and took a deep blister sample out of my calf.  Both biopsies confirmed his diagnosis. So 3 different types of treatments and a couple months and a medication allergy later, it was worse worse. Check these pictures out.

 

Yeah, super gross. Sorry about that. It was bad. Luckily it has not been like that in a long time, but I still have a couple patches that have never gone away on my calves, and a few times it has flared up and bothered my chest, back, and arms. Not the worst thing to have, but certainly not fun. This disorder is basically my body rejecting my skin, and I was allergic to the last ditch effort medication they prescribed. Well, I like having skin. So I'm going to do what I can to ensure I get to keep it. First off was learning that 60% of our immune system is developed in our gut, and then learning about Probiotics. Probiotics are the bacteria that live in symbiosis within us. We need them to help break down food into usable material. So if we take antibacterial medicines, we consume chemicals on our food from not eating organic, we eat a lot of food that wont break down naturally in nature (watch the Super Size Me documentary on Netflix and focus on the breakdown of McDonalds food over time, it doesn't!!), all of these are motivators to consume probiotics and give our bodies the assistance they need to break down food into useable building and repair materials.

Ok, so if your motivated and interested, continue reading!! I'll give you some prices and a breakdown to get started!

First off, the best example and explanation I've found is on Youtube on a channel called Brothers Green. They have a 2 part video series on Kombucha Brewing and Bottling. I followed their videos exactly for the Mango Ginger batch, but switched to gallon batch brewing after the first round. These instructional videos are free!

Secondly get the book pictured at the top of this post. The Big Book of Kombucha is the brewing bible. It's unbelievably full of info, colored pictures, troubleshooting, and tons of flavoring recipes. Like tons. I have Amazon Prime, and the book was 16 dollars. I paid hundreds for textbooks in college that had less information. And less pictures.

Next, the SCOBY. Most people recommend just getting one from a friend, but logistically I didn't want to mess with that, so I ordered one from Fermentaholics.com also through Amazon, and it was $10.

Jars. You'll need a brewing vessel, and I recommend having another large jar for the second ferment. Putting it into the individual drinking containers means you have to filter it every time you want to drink, this was a pain in the butt, it's easier to just have 2 large Gallon Jugs. The first one I bought was off of Amazon, and it was also $10. However, I went to my local brewery store called Brewtensils and bought 2 for $5 each. So, not everything is better online. Go visit your locals dealers!

Tea, Sugar, and Water. You will need about 4 tablespoons of tea, and 1 cup of sugar for each gallon batch. I am not sure what is in our local tap water, so I'm choosing to buy gallons of Spring Water for about $1 dollar a gallon until I invest in a filtration system for our sink.

Lastly you'll want the flavoring ingredients. For example, my most recent batch is a bit of an experiment. One gallon of Lemon Basil called for 3/4 cup of Freshly Squeezed Lemon Juice, and 1/4 cup Roughly Chopped Fresh Basil. I couldn't find fresh Basil, so I am using about 3 tablespoons of dried Basil leaves. I think it will still turn out ok. But the flavoring ingredients can range from stuff you already have sitting in your kitchen or garden all the way to specialty herbs or juices you order online. Those costs are as reasonable as you want to be.

This picture shows the newly brewed Sweet Tea with SCOBY added on the left, and the Lemon Basil Kombucha in the middle. In the back right corner is my last recommendation. Bottling. I had a case of mason jars sitting around so those are what I've used so far and its just a little to hipster for me to keep unscrewing the clanking metal lids in my cubicle at work. Plus they have two piece lids which doesn't make for good drinking. Blah. Buy yourself some of the bottles in this picture. A case of 12 on Amazon runs $20-$25. Worth it. I'll be getting some in the next couple weeks.

So, the most basic things you need are 2 Glass Gallon Jugs, Water, Tea, Sugar, SCOBY. That's it. Everything else is just convenience. Even the conveniences are pretty affordable, just the vessels you want to store them in at the end to make them portable, and the flavorings. Kombucha is perfectly drinkable after the first ferment but I prefer mine to have a little more carbonation and I like to take my stuff to a fun tasty level so I experiment. This whole process can start as cheap as FREE depending on what you have laying around the house/kitchen, and will still only get up to around $40 to get started.

Added content bonus!! I want to share some of the recipe names from The Big Book of Kombucha that I am looking forward to trying soon. I don't want to share their recipes or the recipes from the Brothers Green Youtube channel because these guys definitely put a lot of time and effort into delivering good products, so buy the book, and watch the vids! But I'll finish up with some of the brew namesl see on my Instagram and Facebook in the future.....

Apple Pie

Midnight Fire

Rock the Casbah

Love Potion 99

Turkish Coffee

All in Dew Thyme

Golden Glow

Mellow Buzz

Tibetan Delight

Elder Zandra

Sounds awesome right? Yeah, time to make healthy the cool thing to do.

Lets get back to Life.