Fermentation Part 2- Kombucha

This is the second episode in our fermentation series, and it features kombucha! What is it? How do you make it? Is it really good for you? Listen along as we explore this fun, bubbly topic!

Resources: 

https://foodsafety.ces.ncsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Kombucha-Colorado-State.pdf?fwd=no

https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/kombucha-

faqshttps://www.canr.msu.edu/news/kombucha_tea_origin_ingredients_and_precautions

Transcript

Lindsey Edwards: 0:01

Welcome to the Extension Connection podcast series where we connect our listeners to research-based resources to help them build better lives. Hello, everyone. It's Lindsay Edwards, your family and consumer science agent in Polk County. Coming at you today with a new topic in my fermentation series. Today I'm gonna be talking to you about kombucha. What is it? How can I make it? And are there really any benefits to my diet in drinking it? So let's get started. According to the University of Oregon, kombucha is a lightly effervescent cider like beverage made from fermenting sweet tea. Well. Not everyone loves the flavor of kombucha. If this is something you want to start brewing at home, I would suggest going out and purchasing a bottle from your local supermarket and try to aim for a low sugar added. Beverage and taste it, before you start brewing because it does have a flavor that has a slightly, acidic, similar to a vinegar flavor. It's not as strong as vinegar by any means. But if you are not a vinegar person, you're not gonna love kombucha. So a little history about kombucha is that we don't actually know when it was started being brewed. They believe around 2020 BC in China, but it has been around for a long time. But the popularity, especially in the us. In supermarkets really didn't start it until the 1990s and it started to be sold commercially in grocery stores. Before then, home brewers would just create their delicious brew at home. So why did it become so popular? What I found is according to Penn State Extension Office. They did research at their local farmer's markets on why people wanted to drink kombucha, so they surveyed the people who were purchasing it. They found that 66% of the respondents said they wanted to drink it for its probiotic benefits or their belief. Of the probiotic benefits, 57% even stated that they cared about the benefits over what the drink actually tasted like. While these are claims of the probiotic benefits in Buche, We do know that it is a fermented product, so it does contain that lactic acid probiotic, there are claims that it may aid in digestion. There's also claims that probiotic benefits can be helpful for gut health leading to better immune systems. And although at Extension we cannot necessarily support these claims, it is important to remember that it is a fermented beverage and it does contain probiotics. According to Michigan State University, kombucha does. Also have, B vitamins, antioxidants, organic acids, and trace minerals. So again, just like sauerkraut, it has other nutritional benefits other than the probiotics. So while the claims can be kind of confusing, and if you're choosing to drink this beverage, just remember that it does have some nutritional value. And it does have probiotics. Now, if you're purchasing kombucha at the grocery store, I want you to read your nutrition labels and aim to purchase a brand that is low in added sugar. It is a fermented sweet tea, so it's going to always contain some added sugar, but during the first fermentation process, the sugar is usually consumed by the scoby. Which we'll get to in just a second. And that lowers the overall sugar content of the product. When you do a second ferment to make it carbonated, many companies will add a lot of extra sugar to it, and it will give them a carbonated beverage, but it also will make it much sweeter. Kombucha is not naturally a super, super sweet drink, and we just wanna make sure that we're not. Taking in or consuming a lot of excess sugar. So just aim for the ones that have less added sugar. The cool thing about making kombucha at home on that point is that you get to control that second batch ferment and how much sugar that you do add or don't add to that second ferment. Kombucha is made. By brewing a black tea or green tea and adding sugar to it, and then putting a SCO and letting it ferment at room temperature. Very similar to how we talked about doing sauerkraut, but this process has what's called a scoby. A SCOBY is a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast and what acobi is. When you look it up on the internet, you will find pictures of a gelatinous, kind of gross looking, disc. And that's actually only part of a scoby. A SCOBY is also the liquid. So when we're talking about fermenting. Tea you have to have or you have to add in some of the liquid from a previous batch, plus that gelatinous disc, which is actually called a pellicle, to produce a new batch of kombucha. How do you get a scoby? You can purchase them online. Sometimes local farmer's markets may have them, or health stores may have them. I actually made my first SCOBY by purchasing a bottle of kombucha from the store. Making my sweet tea and I'll give you a recipe in a second. And then adding that two cups of that and letting it ferment for two to three weeks, and it produces its own pellicle and own scoby, which you can then use to make kombucha. The cool thing about SCOBYs. Is that every time you brew a new batch of kombucha, a new pellicle grows. So if you know someone that brews kombucha, that's also a great source to get them from because they can actually split theirs and give you part of it. So you can start on your brew brewing journey. So I'm gonna be sharing a recipe from Colorado State University on how to make kombucha. First and foremost, make sure that you're creating a clean environment as possible, so cleaning your jar really well. Washing your hands really well, any type of. Equipment that you'll be using like a spoon, any of that needs to be very sanitary and clean. for this recipe, it's gonna be using a one gallon vessel. And what it says to do is to brew four to eight tea bags. And that's either green tea or black tea. Avoid using herbal teas as they do not ferment the same way. And they're not as acidic as those black and green teas. And you're gonna steep this for about 10 minutes, and you're gonna make a really, really small batch of this. The recipe actually says a fourth of a cup. So you're brewing that many tea bags in just a little tiny bit of water. You're making a very, very strong concentrate. You can do more than a fourth of a cup. I usually do like a cup of it. And then you're gonna pour that into your gallon vessel and then you're gonna fill it the rest of the way up with a gallon of water. So if you were using one cup, there's 16 cups in a gallon, so that would be 15 more cups of of room temperature water.'cause what you're trying to do is you're cooling down that brew because if it's too hot, it can actually kill your scoby. So once cooled. You can then add one to two cups of sugar, and it's not very much of sugar for a gallon of tea. If we live in the south. A lot of times people are adding way more sugar to their sweet tea than one cup for a gallon. But, that is considered enough, one cup of sugar to one gallon of tea, and then you're going to add your one to two cups. Of your SCOBY liquid from a previous view and your pellicle. If you buy a SCOBY online, it'll come with that gelatinous disc, but it'll also have one to two cups of liquid, so you can start this first brew process. Then what I do is I cover mine with a coffee filter, the top of mine with a coffee filter, and I put a rubber band around it. You want this to be able to breathe and get air but you don't want bugs to be able to get in, so just be sure that you are covering it with something that has a really, really fine opening. Then you're gonna let it sit at room temperature for seven to 14 days at day seven. Go ahead and taste it. If you like the flavor, you can stop the first ferment, and if you want it to be more acidic, then you can keep fermenting to stop your first fermentation. You're going to either need a pop top bottle and make sure it's round. I have used old kombucha bottles that I've washed and sanitized from the grocery store to make home brew of kombucha as well, because they have been made to hold kombucha in them. And you're going to add your kombucha to that bottle. And then this is the fun part that you get to actually flavor it with 10 to 20%, either fruit juice or clean fruit. And then you can kind of experiment with your herbs and spices. So at this point, it's where you get to really be creative with this because. you're getting to do new flavors and that is really exciting for me because I like experimenting with flavors and especially during the summer when things are in season making kombucha that are seasonal is a really exciting thought to me. I have made one that was like a blueberry, lavender flavor from things that I had in my garden. I am also right now currently trying a cherry almond extract flavor, so it has cherries and then almond extract. It's very reminiscent of a couple of different sodas that are on the market. The smell of it is, I'm also excited to experiment with some strawberry, and maybe I'll just do strawberry, or maybe I'll throw in like some fresh mint or basil in there. And. See what that tastes like. Other flavors that come to mind are things like ginger and citrus, like maybe ginger and lemon, or ginger and orange. watermelon, when watermelon are really in season. I'm gonna try that. A cucumber melon. You can also like experiment different times a year. So I think about like fall when apples are in season, maybe doing an apple cinnamon flavored kombucha just being able to try and do different things and really the flavor combinations are endless. A few safety reminders before we end this episode that I want you to consider. Is, and these are really safety practices for brewing is, I've already told you this, but one, keeping your hands clean, making sure you have a sanitary environment. If you're going in and grabbing that PCO with your hands and they're dirty, you're introducing things in there that shouldn't be in there. And that's when that can mold. And if you ever see signs of mold on your scoby. You have to throw out the whole batch and start your brewing process over again. Wash your vessel really well if you see mold in there and start over. Now, I do want you to keep in mind that when you start brewing kombucha, your scoby can sometimes look kind of funky, the first like two to three days. And you'll also notice that it'll sometimes have like these brown, stringy things underneath the scoby that is your second scoby starting to. create, or it's your second scoby starting to form. So just keep that in mind that unless you know it's actually mold and what you wanna look for with that is something that's fuzzy. It can be blue, green, gray, black or brown, but you're looking for that fuzziness. If you think like, this looks weird, but it could be the scoby. Let it go for a couple more days and just check it again because it may just be the scoby, the new SCOBY forming. Some other reminders is under some conditions of brewing, you might produce a slight bit of alcohol. The alcohol should be below 0.5% to be considered a low alcohol brew. If you are brewing in proper temperature in proper conditions, you should not produce more alcohol than that. Also, remember, this is a probiotic drink, and if you're not used to. Drinking probiotic drinks. You need to start in small amounts and see how your body reacts. There's actually a couple, actually, this recipe suggested starting with four ounces a day and drinking it with water, and some people will say to drink it with food and then to build up to see how your body reacts to that probiotic. See if it likes it or it doesn't like it. And adjusting your amounts. And then like I said, after you drink that four ounces and your body reacts well, you can build up more than that. Well, that's all I have for you today. I wanna thank you for listening to the Extension Connection Podcast and I'll talk to you next time.