Kombucha Mushroom Distribution

[anthonydissen]

Hello everyone!

I just received my first kombucha mushroom/SCOBY, and hopefully will have delicious kombucha in about a week! As my SCOBY will be producing many new babies, I wanted to let everyone know that I am more than happy to hand out SCOBY babies to interested co-opers for free. If anybody is interested, let me know and we'll figure out when a SCOBY baby will be ready for pick up/what time works best for pick-up. SCOBY distribution will happen at the co-op. =)

Anthony

[Pandora Scooter]

I totally don't know the first thing about SCOBY, but if you could direct me to an informative and accurate site to find out, I may be very interested in receiving one of your SCOBY babies (thank you for the generosity!).

Peace,

Pandora

[Pandora Scooter]

Hi Anthony:

I found a great site: www.thenewhomemaker.com/kombucha with wonderful information on brewing the kombucha. I think I'm in, so just leave a note when you have the SCOBY babies (and would you be willing to part with about 1/2 cup of the kombucha, too? the direcitons suggest that). Let me know if you'd like any dough for this!

Yay! Thanks,

Pandora

[anthonydissen]

Hi Pandora!

I'll have to check that website out! I highly recommend kombuchakamp.blogspot.com created by Hannah Crum. She also has an online "How To" guide to kombucha brewing on Expert Village. As soon as I have some babies I'll definitely let you know! And I'd be more than willing to part with some kombucha to begin your brewing process =)

[Pandora Scooter]

Thanks! Looking forward to it.

Peace & Happy New Year.

Pandora

[Rich Menashe]

have you or anyone you know tried honey instead of sugar-
how about flavorings like the commercial stuff-
rich

[anthonydissen]

I myself do not like the use of sugar in my daily diet. That being said, most of the research I have done advocates the use of raw, unrefined sugar in brewing kombucha because 1) the SCOBY can more readily use that as a food 2) other sweeteners may lead to a foul tasting kombuhca 3) sucrose produces the greatest quantity of healthful substances and 4) the SCOBY eats most to all of the sugar, so there is practically none left in the final tea. This is my first time brewing kombucha, so I am going to see where I am at day 7, see how it tastes, and possibly experiment with brown rice syrup after that. I know most people say to stay away from honey because honey is a natural antibiotic and could damage the SCOBY. However, I have read from sources people claiming to have amazing success with honey, maple syrup, brown rice syrup, etc. So my thought is to try it with sugar until you have a couple of SCOBYs lying around, and dedicate one of them to trying honey or whatever, so that way if things do go bad you have other SCOBYs still viable and brewing away. As for flavorings, as I understand it you can use practically anything you like to flavor your tea, but that flavoring absolutely must be done after brewing your tea. If you put flavorings in the tea during brewing, or use flavored teas, herbal teas, Earl Grey, pretty much anything besides organic black and/or organic green tea, you can damage the SCOBY. But after the tea is brewed and you move it to whatever vessel you are going to use, the sky is the limit on what you'd like to flavor it with.

[Pandora Scooter]

Great info/explanation. This jives with what I've read, too.

[Rich Menashe]

Thanks for the info-
It seems that flavoring the kombucha would definitely be done after it is made but possibly you could do it before it carbonates fully in the bottle.
As for honey if you heat it it won’t have any of those antibiotic properties but it would be interesting to see if it could be done with raw honey.
It certainly would pay to have extra starter around or a friend to get one from thanks again-
Happy brewing
Rich