Summertime is here. If you’re anything like us, hosting family and friends for outdoor gatherings is an important part of your summer fun traditions.
Figuring out what to serve includes food and refreshments. The food part is easy if you have a grill. Just toss on some of your favorite meats and veggies and voila! You have a quick and easy meal for everyone.
Deciding what drinks go best with your entrée and desserts is sometimes more challenging. That’s where kombucha comes in.
If you’re asking yourself, “kombu, what?” then this blog is for you. In it, we discuss:
Kombucha is a fizzy and tangy fermented beverage that has become a popular and refreshing summer drink. Its origins are a bit elusive, but it’s believed that it originated in East Asia thousands of years ago.
Its exact beginnings may be obscured by time, but that hasn’t stopped it from becoming steeped in legend and folklore.
One popular theory has kombucha first being brewed in ancient China during the Qin Dynasty around 220 BCE. The drink was revered for its detoxification and energizing properties. It was highly prized among emperors and nobility. You wouldn’t have found many common folks like us enjoying it in those days.
Another theory places Japan as kombucha’s birthplace, where the culture’s traditional tea and fermentation practices align well with how kombucha is made.
We may never know how it started, but that doesn’t stop us from enjoying it.
Some of the basic ingredients of most homemade kombucha recipes are tea, sugar, and a Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast (SCOBY). Of these ingredients, SCOBY is arguably the most important. It’s responsible for the fermentation process that transforms sweetened tea into the tangy and bubbly beverage known as kombucha.
The advantages of using homemade kombucha recipes to make this tasty summer favorite are plentiful. For starters, it’s cheaper than buying pre-made kombucha in the store. You’ll pay anywhere from $3 to $5 for a 16-ounce bottle of store-bought kombucha. Ouch!
The initial investment in the materials you’ll need to make your own at home is around $50. However, you can reuse all these materials each time, only adding a cup of sugar and 8 tea bags of your choosing to a packet of SCOBY to produce roughly 128 ounces of kombucha.
When you break it down, there’s no comparison in cost. You’ll spend about $0.08 for 16 ounces of homemade versus the $3 to $5 you’ll spend on the same amount in the store.
Another reason to make your own kombucha is the ability to customize your flavors. You can choose from a variety of homemade kombucha recipes, or experiment by combining the basic ingredients with some of your favorite flavors to create something new.
Before you can get started with a homemade kombucha recipe, you’ll need to purchase some equipment. All these items are reusable, so once you make the initial investment, that’s it.
Here’s a list of the essentials:
Make sure you clean and sanitize all equipment before and after use to keep from introducing harmful bacteria to your homemade kombucha recipe.
Following a homemade kombucha recipe requires dedication and patience. It’s not a quick process by any stretch of the imagination. But we promise the effort is worth it once you taste the fruits of your labor.
Here’s a step-by-step process for brewing homemade kombucha.
Adding flavoring to your homemade kombucha is done during the secondary fermentation process. You can use fruits, herbs, spices, and flavor combinations of any of those ingredients to come up with your unique taste.
Fruits add a burst of zing to your mixture. Some of our favorites to add include:
Herbs and spices that work well with most kombucha recipes include:
Some of the flavor combinations we’ve found work well together include:
Following homemade kombucha recipes isn’t without its complications. If you’re new to the process, you might find your finished product moldy, excessively acidic, or that it just tastes a bit “off.”
Once you’ve spent all that time brewing your homemade kombucha, make sure you safely store it so you can enjoy it. If you don’t store it correctly, it’ll lose its flavor, carbonation, and overall quality. Here’s what you need to do once it’s finished.
Following homemade kombucha recipes is time-consuming but well worth the effort. You’ll have an amazingly refreshing drink for the summer your family and friends will enjoy. You can save money while enjoying the many benefits of this ancient drink.
In our kitchen, we only use cultures from Cultures for Health.
Get yours here and start culturing today.
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