Homemade kombucha

Several years ago I hopped on the Kombucha bandwagon and became addicted.  I knew that brewing homemade kombucha was possible, but it was just one more item to add to my "Becoming a Domestic Goddess" wishlist.

Until I started grad school and became super broke.

After several months of not drinking the sparkling sweetness, I decided to try out the brew.  I did not want to, or rather afford to buy a SCOBY so I grew my own from store bought kombucha.  Now there are a ton of resouces online about  growing SCOBYs and not  growing SCOBYs from store bought kombucha.  I decided what they hey, I should just try it.

And I think it worked!

After about 8 weeks my jar had a leathery 1/4" thick mass floating on top of my liquid.

I added what I hoped was my SCOBY to my tea/sugar mixture topped it off with cheesecloth and set it in my cabinet to brew away. I used Irish Breakfast tea and organic sugar for my tea.  If you do want to brew kombucha, please do lots of research as to what type of teas and sugar to use.  I'm not going to bore you with dos and don'ts - there is better info out there than what I can give you. Cultures for Health has a plethora of info on kombucha (and lots of other yummy stuff too).   http://www.culturesforhealth.com/kombucha 

After about two weeks (which was yesterday), I checked in on my experiment.  And this is what I found.

My kombucha is turning into kombucha!!!  I  tasted a bit and oh my it is delish.  It smells like kombucha, tastes like kombucha - so it must be kombucha right???  It's starting to carbonate and has a lovely smell.

I'm going to let it sit for about two more weeks, but so far I am pleased.  I sent this photo to my friend who is not on the kombucha bandwagon and her response was "Gross! Are you going to drink that?"  LOL!

I'll keep you updated on my kombucha progress.

Have you tried homemade kombucha?  Do you have any favorite flavor combos?