Kombucha Boogie

ginger, cinnamon vanilla, and in progress

Everyone needs a hobby. My latest is brewing kombucha. When I started, I imagined maybe one batch per month. Now I’m “chain-brewing” so my SCOBY is working 24/7 with no compensation.

Right now, I’m drinking the last bottle from two batches ago, have another four bottles infusing, and a fresh batch of starter tea underway. That’s where SCOBY-Doo is presently housed, feeding merrily on the sugars and creating the bubbles that make kombucha so … weird.

Face it, Ru. It’s weird. Really. Who was brave enough (or fool enough) to peel back the gelatinous layer of goo and sample the smelly liquid beneath it? I guess something similar happened in 18^th century France, when Dom Perignon’s batch of white wine went wrong and champagne was born. Kombucha begins with tea, after all, so clearly something else was intended when the discovery was made. Isn’t that usually the way?

SCOBY (“symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast”) is like a sourdough starter and who knows how old mine is? His direct ancestor belongs to my older sister, who got hers from her daughter, whose beastie can probably trace its lineage back to northeastern China where it supposedly all began. And my own SCOBY is a parent as well – I gave our first baby to a buddy whose initial batch is almost ready for bottling.

Green, black, herbal. Spicy, fruity, tangy—the flavours are proving endless and the “happy bugs” are a bonus as I’m dairy-free and no longer eat yogurt. I’m not 100 per cent sure, either, but my power surges seem to have ceased since I stepped up my kombucha consumption …