Lily's Kombucha Upgrades: Shelf and a few Giant Jars
This has been growing and multiplying with my help in my laundry room for almost six months. At this point, I've got 13 total gallons brewing capacity although I'm just starting to get those two biggest jars started today. This room was for lack of a better term an absolute disaster until we invested in these shelves. I'm so excited about both the shelves and the new jars (and old, I still love them all) that I took some photos to show you all how things have progressed.
The above two photos are my best attempt at an area to cool my tea quickly. While I experimented briefly with the idea of brewing a small amount super strong and diluting it, I find I like the resulting brew better when I deal with the long wait time by brewing the tea all in a big batch. So setting them in a place with a lot of good air flow is my best attempt at cooling my brews quickly.
And now we've dedicated the smaller fridge to housing my kombucha, as it was taking up too much of the fridge. Lots of great upgrades with my favorite ferment.
Check out some of my other recent posts!
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Hey Lily where do you get your Scoby? Nice post I love me some kombucha especially homemade and organic =)
@kennyskitchen brought it with him from Oregon last year. After brewing his own here, he split up his scobies before he left and I purchased one in the smaller barrel jar featured in these photos.
Kombucha has been surprising for me. I asked for the scoby as a last ditch effort as I was honestly pretty sick at the time. Everything made me nauseus but kombucha helped and continues to help. As I type, I've got a cup of ginger hibiscus, or jamaica as they call it here.
Good shit is that Flor de Jamaica? I'm in Colombia and we drink that a lot. Kombucha is new here though, my homie brews his own I have to track down a Scoby!
Yep, you can brew kombucha with it. In my research I've found kombucha likes :green tea, black tea, flor de jamaica, jasmine and oolong.
Never heard of kombucha before. So it's like a cold beverage of tea, sound interesting. Big tea lover myself :)
It's fermented tea that utilizes a colony of yeast and bacteria strains to make this fermented drink that's honestly changed my life.
So what does it taste like?
.....it's hard to describe. Unflavored it's like tangy and nutty...believe it or not. The flavors make a big difference...but it's tasty
Man, my mom gave my brother and me that in the 90's. I remember it as something sour that we didn't like. Interesting to find your post! Thank you for share it
Thats interesting to hear you didn't like it! I've heard a lot of kids dig kombucha.
Yes, I remember my mom giving us the tea in a shot without sugar. Maybe somebody tell her it was the right way to serve it, I don't know. hehe
It's the best way for kids...although sweetener would not have hurt lol. But small doses like that are best for kids
Love the photos! I need to clean out my big jars. They have turned into scoby hotels and I haven't actually made a fresh batch in several months. I've been playing around with water kefir since it's much quicker to make. But I love both.
Do you not have half the kombucha shoot out of those glass bottles? I tried those and got tired of wasting so much. I use plastic bottles with screw lids now.
Hey! Another brewer :D
I clean out my jars every brew otherwise it starts to taste like beer and I'm not into that. I've got a baby hotel as my oh shit jar in case I fuck up the rest but so far it's just been sitting growing fat pellicles in it. Soon, I'll take them out and feed it.
As for the bottles these are what I've used the whole time. I get perfect fizz so long as I do my end correctly. I burp once a day and I only 2f for like 2 days before it goes into the fridge. Then the carbonation calms down for like a week until it randomly starts building in the cold....kind of suggesting that kombucha caaan brew in those temps just super slow. Anyhow, those bottles are nice because you can hold down the lid as you open them and feel the pressure on your hands. I've had bottles that would have emptied themselves before but I noticed that was going to happen so I held the cap down and burped it bit by bit over a few minutes. Eventually some does foam over, but I aim it in a wait so I can capture it into a cup :)
The only explosion I've had was when it got put into this fridge, I had three large bottles (sob) explode because it was too cold, freezing the bottles and causing the liquid to expand. But other than that, no issues!
And as for water kefir, I wanna try it but I cant get ahold of kefir grains here in Acapulco as far as I know, I'll have to have someone smuggle them. My kombucha starter was originally smuggled from the states, lucky me lol
I never thought reading about jars can be this interesting. I'm loving it. :)
Jars are incredibly interesting. From chemical composition to history, I love it haha
sound intresting :D lily