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RE: Kombucha Chronicles, part 12: Weed Berry Booch Tasting, My Favorite Second Ferment Flavors and Thoughts on Brewing
got all my stuff to begin trying to grow my own scoby. I have been holding out because Im on a well. and wasn't sure if well water was safe..with all the minerals..but compared to fluoride city water it couldn't be better in my mind....how was the effects with marijuana leaves? great post. thanks.
I didn't use them for any psychoactive effects, they were just fan leaves with no trichomes. That being said it added an interesting sweetness to the brew. As for starting your own, do you drink your well water? Is it high in minerals? Those can degrade a scoby after time, things like iron ect. If your water is super mineral rich, just buy reverse osmosis bottled water or something to that effect.
I know some people are on really nice wells that are actually better than what you get in a bottle
I am on a very lovely well..drink, bathe and cook with it...and actually reverse osmosis seems like a down grade..I did question the mineral effect..but I won't know until I try..thanks for the reply.
I've seen many posts from people in my kombucha groups of people that have used high quality well water for years, sometimes like 20 years with no problems. So go ahead and try! If you get no mold and good scoby production, there's no issue! If you notice you're having issues forming the scoby it might have too much minerals and metals in it. Irons a bad one for scobies, that's why people advise against using molasses or brown sugar
thank you for your reply..it will be very useful in this process..I was going to use coconut sugar. I have instead decided to stick the organic cane sugar...fingers crossed
Of the alternative sugars, that's one of the ones people have okay success with. When they do use it they generally substitute with white every couple of brews for the scoby. I would start trying to grow the scoby in the white sugar, preferable cane if you can
Organic Cane sugar will be used to start to grow the scoby..once I can get one to actually grow..I will experiment. thanks again
What I do is use 1/3 alternative sugar (jaggery for me), 2/3 cane sugar in every brew. Earlier on I used more jaggery but found it caused a yeast dominant brew and slow fermentation. Jaggery is too high in minerals to use 100%, but I've found 1/3 jaggery works well and gives a nice caramel note. Apparently the culture adapts to different food over time, thats why you need to introduce certain ingredients gradually (like how some people wean the brew onto white tea). In my understanding, its best to use similar ingredients for each brew, so that the food is well matched to the bacteria in the starter liquid.