I hate paying exorbitant amounts for drinks. It seems the shelves of cafes here are filled with really tempting concoctions from apple cider vinegar and honey (okay okay, that's not to everyone's taste, but I love it!) to chai and vanilla kombucha to frangipani coconut kefir.

I'm a bit of a sucker for 'treating' myself to a nice drink in the name of experimentation - I have to taste test it so I know how to make it, you know? I'm sure you do the same thing with like - cake! It's a great justification for buying stuff you don't need.

But ouch! The apple cider vinegar on the right cost me $7! It was one of those embarrassing check out moments where you just don't want to yell - 7 bucks! What the actual flying fuck! It's VINEGAR AND HONEY! And the kombucha below was about $5 too - about twenty times more than you can make it for.

Granted, ayurvedic chai / handblended spices / slow fermented / organic and live probiotic elixir sounds awesome. Especially since they call it an ELIXIR. I wonder how healthy these drinks are - they are mass produced, after all. Apparently, if it's pasteurized, it's going to get rid of those 'elixir' medicinal qualities anyway, and if it's not, it's going to keep on fermenting in the bottle and get more alcoholic. How do I know if it's pasteurized or not? Most bottles won't tell you. I googled the 'Bod' one pictured (handmade in Melbourne) and turns out it is definitely RAW and unpasteurized, so that's good.

Despite the fact I enjoyed it, I did start obsessing over figures in my head and thinking it could cost me $35 a week for a hardcore 'boosh habit. After duly reprimanding myself for being a lazy, scoby neglecting bad person, I launched into Operation Scoby Saving, grabbling them from where they languised in the dark under the laundry sink where they layer like fat alien babies, vying for space. I don't know how long they last for, but I'm sure they'd appreciate a feed of sugar.

A scoby is an acronym for Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria and Yeast. It's a home for the bacteria and yeast that enable sweet tea to turn into tangy kombucha. It's slimy and it's weird when you first create it but it's a miraculous beast indeed.

I usually make tea kombucha, but my girlfriend just returned from Burma where she had donned nun robes and took the ten precepts for a few months, and she brought me back some Burmese green tea.

Bestie being nunnish in Burma

Tea is an important part of daily life in Myanmar, and they even make a salad out of green tea leaves called Lahpet, pictured below. Have you ever tried it? I got quite addicted to it when we were there! It's crazy stuff:

Burmese tea leaf salad (လက်ဖက်သုပ်) is served as two main forms. First is mainly used to serve in ceremonies and is called A-hlu lahpet (အလှူလက်ဖက်, လက်ဖက်သုပ်လူကြီးသုပ် or အဖွားကြီးအိုသုပ်) or Mandalay lahpet. The second one is mostly served with meals and is more popular. The best tea leaves are selected for fermenting and the rest for drying. They are steamed for about five minutes before either drying or fermenting. Young leaves are packed into bamboo vats set in pits and pressed by heavy weights; the fermentation process is checked at intervals and the pulp may occasionally require re-steaming

You can find a recipe for Lahpet here

Gawd. That's making me hungry - must concentrate - where was I? Oh yeah! Green tea Kombucha...

So, with a stack of green tea I thought I'd ditch the black tea 'boosh for a change and see how a green tea one would go. I'd heard that it didn't take as well as black tea but I didn't find that was the case at all, although it did take a little longer to get to the desired tartness - although that could have been the weather.

How to Make Green Tea Kombucha

• Make a strong tea (enough for about 2 litres of liquid - this will fill around 2 x 2 litre bottles) and 1 cup of sugar, dissolved into the brew.

• Strain the tea leaves, and add a scoby to the cooled liquid, and leave for around 7 - 14 days. The warmer your environment, the quicker it will ferment.

• When it gets to the desired 'boosh taste (ever so slightly vinegary or tart), pour into bottles, preferably with a sealed lid. Ones like these are great, but you can use Grolsch or cordial bottles that use the same sealed kit. I stole Jamie's bottles from his home brew drawer - I won't tell him if you won't.
  

  
  
  

• Leave the top few inches free - you want to allow room for fizz - and it can really fizz!! This is called the 2F or second ferment, and I would seriously caution you here - put it in a laundry sink or somewhere you won't cry if it explodes. Yep, it's happened to me!

• Squeeze in a lime and a few jalepeno peppers and seal it up. Leave for anywhere between 1 and 4 days - but I'd 'burp' your bottle every day to relieve a little of the excessive gas so it doesn't explode. Once it's got a proper fizz going, pop in the fridge where it will keep for weeks and the brewing slows down in the cold - eventually, it will turn to vinegar, but I've never had it in my fridge long enough for that to happen!
  

  If it's too strong (and too much kombucha can really affect people, especially if you aren't used to it) try watering it down with soda water.

  However, with the jalapenos and lime, one of the best combos of this drink is with some soda water and vodka. It's a great way to make your vodka healthy, right?

  Do you make kombucha? What flavours do you make?

  In this round, as I had about 6 litres of it, I also saw what other flavours I had to hand, and also made a mango & turmeric, fennel & lemon & ginger, and a chai spice 'boosh. So much fun.

  Plus, I felt victorious - I'd saved a ton of cash. Woo!