Kombucha is a pleasant tasting, powerfully effective health drink / food supplement which you can make at home for next to nothing.
The taste can vary depending on how you make it but the basic recipe, which most people use, will produce a slightly sparkling drink that tastes like an apple cider or dry white wine.
Though there is alcohol in it, it is normally so low that commercial producers can sell Kombucha as “non-alcoholic”. You can expect less than 1% by volume alcohol content.
Sugar is used as part of the recipe but it is not used as a sweetener. The sugar is broken down and converted into different components of the finished drink.
It has been drunk for many generations. In fact, it has been around so long that we are unable to tell where it was originally discovered or when.
Kombucha is a fermented drink made from sweet tea and a Kombucha mushroom or Kombucha culture as it should more properly be called.
The culture is live and is a co-dependant blend of healthy bacteria, yeasts and other micro-organisms.
Though, it may appear complicated at first, Kombucha is actually very easy to make.
This website contains all the information you need to start making Kombucha in your own home and answers many of the questions that you may have.
We should clear up the confusion and difference between Kombucha Tea and the Kombucha Culture before going much further.
Kombucha tea
Kombucha, or Kombucha tea is the actual health drink, which we make from sweet tea and a Kombucha culture. According to Janneke, it is known by a number of different names around the world including – Cainii Kvass, Kombuchakvass, Tea wine and Teekvass.
Kombucha culture
The Kombucha culture is the live substance which is put into the sweet tea to ferment and convert it into Kombucha tea. The culture is probably best known as a Kombucha mushroom, though this is an incorrect definition.
The Kombucha culture has been known as a mushroom, a lichen and many other things but the best and most accurate definition we have today is a “symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast”.
This is just a scientific term for a co-dependant live mix of bacteria and yeast. That definition sounds a little complicated, though it is where we get the more friendly term “SCOBY” from.
The culture has been given many names, Gunther W. Frank, in his book – “Kombucha, Health beverage and natural remedy from the Far East” lists 70 different names for the culture including – Combucha, Brinum-Ssene (Latin for miracle fungus), Champignon miracle and tea fungus.
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Kombucha drinkers around the world have reported a massive list of ailments and sicknesses which have responded positively to drinking Kombucha on a regular basis. This is how the name “Miracle Fungus” or “Cure-all” has been birthed.
The secret of Kombucha is not that it ‘cures’ a multitude of illnesses but, that it boosts your body’s own system to fight those sicknesses.
It does have various components, which on their own fight problems, but its probioitic properties are what make Kombucha tea so extraordinary.