My mother is a master of concoction, a veritable alchemist in the kitchen, always fiddling and creating new flavor sensations out of ingredients only few on the front line of alternative nutrition have heard of. As children, my brother and I were the only ones at snack time to whip out containers of alfalfa sprouts, sprouted wheat toast, and sunflower seeds (otherwise known to our peers as "birdseed"), and were members of the elite few who knew how to to pronounce "macrobiotic" before the age of 5. Ok, so it was a little traumatizing to be the only one at lunch who no one wanted to trade with, and I had a strange obsession with Oreos until I was around 15, but in the long run I'm grateful for the attention my mother gave to our health and the wealth of knowledge she's imparted along the way. Today she's still at it, pushing the boundaries with delicacies such as homemade Kombucha, raw cacao and superfood smoothies, and delicate kale chips. Below is a recipe for the latest version of her POMEGRANATE WHITE TEA KOMBUCHA. It's a little confusing, but if you can sort it out, you too can have a freshly brewed jar of tea, replete with mushroom culture, fermenting in your closet.
What you will need:
Starter culture
4 cups Kombucha (already fermented)
2 Gallon Ball jars
6 Pomegranate White Tea bags (or any caffeinated tea of your choice)
1 cup agave nectar
Step 1. Make a batch of caffeinated tea of your choice. Ratio should be 6 tea bags per gallon yield. You don't need to brew the tea in a gallon of water, this will be the yield when you're finished. Add 1 cup agave nectar to the condensed tea mixture and let cool.
Step 2. Carefully rinse your starter culture patty, otherwise known as "the Mother". This is kinda gross, kinda awesome, and not for the faint of heart.
Step 3. Add "Mother" and already made Kombucha to a clean gallon jar. Click HERE for container resource.
Step 4. Add tea mixture to "mother" mixture and fill rest of jar with water. Cover with a breathable cloth towel and put in a dark, warm place to ferment. The mixture will take between 8 days and 4 weeks to properly ferment. Taste intermittently to check on status (those little twist spouts come in quite handy here). Once it tastes right to you strain off the liquid into a new clean gallon jar, rinse the culture, and start all over!
For information regarding the health benefits and considerations of Kombucha click HERE.
*Disclaimer: Too much Kombucha will over acidify your body. Imbibe in moderation.
