Stay tuned for the third and final post where I will go through the process of bottling and ultimately doing a tasting. Honestly, I am really quite excited to see how this turns out now!
Until then, steady brewing!
In a previous post I was going on at length about the Kombucha kit I was sponsored and I promised a follow-up post with regard to the progress and what the next steps were for this mysterious, ancient brew. As promised, herewith comes instalment two of three...albeit a really quick one. The idea was to add some fruity flavours to this brew as the instructions suggest. Endless possibilities I guess, but seeing as I was able to find some fresh strawberries the day before I figured it will be as good a flavour as any to go for. Probably also something the ladies might enjoy so always a safe bet. I grabbed a punnet and convinced myself it would work just great. There are no explicit instructions in the little booklet that accompanied the kit on whether the fruit addition needs to be sanitised or cleaned or something. Going against my better judgement and experience from beer brewing, I pushed on pretending that I am someone that has never brewed anything before besides a pot of filter coffee (I mean this is Cape Town after all). Instead of just throwing it straight into the tea, I thought I would at least rinse them off quickly and remove the little stems. Removing the SCOBY is the only thing that is stated very clearly for these steps and they advise to carefully lift it out and place it in a jar in the fridge along with about half a cup of the tea which will be your starter for the next batch. Of course the final step was to chop the strawberries in half and then I simply dropped them into the bucket of tea and recovered it with the fabric and elastic band. Simples. Not really sure how long it will need to sit, but I started getting a really nice strawberry whiff out of it within about 30 minutes so I am guessing about 24 hours should do the trick.
Stay tuned for the third and final post where I will go through the process of bottling and ultimately doing a tasting. Honestly, I am really quite excited to see how this turns out now! Until then, steady brewing!
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The kind folks over at Tidy&Co decided to send me a Theonista Kombucha Home Brew kit to try out figuring if I can brew beer and ramble about it, I could probably do the same with Kombucha. For those of you who do not know what Kombucha is or have never heard of it (myself included), I have added a couple of links at the end of this post with some more info. From what I read it is a slightly fizzy, fermented tea that is brewed with a special yeast "cake" called a SCOBY (which stands for Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeast***) and using a tiny bit of a previous batch as a starter. There are many folks that tout some serious health benefits although there are no scientific facts to back it up, but I was quite interested to see what this is ever since I heard Serj Tankian go on about the Kombucha Mushroom People back in my high-school metalhead days... The kit arrives complete with everything you need except for a fermentation vessel and they recommend brewing half the batch first time in something like a 3 litre Console glass jar. I suppose this allows you to do a bit more "experimentation" when you do it the second time although I figured I would go big or go home first time! Being home alone for the weekend I dusted off my camera, poured myself a pint and made some time on Sunday afternoon to dive in. Brewing this tea is actually about as easy as doing a kit beer out the can, the hardest part for me was to decide on a fermentation vessel. Luckily I had picked up a 10 litre, food safe plastic bucket the day before that was ultimately destined to be used for experimentally dry-hopping half of my 20 litre beer brews. You might be lucky enough to have something with a wide mouth lying around already so that's half the battle won right there...Camera in one hand (and that beer not far away!) I started going through the instructions:
I have no idea what to expect to be honest so this is quite exciting. The kit advises that you can add some fruit or try and spice it up after the primary fermentation and before moving it to some bottles which I intend to do with at least half of my batch. In the back of my mind I envision keeping some aside to mix in with my next home brew to see what might happen - surely someone has tried it before? A Kombucha-Beer hybrid that I will call "The Chimera"! Oh Hells yeah, I am actually going to do that!!! Do remember to check back next week for Part 2, where I will talk about the bottling and to see what kind of experiment I put this little brew through. Again, a major thank you goes out to Nicole of Tidy&Co for hooking me up with this kombucha kit. Go over and get yourself a batch and see what chimera you can come up with! Else if Kombucha doesn't sound like your thing, just browse around a little. They have quite a selection of gifts and guarantee that they can help you find the perfect gift for anyone so now you have a chance to make up for that Mother's day gift you forgot about! Good luck! Links for more info on Kombucha:
Washington Post on Kombucha Wikipedia article on Kombucha *** What is Kombucha and why is it healthy for you? If anyone was kind enough to follow my posts for a while you might have noticed that I took a bit of Sabbatical so-to-speak. That doesn't mean I did not drink beer of course, but I did not necessarily drink only local beers (or "craft" as the more popular nomenclature would dictate) and not nearly as much as I used to. I also stopped brewing for a short while and stepped out of the beer scene completely in an effort to clear my head, take away my preconceptions and to come back with a clean palate and a fresh hunger for brewing and some good beer experiences or "beersperiences" if you are one for contracting words into cute beergrams (damn, I did it again). The last event I attended was the Cape Town Festival of Beer and I have purposefully missed out on other things since, especially seeing as I seem to constantly have a bad taste in my mouth. Hopefully after this near six month break, I can steer my focus towards my love for beer, for brewing and sharing my experience and possibly that of other brewers through the "Home Brew Hero" style posts. It just feels like I was getting lost in the hype and getting chewed up by everyone trying to make a few bucks by selling craft... Well, before I get carried away with millions of reasons and excuses and promises of things to come let me just crack on and welcome you back to my blog. If you are a new reader, welcome back to you too as nothing here will change from what you see (hope that makes sense). I look forward to delighting you with my brewing stories, tips, mistakes and other quirky posts as we indulge our shared love for this wonderful beverage. Feel free to chip in, comment, criticise, advise or even flaterize (last one, I promise!) if you come across something you feel you can relate to or feel passionate enough about to speak up - that's what this is all about, don't just take my word for things...GET INVOLVED!!!
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About me
Recently enlightened by the exciting world of craft beer I have been falling in love with new flavors, colors and smells. I do not consider myself a professional brewer (yet), but I am an enthusiast and passionate about beer and that is all that matters... Archives
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