Kombucha Journey, Start!
As far as sustainable drinks go, nothing beats water. It’s healthy, plentiful, doesn’t have to come packaged in plastic or even bottles. It just gets piped straight into our homes!
But drinking nothing but water can get kind of dull, and trying to find other things to drink that don’t come in plastic can be tough. I drink soy milk and oat milk that comes in paper packaging (I think there’s still some kind of plastic wrapping on the paper, but better than PET bottles), and we usually have juice in a big plastic bottle around the house that my wife and daughter mostly drink.
But that’s about to change, because last week I tried making something new for the first time: kombucha! Is it as perfectly sustainable as water? Nope, there’s still some packaging involved in making the tea and a glass bottle for the 1/3 juice that goes into it, but man it tastes amazing for not that much work, and lot less plastic bottles.
My First Batch
This is how it started: some filtered water and black tea.
Add a cup of sugar per 1 gallon of tea, add a scoby (a little microbacterial colony that looks like a jellyfish, but turns that sugar and tea into delicious kombucha), and a bit of the tea he’s currently living in, and wait a week. This is called the first fermentation.
After a week to 10 days, depending on how vinegary you like your kombucha, you can remove the scoby (and keep it in some tea so it doesn’t die!), and add juice to the kombucha to flavor it, then let it sit for another week, and it will start to get fizzy. This is called the second fermentation!
After a week of second-fermentation, the kombucha is ready to drink! This time around, I made one with mango juice and one with mango and pomegranate juice! So good! The bacteria eats up a lot of the sugars so it’s not nearly as sweet as the juice alone.
The Start of My Kombucha Journey
Making this kombucha starts a journey that I’m going to have to keep walking for a while….Once you get your scoby, you gotta keep feeding it to keep it alive, meaning you gotta keep making kombucha! At this point, the kombucha is delicious, it’s easy to make, and I don’t have to feel guilty about a whole lot of plastic packaging all the time.
Good deal. I love when thinking about sustainability and trying to apply it to the way I live makes my life even better. Another small step towards a more sustainable life. Happier, healthier, and more delicious!
Thanks for reading!
