How to Brew Your Own Kombucha From a Store-Bought Bottle of the Same

Yes, you can use nothing more than a bottle of store-bought kombucha as a starter for your own never-ending supply of kombucha -- if you are patient and a little careful.

I'm not going to bother with the controversy over the health benefits of kombucha. It's a mysterious, ancient elixer fermented with a thick rubbery "mushroom" (the mother), which is actually a symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast (also called a SCOBY). Nobody has ever found a kombucha SCOBY in the wild, but it entered recorded history around 250 B.C. in China. The main thing is, it's a delicious, non-soda, (mostly) non-alcoholic, tart, fizzy, refreshing beverage.

The common wisdom is that to make your own kombucha, you have to buy a kombucha mother for a lot of money online, or acquire one from your housemate's boyfriend, who got it from a girl on Craigslist in exchange for a ride to Portland. Sadly, the girl on Craigslist may have a subpar kombucha mother. It's hard to tell, but not all kombucha mothers are the same. A neglected kombucha mother, or any of its descendents, will fail to produce delicious, fizzy, happy kombucha -- and it may even breed fruit flies.

Commercial kombucha brewers work with very high-quality kombucha mothers. You can propagate a high-quality kombucha mother of your own with just a bottle of raw kombucha from your favorite kombucha-brand, a little care, some sugar, and good black tea.

Here's why. Every bottle of raw kombucha has very small strands of kombucha mother in it. Your job is to feed those strands until they form a strong kombucha mother. Too much food, and the kombucha won't be strong enough to culture the substrate and it will mold. Too little food, and it won't grow.

Growing the Mother

First, select an excellent bottle of plain or gingered kombucha. It should have as many yeasty filaments floating in it as possible, and it must be raw. Heat kills kombucha. You can drink some of the kombucha if you like -- just leave all the sediment & stringy bits in the bottle, and at least half a cup of liquid. Next, ready the kombucha food.

In a small saucepan, heat 1 cup water to boiling. Add two tablespoons white sugar, and return the liquid to a boil until the sugar is dissolved. Turn off the heat and add one bag of organic black tea (or a tablespoon of looseleaf) and let the mixture cool at room temperature until it no longer feels the slightest bit warm to the touch. Remove the tea bag or strain the tea. Pour all the contents of the kombucha bottle into the sugar-tea -- the the sediment, the half-cup of kombucha liquid, and the stringy things (these will turn into the kombucha mother!), and put it all in a glass quart or pint jar. Cover the jar with a cloth and a tight rubberband to keep bugs out, and place it in a warm, dark, safe spot. Note that the kombucha liquid is necessary to keep the mixture sufficiently acidic. If the liquid is not acidic, mold will grow.

Keep an eye on the kombucha. In a few days or a week, it should star to grow a thin film over the surface. The film will thicken and become the kombucha mother. If any mold appears, discard everything and start over -- but that shouldn't even be a possibility if you have enough acid in the liquid.

When the film is about an eighth of an inch thick, you'll need to give it another little boost of food. It's not yet strong enough to culture a lot of kombucha for you to drink -- right now it's just growing.

This time, make a quart of tea. Heat four cups water to the boil, add 1/3 cup sugar, and steep with 2 tea bags or 2 tablespoons black tea. When the liquid cools completely, remove the tea leaves, put the baby kombucha and all the liquid and sediment in a large glass jar or bowl with the tea. Cover it tightly and watch it carefully. The kombucha mother should thicken significantly over the space of two weeks. When the mother is between 1/4 and 1/2" thick, you can use it to make yourself a batch of kombucha.

Making Kombucha

Heat three quarts water to the boil. Add 1 cup sugar, return to the boil until dissolved, turn off the heat, and add 4 tea bags (or 4 tablespoons looseleaf) black tea. Let cool completely to room temperature. Remove the tea bags or leaves, and put it in a one-gallon glass jar. Pour in a cup or two of finished kombucha liquid from the last batch (to keep everything acidic) and place the kombucha mother on top. It's okay if it sinks. Cover it securely with cloth and a rubberband, and place it in a warm, dark cupboard for a week or ten days. A new kombucha baby will grow on the surface of the liquid. When the kombucha baby is about 1/8" to 1/4" thick, taste the kombucha. If it doesn't taste too sweet, you can harvest the liquid (saving some for the next batch) and repeat the process.

And you can give the baby kombucha to a friend or someone who gives you a ride to Portland.

Blueberries, Apologies, Wistfulness, and Some Satisfaction

Three years ago this fall Papa and I went to a junkyard in Virginia for a different engine to put in his tiny little late-eighties hatchback, which he was giving me for my journey West. Oregon, where I was born, has always been Papa's Promised Land, and he was happy to help me get back there. It took some tinkering, but the little car got me all the way out here, mountains, snow, and attractive midwestern boys notwithstanding. I've been home twice since -- the first time for four days, and the second time just now, for a pinched and stretched little week spent scampering from kin to friends.

It was a magical, dense visit. Everyone back home has settled into gracious old houses, and I happily settled myself in their porches and spare rooms, just parched with longing. I changed clothes several times daily -- tutus in the morning, garden scrubs in the afternoon, floaty porch-sitting dresses for the firefly-and-thunderstorm evenings.

Just before we got in the car to drive to the Greyhound station to fly back to San Francisco, I picked a handful of blueberries and promptly burst into tears. I ate them slowly, saltily, all the way across the Blue Ridge mountains.

But for all my homesickness, I've done pretty well by the West. Just two days ago Ken Albala and I submitted our manuscript to our publisher. Our publisher who is Penguin. Do you hear that? I'm not yet 25 and just finished writing (half) a book and managed to get a real-life agent and editor and publisher. I really have trouble connecting my daily laundry-hanging, yogurt-making, fruit-sorting, babysitting, hill-pedaling life with such things as happen to people in books.

It's a grand book we wrote, but it did leave me pretty quiet on the blogging front. No, much more than grand! The duck confit! The beer made from nothing but raw barley and hops! The miso from koji I cultured myself! And Ken -- such bread! and he cured his own salami and olives!

And the West also found me the very best boy ever, and we do get to be car-free and ride our bikes along craggy coasts, and we live in a soaring Victorian flat, and yes, I've met many dear friends and seen many marvels. But oh, meadows and thunderstorms and deep windowsills in old brick farmhouses.

Well, I'll try to blog a little more regularly now. There is, for instance, this bubbling vat of black-purple blackberry wine in my pantry.

Mennonite Doughnuts

Edna Ruth Byler's Potato Dough Doughnuts have both fortified and funded many a Mennonite missionary. I tweaked the recipe just the slightest -- exchanging shortening for lard, margarine for butter -- and wound up with spectacular doughnuts (actually, their rectangularity means that they're fastnachts). Never mind that we're in the middle of Lent, when good folks eat neither sugar nor fat, and never mind that I'm in San Francisco's Mission District, which is rather the opposite of being a missionary. I'm trying.

It's a new kitchen. It needed some cinnamon-sugared deep-fried aroma. I've upended myself and moved once again (that's move number three in the last twelve months; lagging behind last year's four-move record). Hence the hiatus. Um, and actually, I'm going to go take another nap-hiatus ahorita, so I'll post the recipe later. Perhaps I'll wait till after Easter so as not to lead you into temptation.

Making Butter

I take home leftover whipped cream from the creamery. I culture it with some yogurt for a while, and it becomes a lovely mousse-like cheesecake-flavored fluff.

I beat the fluff until the fat breaks. It turns grainy, and golden specks of butter appear in the translucent buttermilk. Like stars appearing at twilight.

The stars start clumping -- just like those nights H. Rose and I spread our cloaks over the dew in the cow pasture and watched the Milky Way congeal. Oh yes, and then the butter rises and it's last night's moon all over again.

I knead the butter under running water, cleaning out any trapped pockets of buttermilk. I save the majority of the buttermilk for baking. It contains the sugar and vanilla that were used to flavor the whipped cream.

Sweet as a newborn babe, that nugget! I kneaded in a pinch of sel gris and gave it a kiss.

Does anyone know of a local dairy goddess? Is she still accepting acolytes?

Q & A with Paprikahead: Pot o' Beans and an Accidental Reduction

This, from a Hamster Reader:

Subject: recipe for big pot o beans?

you got one for me lady? i got bags of dried beans and want these suckers good good good. mmmm good.

-A Hamster Reader

p.s. and then i looked to the stove. it's on!, i thunk, and not like friday night hipsters going to the demolition derby. no, no. like the stove, it's on, like still turned on from the night before! and this is what i found.

turned to the lowest heat available the [pumpkin] soup had reduced all through the night (lid on with tiny hole for air passage) to this kind of thick, creamy looking goodnees. the top of it had this thick, thick skin that reminded me of, well, burned, charred pizza sauce. it was unlike anything i have ever seen, really, but i knew it was awesome from the first. and it was. the taste of this here sucker is sweet as candy, the texture thicker than chile, like a kind of paste for toast or something. i feel like the guy that *happened* upon blighted rye and tripped balls and gave the world the wee secret of acid, two hundred years before it was synthesized. or something like that. anyway, i thought you would like this story and that maybe it would make a smile.

Dear Hamster,

For the beans: first, soak them overnight in three times their volume of water. Drain them in the morning, fill the pot with fresh water, and bring them to a simmer. Simmer simmer simmer. Throw in some onions, ham bone or bacon, carrots, tomatoes, celery. Make them a little sweet -- molasses is good (with care!). Some apple cider vinegar for tanginess. And a lot of salt, but only after the beans are soft, because the salt will make their skins tough if you add it too soon. They should simmer all day, in proportion to their size.

I'm so happy your pumpkin soup reduction was magnificent and not disastrous! It sounds like a good task for a crock-pot, akin to making tomato paste or apple butter. I think I'll try to replicate it with the pumpkin on my counter.

My Sourdough Turned White!

I've been happily tending to my new starter for some weeks now. I notice with pride its every milestone, watching misty-eyed as it develops character, strength, and smooth digestion.

This morning, like many mornings, I rose early and got a batch of bread going. The starter was chafing at the bit and the dough rose steadily. When I put it in the oven, it gave a yare spring and wafted up a fragrance savory enough I could hear the upstairs neighbors' stomachs growling. And then I noticed the crust was blanching. Like this:

Does anyone know why? The crust is thin but crisp, the crumb moist, a little bubbled, and tender. Perhaps I should start it in a hot, steamy oven to ensure perfect browning. Perhaps I should clean my room, which has evidence of a hundred ongoing projects:

Can you find (1) the bread, (2) the bicycle chain ready to be covered with waxed canvas & leather for a homespun anti-thievery saddle-leash, (3) W. Crawford's briefcase, tin cloth pants, and pinstripes, (4) Dogfish Head's chicory stout, (5) the flaky-ass router, (6) the milk crate holding my mending queue, (7) two of three bicycles, and (8) the recently-pruned Mystery Mint, plus the recently-repotted jade, dieffenbachia, and rapidly-rapunzelling ivy. All of which need constant, unwavering attention. And that's just one corner of my room.* No wonder my bread turned white -- my hairs aren't far behind.

I will not give you my bread recipe until it stops turning white. Instead, I will go cut another thick, warm slice and slather it with butter, which will melt, pool, and slowly saturate its velvety, spongy crumb.

*Actually the picture shows four of the twelve corners in my room.

Wholegrain Banana Bread, the Good Kind

Here's the thing all the bran & germ hippies need to know: that bitter, gritty flavor of wholegrain bread, that flavor you pretend to relish? There's a reason you don't actually like it, deep in the crystalline magnetic reaches of your rainbow souls. It's not that you're an accountant in disguise. It's that underfermented wholegrain breads are, in fact, bitter and gritty and pretty much taste like yeast excrement.

Well, I guess that leaves us with... sourdough. All well and good, the sourdough. Such long, slow fermentations, so much intensity, texture, character, whatnot. Marvelous stuff.

But what about that banana bread? It only gets a little baking powder rise in the oven -- no fermentation there, to break down the bitter grit and make us a nice sweet strong loaf. And yet, we want some.

Oh look, here comes the dairymaid to the rescue. You can ferment quick breads (banana bread, cornbread, muffins) with yogurt to get a silky rich tender nubbly bread, with all the germ and bran melted into a creamy batter. My recipe is adapted from Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions.

I make this stuff in batches when I have bunches of overripe bananas from Bi-Rite, and then freeze loaves of it to surprise W. Crawford in later, poorer days. Speaking of whom, note the funny little grin at the top of this picture. I was so engrossed in my banana bread photo shoot that I didn't notice my visitor for another two pictures. I hope you're similarly oblivious to the street-grime on my window.

Banana Bread

24 hours before baking, stir together in a large bowl:
6 cups whole grain kamut flour, wheat flour, or spelt flour
4 cups acidic liquid, being: yogurt, kefir, or water + a splash of raw vinegar
Cover with a plate and let sit till tomorrow.

The next day, butter 3 large loaf pans, preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and mash:
6 large overripe bananas

Whisk in:
6 eggs
1 T. vanilla extract
2 tsp. salt
1 T. baking soda
3/4 cup honey or maple syrup or other sugar
1/2 c. butter, melted (and browned slightly, if you like)
1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans or dark chocolate chips (optional)

When well combined, add to the soaked flour mixture and stir until thoroughly mixed. I use my hands. Pour into the buttered pans and bake until well browned and a knife comes out clean, somewhat more than an hour. Let cool for a bit in the pans, then run a knife around the edges and ease the loaves out.

Wrapped in plastic when cool, this bread keeps well for days at room temperature. Or wrap tightly and freeze.