Brewing Kombucha

I've been back at the brewing station with my kombucha science experiments at home. It is seriously so fun to try new things that involve real food and real health benefits. After returning from my month long traveling trip I was a little worried that my kombucha was dead. It was exhibiting some symptoms of death as I pulled it from the fridge. For one it had not fermented the tea at all. It was still sweet tea tasting and I noticed a few very minor specks of mold on the top of the tea. The SCOBY was also not floating but instead had sunk to the bottom. In my desperate plea to revive it I simply gave it a fresh feeding of new sweet tea and left it for a couple of weeks in our dark basement. I was so excited to come home this weekend and noticed a very healthy looking SCOBY floating on top and a nicely sour smelling kombucha. 

 I also managed to acquire two nice brewing bottles this weekend in KC and found three more in this farmstead house so that I could give a second fermentation to my kombucha. I hoping to finally create a nice sparkling carbonated kombucha beverage. I have fallen in love with a specific brand available in stores for almost $4 that is made from kombucha and ginger juice. I've got to figure out how to replicate that action for this frugal lifestyle. For this second ferment I used approximately 16 ounces of kombucha plus 2 ounces of juice. I made three using a cranberry juice and two with an apple cider. I capped them and put them in the basement for the second ferment. Here's to hoping for a science experiment success!