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Kombucha Tea Recipe

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About Kombucha Tea

Kombucha Tea is more than a fad drink being heralded by Hollywood stars and health fanatics. Having been enjoyed by those in Europe and and Asia for hundreds of years, Kombucha is thought to have been created in China in about 250 BC. Russia is often thought to be the origin of Kombucha because people there have made it for hundreds of years, and spred its use to the Western world.

Kombucha Tea has many known health benefits, such as its digestion-aiding properties, and many others attributed to the drink by anecdotal evidence and independant research. Some, for example, swear by its cancer-fighting properties and have used the beverage to fight cancer diagnosis.

Kombucha is a fermented beverage containing a colony of microorganisms -- a combination of vinegar-producing bacteria and two yeast strains; all three of which must be present together to form the unique culture, also called a fungus, that turns the caffeine and sugar into different compounds through the fermentation process. Thus the finished product contains B vitamins, detoxifying glucuronic acid, microorganisms, and trace amounts of alchohol but virtually no caffeine or sugar.

How to make a recipe for Kombucha Tea

Assemble your ingredients and tools, such as a pot or kettle to boil the water for the Kombucha Tea recipe, a measuring cup and a spoon.

Ingredients for Kombucha:

4 organic black tea bags
3 quarts water
1 cup white sugar
glass bowl or jar
Kombucha culture or starter

Follow these steps to make Kombucha Tea:

Boil three quarts of water. Remove from stove and add four organic black tea bags and one cup white sugar. Stir gently to dissolve sugar; cover and allow to steep for 30 minutes.
Remove tea bags and allow mixture to cool to room temperature.
Pour tea into a clean, dry glass bowl or one-gallon glass jar.
Place Kombucha "mushroom" culture on top of the tea.
Place a few pieces of making tape in a criss-cross patter accross the openeing, and cover with a clean, dry cloth.
Allow Kombucha Tea brew to sit at room temperature for 8 to 14 days, depending on temperature. In warmer rooms, fermentation will be a faster process; whereas colder atmospheres wil require a longer wait.
Once your Kobucha tea recipe is ready to drink, create another batch -- or two -- and remove the culture form the top of your current batch for use on the next one. You can also seperate the mushroom into two, as a new one will have grown atop the old.

Making your own Kombucha Tea recipe at home means that you can save money and have control over your product, creating organic raw Kombucha at a fraction of the cost of the bottled variety. Drink to your health!

Where to Buy a Kombucha Mushroom Culture

There are several ways to acquire a kombucha starter culture.

Check with friends or foodies who brew their own Kombucha -- one may have a "baby" mushroom to give you to get started with your own batch.
Ask at your local health food store. They may have kombucha culture for sale (look for live mushrooms rather than the dry powdered culture as the latter takes much longer to start working).
Purchase a Kombucha mushroom online.