I'm sure some of you health conscious peeps have heard about kombucha tea? While studying my Integrative Nutrition course in 2014 and learning about the benefits of this so called tea, I became more and more intrigued. Anyway, I fell pregnant and life became busy!

Now that I'm in some kind of routine (let's just call it that!) I decided to give this tea a try. I googled and googled and came across LOADS of info which just made me confused! To break it down into simple terms, kombucha is a fermented tea filled with loads of probiotic benefits (probiotics are essential for good gut health and good gut health is critical to your overall health). It has a refreshing taste and becomes fizzy due to the bacteria strains it contains. I'm going to try to keep this as simple as possible due to the confusion I felt when investigating kombucha myself!

To begin a batch of kombucha you need a SCOBY and some mother liquid (liquid from a previous batch of kombucha. A SCOBY is a mushroom looking Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeast. The scoby feeds off the sugar in the tea. A lovely client of mine (who enjoys her kombucha every morning and raves about the benefits it brings her) was kind enough to offer me some of her mother liquid and a magnificent looking scoby! I had already prepared my tea before I got my hands on the scoby as it needs to be cooled to room temperature before adding the mother liquid and scoby.

So once you have organised a scoby and mother liquid, its time to prepare your tea!

WHAT YOU NEED

Big pot

Glass jar

Muslin Cloth

Elastic to tie cloth around jar (I used a tight headband)

5 Tea bags of your choice (I used green tea)

3 litres of water

1 cup sugar

TO BEGIN

Wash hands and glass jar well with hot water

Boil water for 5 minutes in big pot to purify

Add tea bags to hot water

TURN OFF HEAT then add 1 cup sugar

Cover and allow tea to cool to room temperature

Once cooled, pour into glass jar then add the mother liquid and the scoby (gently)

Cover with the muslin cloth (it needs to breathe but also be kept safe from contamination) and elastic tie and leave somewhere warm and dark (I keep mine in a kitchen cupboard)

When your tea starts to smell like vinegar (after about a week-10 days), have a taste and if it's too sweet it needs to be left longer. Once it's ready you can either drink it, ferment it a second time with flavours (spices, fruits, etc.) or what I chose to do is make a continuous batch where I draw some out (2 litres), add some flavours (I love grated ginger & chopped up orange) and leave for 3 or so more days for the second ferment. Then I replace the 2 litres with another batch of tea and sugar and so on.

After the second ferment I place the kombucha in the fridge as it tastes delicious when cold!

Every batch creates a new scoby so you can remove the old one gently (they attach together) and place some mother liquid with it and pass on to a friend to start their kombucha or start a scoby hotel and keep them in a jar with mother liquid for another batch.

I hope you find this blog post a simple yet informative way to start your kombucha batch and enjoy the many benefits of this healthy, refreshing fermented drink!

Lou x

I'd love to hear your feedback if you get the chance - everfitbylouise@live.com