I've been doing a little experimenting at home.
With tea.
It's called Kombucha tea, or KT. It's an ancient Chinese tonic that is supposed to be extremely healthy. It reportedly detoxes your body of all sorts of nasties, boosts your immune system, and helps your body heal an amazing variety of ailments.
The catch (isn't there always a catch?) is that you brew it yourself--from a culture. That's right. It doesn't come from a leaf, and you don't steep it in hot water.
It's fermented from a live culture, with water, sugar, and a vinegary "starter", and takes about a week to produce approximately two bottles of the stuff. With each batch, you produce a new culture, and the cultures are reusable.
It's also diabetic-safe, from my understanding, because the sugar is consumed and converted during the fermenting process. I would check to make sure this is the case, however. I'm not diabetic, nor am I a doctor or a scientist, so don't take my word as law.
Please follow this link to read Who should not drink Kombucha tea.
Anyway, last week, I bottled my first batch of Kombucha, and began my second. Turns out, I let that first batch brew a little too long for my taste, so it came out pretty vinegary. My second batch, which surprised me by being ready a few days early, is a tad sweeter--just on the threshold of being tart, and I mean just. It's perfect. So, I bottled that, then held some back to add to the sour stuff of last week.
And you know what?
Damn, if it doesn't taste good!
A couple months ago, while researching this growing phenomenon, I joined a Yahoo! group called Original Kombucha. I'll have to admit, some people get a little fanatic about this stuff, or just downright flakey, but the fact that this femernted beverage has so many followers gives testament to it's supposed efficacy.
You can find it already made and bottled, but the best stuff comes from your own kitchen. And it's much less expensive to produce yourself. If you're interested, you can Google it and find a wealth of websites to choose from. Or you can simply link from here to the sites that I have looked at and found very helpful.
Kombucha Tea... all you need to know
The Happy Herbalist
Let me know if you give this a try, and how you like it. I'm curious to know others' opinions, as well.
