I am flipping ecstatic right now!  Guess what showed up in the mail today?  Huh?!  Huh?!  No guesses?!  My SCOBY!

What in the hell is a SCOBY, you ask?  SCOBY stands for Symbiotic Colony Of Bacteria and Yeast, and can also be known as a “mother” or “mushroom”.  Don’t be confused; this is no fungi, but a liquid-y culture.  Think high school biology petri dishes.  I am going to grow, grow, grow my own kombucha!  What is kombucha, you ask, and why am I throwing all of these funky acronyms and names at you?  Because sometimes I can be funky that way!

Kombucha is a fermented  tea that has apparently been around for more than 2000 years as part of the Chinese culture, as an all around “Health Elixir”.  I am neither Chinese, nor 2000 years old, so I am going to have to take the internet’s word on that one.  The health benefits of kombucha tea are supposedly immeasurable: immune booster, cancer prevention, liver detox, it is chocked full of B vitamins, and extremely supportive of a healthy digestive system.  Again, internet statements, so I take all of this with a grain of salt.

The only testimonials I have are of my own.  I had purchased a bottle of kombucha tea at the local health food store this weekend.  It tasted like garbage; I could only drink about 1/4 of it before sticking it in the fridge upon arriving home.  Really, it tasted like a bottle of mineral water, with a very weak effervescing and a splash of apple cider vinegar.  Bleh.  Not my idea of refreshing.  Alaina had started to come down with a sore throat, congestion, aches and pains.  I suggested she finish off the kombucha leftover in the fridge.  The next day, she was feeling right as rain.  If this shit is going to cure all my ailments, even before they are made aware to me, then hell yeah!  I’m in.  The $4.00 price tag, however, was enough to stop this penny pincher in her tracks.

Doing a little more research on the subject, however, I discovered that I could make my own kombucha tea!  I surely could make it taste better than that store-bought garbage.  So I ordered a SCOBY off amazon.com, and it has arrived.  I plan on brewing a super strong batch of Earl Grey tea for my kombucha starter.  I think the Bergamot flavor will cover up some of the vinagery taste, or at least add a nice distraction!

More to follow…