The Kombucha Mushroom People

Near the end of last year, my father came home from a delivery one Saturday morning a little bit later than usual.  He had a meeting with the Board of Directors (The Board is a painting of donkeys in Greece hung on the wall in the back room of the herbal store).  He tells me they have asked him if he would partake in a new project.  At this meeting, the owners of the store share with him some Kombucha Tea.  They used to be able to provide an external Kombucha concoction to help with arthritis and other aches and pains.  The man who created the concoction had recently deceased.  They handed his recipe over to my dad and asked if he would be interested in making it for them.  The Mad Scientist agreed.

In order to prepare himself for this new venture, my dad went to the library and brought home a bunch of books on Kombucha.  I got through some of one of the books; sadly I am becoming so used to googling everything nowadays.  I do miss the library.  The most information I have retained has still been from the first chapter of one of the books.  Kombucha originated in Manchuria and is also knows as the "Manchurian Mushroom".  It is known that no person from Manchuria has ever had cancer.

Here is a list from the book of some of the things Kombucha is said to aid with:

1. Eliminates wrinkles, helps removal of brown spots on hands, it’s a skin humectant.

2. Prevents certain types of cancer in Manchuria where the mushroom is from not one case of cancer has been detected. Each day the people drink this tea as a religious atonement.

3. During menopause, reduces hot-flash discomforts, increases mobility in your extremities and flexibility around your waist.

4. Helps with constipation.

5. Helps muscular aches and pains in the shoulder or neck

6. Helps bronchitis, asthma, coughs in 2 days, helps chilrden with phlegm

7. Helps with allergies, also with aching nerves

8. It is prescribed in kidney problems

9. It’s proven useful in cataracts and other formations on the cornea

10. It cleanses the gall bladder, helps colitis and nervous stomachs

11. It helps heal the diseases. It will lower cholesterol and softens veins and arteries

12. It will stop infectious diarrhea

13. Helps burning of fat, therefore it also helps one to lose weight

14. Helps with insomnia

15. Helps the river work more efficiently

16. Helps to level off glucose, and sudden drops of blood sugar in diabetes. Taken daily, it eliminates urea in 100 days

17. It has surprising effects on the scalp, it helps avoid balding, thickens hair, helps to eliminate gray hair

18. Helps digestion

After reading about all the amazing health benefits I start getting really excited about drinking some of this fantastic tea.  I read a blog about how this dude started making his own tea in the 60's, he wrote that it become a big craze but was sort of forgotten a bit over time.  Once I learned about this tea I started seeing it everywhere.  When I bring it up to friends many of them already know all about it!  I hear it tastes great and I was just itching to try some.  While at a fantastic little restaurant in Burlington I see they have the Kombucha drink on the menu so I order the beverage.  It comes in a bottle and there are different flavours.  My drink was extremely tasty and refreshing but after reading about others experiences I felt like I was not getting any new flavours from this drink.  I did not feel like I was tasting something different for the first time ever.  It tasted more like the flavour that was added (pomegranate or blueberry) with a nice fizzy bubbly to go with it.  I was not entirely satisfied.

Our first batch of Kombucha failed because it was in an area that was not warm enough.  The second batch was placed in a warmer room with an additional heater to keep it to a 25 degree temperature.  It is usually easier to ferment Kombucha in the summer in warmer temperatures.  I got to taste the tea freshly brewed for the first time and I was pleasantly surprised.  What I find really interesting is how it ferments on it's own and becomes a refreshing bubbly beverage.

My dad is the brains behind this project.  He went on Kijiji (or Kajibi) and found someone who was selling scoby's close enough in our neighbourhood.  A SCOBY is the source of this beverage and looks like a pancake like disc.  It is actually not a mushroom but is a culture.  The tea is made by fermenting the scoby in a caffeine tea with sugar.  It needs both the caffeine and sugar to grow and thus creating the tasty tea.  The scoby sucks up pretty much all the caffeine and sugar while it grows so the tea becomes even better for you.  I use green tea most of the time and always organic cane sugar.  I did a white tea batch once and while it was good I preferred the green tea.  I used yerba mate for my batch last week which has had favorable results across the board. 

The scoby has a baby every time you make a batch of tea.  You can keep using the mother for many batches and remove the baby and use it as well or keep it stored with some of the fermented tea in the fridge so it does not keep growing.  It grows to the size of the jar when it is brewing.  As you can imagine, unless you have someone to take the baby scoby's off your hands every time, you start ending up with lots of jars in your fridge with weird looking gooey mushroom like aliens inside them.  I make a batch every 7-10 days and drink it regularly   I share it with friends that come over.  Since it is a cold, refreshing, bubbly drink I think it should be considered as a replacement for pop in everyone's day to day lives.

Speaking of pop, it boggles my mind that such a substance was ever even created.  To think that someone somewhere decided to make a drink that is so unbelievable bad for your health.  It is common knowledge that pop will rot your teeth and your innards.  Recently, a woman in Australia died directly from how much coke she was drinking a day.  It is such a part of our modern lives, we had it as children, the sugar goodness is craved always.  We know there is not a single good thing in it for us, why are so many people drinking it on the regular?  Not only is it not healthy, but it is actually harmful.  

Through out my adult life I have been on and off pop.  It is so much easier to not drink it if you don't drink it.  Seriously, simple as that.  I haven't had a coke in a while and I took a sip on the weekend and

I felt like I was drinking toxicity.  One day months ago I had some at the movies and I had the shakes and jitters afterwards from either the caffeine or sugar or both.  The more I simplify my life and get back to nothing, I can feel so clearly what is good and what is bad for me.

As for the Kombucha Tea.  I am looking to find anyone interested to either learn from me how to grow it yourself or to order a litre, or 2 or 3, of freshly brewed Kombucha tea from me.  My father is still making the special potion, that is a separate project now.  What I've learned from all this is how great my dad is at being the Mad Scientist, he really is smart and I need to learn much more from him.