Kombucha craze

Anna Paquin (Perkins, Shirley, PacificCoastNe)

Ashley Greene (Ben Dome, PacificCoastNews.com)

Simon Baker (Gaz Shirley, PacificCoastNews.co)

At the end of an indulgent weekend last summer, our friends marched my husband and me into a health food store for an elixir they promised would counteract the previous 48 hours of feasting. “One bottle is plenty,” warned my friend. “Share it, and maybe even save some of it for tomorrow.”

Tim and I proceeded to guzzle the 16-ounce bottle of fizzy deliciousness within a half-hour. Twenty-four hours and a few trips apiece to the loo later, we had learned Rule No. 1 when it comes to kombucha: Build up your tolerance.

The “booch,” as many quaffers call it, is a little freaky and a lot addictive. Here’s how it works: A mother culture, a.k.a. a symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast, or SCOBY, is placed in a vat of sweet tea and left to ferment for a week or more. During fermentation, the mother culture devours the sugar, producing lactic and acetic acids — as well as a baby SCOBY. When the tea tastes pleasantly tart, both SCOBYs are removed and the beverage is bottled and stored at room temperature for several days to carbonate. Devotees claim the booch increases energy, improves skin and hair, greases the digestive tract and boosts immunities.

These days it’s the fix of Hollywood starlets. The field once was dominated by two brands, GT’s and Synergy, from California-based Millennium Products, but in the past two years competitors have entered a growing retail market that industry sources guesstimate at anywhere from $50 million to $500 million.

For us, though, as much as we enjoyed the drink, at $4 a bottle, kombucha didn’t exactly smack of habit-forming.

Then Tim reminded me that he had watched our host’s husband set a batch of homemade kombucha to brew.

Bingo. I got on Craigslist and found a woman selling a pair of SCOBYs and starter liquid for $5.

As soon as I got into online forums in search of brewing tips, I realized I had to deal with issues. There were reports of bottles that had exploded when left untended. (Why had I acquired this thing right before vacation?) Should I just stow the starter in the fridge? No, somebody says the cold kills the culture. And what do you mean I can’t taste the kombucha with a metal spoon?

Death was a recurring theme.

Finally, I threw caution to the wind. Ten days later, we came home from our trip, I stuck a stainless-steel teaspoon into the jar for a taste or two, used my bare hands to remove the SCOBYs and bottled the drink. The next morning, I was happy to wake up alive. What’s more, our kombucha was delicious.

Flavor-wise, it’s hard to go wrong. I’ve used plain old Lipton black tea, organic whites and greens and chais. I even got cocky and tried Earl Grey, which the Internet said was a sure failure. As in cooking, I taste and bottle the brews to my liking.

Among nationally distributed brands, Vibranz and Kombucha Wonder Drink are respectable if your taste skews sweet; GT’s packs a punch that is more tart. Still, Tim and I prefer to let the housemade version work its magic on the ol’ gastrointestinal tract. And it does, right?

Well, celebrity physician Andrew Weil, the Mayo Clinic and the American Cancer Society have pointed out that definitive human clinical trials have not been conducted to show whether the drink imparts health benefits.

But Randy Worobo, a microbiologist at Cornell who studies bacteria produced by fermentation, has a different take.

“The science hasn’t yet been established where you can make an absolute claim,” he said. “But, scientifically, you can explain the potential benefits for gastrointestinal health. You can see a link.”

Worobo also reassured me once and for all that as long as I don’t get mold on my culture, I won’t kill it — or my husband.

“You’ve seen mold on bread, right?” Worobo asked. “It looks the same on top of kombucha. See that, and throw it out.”

Recently, we brought a jar of one of my best batches and two beautiful SCOBYs to our friends who first told us about kombucha. They were much more potent than what they were used to. And so it was that I learned the ultimate tenet in the curious universe of kombucha: Pass it on. — From The Washington Post