Probiotic foods like kombucha

Yvonne Smith

Yvonne Smith

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I have decided to make kombucha again. It has been a year or more since I last made it. It seems like my body craves something for a while and then i just stop wanting it . Kombucha didn’t even taste good to me anymore.
The other day, I had a bottle of store bought kombucha, and now it seemed to be something I wanted more of, so I ordered another SCOBY, and it is supposed to be here today, and then I am going to start a batch of kombucha.

We have lots of strawberries right now, and after that will be blueberries and raspberries, so I will have plenty of fruit to flavor it with once it has cultured, and kombucha makes a great summertime drink over lots of ice.
It is easy to make , just sweet tea and ad the SCOBY ( a pancake looking thing made as the kombucha cultures) and let it sit and do its magic for a week or two.
Here are some of the benefits of kombucha.

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Those are both probiotics, @Steve North ; but we already have threads for fermenting sauerkraut and also for culturing kefir and yogurt. We didn’t have any other threads for making kombucha; so I started this one.
 
Jacqueline Lindt said:
I luv kombucha ..... Only had store bought !

Homemade must be delicious ....hope i can try homemade one day !

Looks complicated though ☺️
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Actually, it is not complicated, @Jacqueline Lindt . I never do complicated foods, so if it does not look simple, I don’t make it. Basically you brew a large pot of tea, and add sugar.
You do need a SCOBY, which is about $10 on Amazon or Walmart, and when the tea is cool, you put in the SCOBY and the brew starter that comes with it, and then just let it sit for a week or so until it turned into kombucha.
The longer it cultures, the more sour it gets, so after a week, you start tasting it and drink it when it reaches the stage that you like the taste.

Then you make another batch of sweet tea, and add it to the jar with the leftover kombucha *which becomes the starter for the next batch. So, once yo have the first starter batch made, you just keep adding the tea and let the kombucha ferment itself.
You can take the kombucha and put it in bottles and add flavors, like fruit or juice, let that sit for a few days, and then you have flavored and carbonated kombucha.
There are lots of videos on YouTube explains how to make the kombucha so you can watch it being done, step by step.
 
Yvonne Smith said:
Actually, it is not complicated, @Jacqueline Lindt . I never do complicated foods, so if it does not look simple, I don’t make it. Basically you brew a large pot of tea, and add sugar.
You do need a SCOBY, which is about $10 on Amazon or Walmart, and when the tea is cool, you put in the SCOBY and the brew starter that comes with it, and then just let it sit for a week or so until it turned into kombucha.
The longer it cultures, the more sour it gets, so after a week, you start tasting it and drink it when it reaches the stage that you like the taste.

Then you make another batch of sweet tea, and add it to the jar with the leftover kombucha *which becomes the starter for the next batch. So, once yo have the first starter batch made, you just keep adding the tea and let the kombucha ferment itself.
You can take the kombucha and put it in bottles and add flavors, like fruit or juice, let that sit for a few days, and then you have flavored and carbonated kombucha.
There are lots of videos on YouTube explains how to make the kombucha so you can watch it being done, step by step.
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Thanks for the reply.

I might try it this summer ☺️
 
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Marie Mallory said:
Yvonne, did you say you mixed Kidney restore in coffee? So far only thing we take now for probiotics is yogurt.
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Yes, I put the Kidney Restore in my coffee. You can also add it to other foods, like soup or even oatmeal. But I always have a cup of coffee in the morning, and so that is what I do usually.
If you are using store bought yogurt, they only ferment it for a few hours, and not overnight like if you make it at home; so there are very few living cultures in that yogurt, if any.
If it is pasteurized, then that kills any cultures that were alive.
Making probiotic cultures at home gives you much more living probiotics than any capsules or any probiotic food that you buy that are commercially made.

Kidney restore is acacia , from the African acacia tree, and it is a prebiotic, not a probiotic, so it is food that feeds the probiotic bacteria in your gut; but you need to have probiotics so that you have the good bacteria.
 
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Yvonne Smith said:
Yes, I put the Kidney Restore in my coffee. You can also add it to other foods, like soup or even oatmeal. But I always have a cup of coffee in the morning, and so that is what I do usually.
If you are using store bought yogurt, they only ferment it for a few hours, and not overnight like if you make it at home; so there are very few living cultures in that yogurt, if any. Of it is pasteurized, then that kills any cultures that were alive.
Making probiotic cultures at home gives you much more living probiotics than any capsules or any probiotic food that you buy that are commercially made.

Kidney restore is acacia , from the African acacia tree, and it is a prebiotic, not a probiotic, so it is food that feeds the probiotic bacteria in your gut; but you need to have probiotics so that you have the good bacteria.
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Not to speak of how expensive the ' good ' yogurt is in the store.
Right now making yogurt is going to have to wait a little while, far as I know anyway.
 
Marie Mallory said:
Not to speak of how expensive the ' good ' yogurt is in the store.
Right now making yogurt is going to have to wait a little while, far as I know anyway.
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If you have a yogurt maker, it is another pretty simple thing to make at home.
I have a Cuisinart yogurt maker that my daughter gave me because she didn’t like making a whole quart in one container. I like it better than having 6 small containers to mess with.

You just add about 1/3 cup of store yogurt (the good kind, with live cultures) and the rest of the quart of milk, set the time for about 15 hours, and forget about it.
I do try and start it for when I will be awake when it finishes, but even if I don’t do that, the machine goes into cooling setting once it has finished the culturing time.

I have had that machine a long time now; but there are a lot of good yogurt makers that are not expensive and do a great job. If I do not use a yogurt for starter, i sometimes use the starter packets instead.
Yogourmet has good starter packets, and Coolinario also has the starter packets with L.Reuteri culture. Once you use the packet, you have LOTS of good probiotics in your yogurt, and you just save part of a cup to start the next batch.
 
I generally eat plain yogurt to get my dose of probiotics and calcium. I also eat some hard Cheddar or Gouda cheese sometimes that is supposed have some probiotics. And buttermilk-- but it is in the forum of biscuits. 😁
 
I don't eat yogurt, but I do take probiotics with kefir every morning. Kefir is basically yogurt that has been cultured until it gets like a milkshake, then stopped before it gets yogurt-thick.

Plain yogurt is too bitter for me, and flavored (even vanilla without fruit) is full of sugar.

eta: I just looked at the added sugars in kefir. 18g per serving. *sigh*
 
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I don't like Greek yogurt, and Icelandic yogurt is even worse, so I go for the lighter stuff, like Yoplait, pretty much any flavor except peach, and I can eat peach yogurt, although it's my least favorite. I have yet to try kombucha. I don't know why, but my mind has labeled it as disgusting, and that's a hard thing for me to get around, but perhaps I'd have labeled yogurt as digusting too if I had known what it was before eating and liking it.
 
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