Adventures with Kombucha Tea!

For almost a year now, I've been interested in the awesome benefits of Kombucha tea.
What is it?
Kombucha is a fermented tea that is imbibed for medicinal purposes. There is limited scientific information supporting any purported benefits and few studies are being conducted. Kombucha is available commercially, but can be made at home by fermenting tea using a visible solid mass of microorganisms called a kombucha culture or mushroom.
{taken from:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kombucha}

The kombucha culture they are talking about is known as a S.C.O.B.Y.
Symbiotic
Culture
Of
Bacteria
and
Yeast

Since I've tried it and felt like it's fizzy goodness was meant to be made at home. Of course I did a great deal of research to get a clear and concise tutorial to start making at home.
There are so many tutorials out there, Google yielded so many.
The best place to look is Instructables.com and within that site is a tutorial from a
website that sells the actual S.C.O.B.Y. kits for your own brewing at
Organic-Kombucha.com.

Of course, I didn't want to purchase the culture kit. If there is a diy method, then I'm ready to do it myself!
I mainly went with the Organic-Kombucha.com's version of brewing, since most of the other tutorials went the same way, but they gave me actual measurements of tea and water.
For growing the culture, I went with FoodRenegade.com and their ultra simple way of growing.
My first issue was getting a bottle of pre-made Kombucha, you can find at any HFS. Grabbed a empty glass jar I had, some Sencha tea I had, sugar, and distilled water.
I grew the culture first, it took a bit longer than I wanted. Mainly because there was another culture growing, but it grew too weak and fell to the bottom of the jar after which another one grew on top and was much stronger and resilient.
This one I named Rocko! (he's technically Rocko II, but oh well, Rocko the first didn't make it)


I had the option of flavoring the Kombucha, so many tutorials suggested to wait until after the tea is fully brewed with a S.C.O.B.Y. so I had a bunch of options. I've had Regular, Cranberry, and Ginger so having tried each one I chose to flavor mine with Ginger. The pre-made kind tastes so much like Ginger Ale! ^_^

So as of right now, this will be ginger flavored as soon as it is fully brewed.
Here is the jar of Sencha tea next to the growing Rocko.


I had to use the top culture, and the original Rocko had to go to that great big Kombucha jar in the sky (the trash).
So now Rocko will be in his new home for a few weeks, then I'll add some Ginger goodness ^_^


I will post updates on Rocko as the Kombucha is fully brewed ^_^