I was told by a doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine that drinking diet soda is literally drinking poisins. She suggested to substitute diet soda with a fermented drink called Kombucha.

I went to the natural food store and bought 3 different flavors of a manufactured brand to try it. The plain flavor was effervescant and I liked that but the taste was unexpected. It did have a pleasant effect though, it made me feel warm and flushed.

So I tried some everyday, could only sip about 3/4 cup at a time and realized it tastes a lot like apple cider vinegar. So although I've always liked pickles wasn't sure if this sour drink would make a good replacement for diet cola.

One morning I woke up craving this new drink! Tried another flavor - lemon, and it was much more like lemon-lime soda, with a fuller taste, more complex and more satisfying, but doesn't have as strong of a warming effect as the plain flavor.

So did some research and discovered kombucha is made from a starter, similar to sour dough bread and you can brew it yourself at home.

Here is the wikipedia link on kombucha: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kombucha

* Anyone else try this drink, or brew it at home?

* How does home brew compare to manufactured brands?

Hey there,

I brewed Kombucha myself for a year or more. I'm actually thinking about ordering a new baby and starting again. It's nice stuff, not quite as tart as apple cider vinegar.

I never tried any prepared by anyone but me or my friend who sent me the starter.

Maria

Thank you for your reply Maria!

So the home brew kombucha = is it effervesent?

What kind of tea did you use as the base?

How did you keep the starter alive? i like that you call it baby.

I am thinking I'd like to buy some starter too, but I'm worried if I don't make it every week the starter might die.

I've tried keeping sour dough starter alive but when I stopped making bread every week or every other week, the starter went off. Is there a trick to keeping either or these alive longer - on hold for a month or so?

The wiki page on how to make kombucha, where they suggest you search "organic kombucha starter" when looking for starter: http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Kombucha-Tea

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I've tried two brands of manufactured kombucha. The pasturized brand comes in 5 flavors - i like the lemon flavor best, but the plain flavor really does taste very much like apple cider vinegar. The organic raw brand has a much cleaner taste - much more like an alcoholic cider drink or like champagne. Tart but clean and very effervescent.

Hey Kay,

You can make it with black tea or with a ratio of green-to-black of 4:1. I used black tea, specifically orange pekoe, when I was making it, but if I try again, I'm going to try the green.

Yes, it was effervescent. That's part of the fermentation that goes on.

Every week the "mama" mushroom, which is floating in the sugared tea in the glass bowl in the refrigerator, produces a new "baby" underneath. You peel off the mama and put her in your compost. You pour the tea into a pitcher to drink that week. You brew the new tea in a big cauldron and when it's cooled, it goes into the glass bowl with the baby. Over the next week, the baby becomes a mama.

It goes basically like that, as I recall. The glass bowl is covered with a cotton tea towel, cinched down with string or a rubber band. If for some reason you end up leaving the Kombucha beyond the time when it has got two layers of the same size, too much of the tea will disappear and the mushrooms could get dry and icky. That's what ended up eventually happening with mine when for some reason I was out of town or something. Also, there are various things that can cause them to get mold, but mine never did.

I got my starter mushroom sent to me through overnight delivery, in with some tea, inside a big Ziploc baggie, inside another big Ziploc baggie, inside some padding and then a box. It survived without refrigeration long enough for overnight delivery. And you can tell when you look at them that they look like a big round creamy colored blob of dough and aren't dried out and don't have any other colorations or difference in textures throughout. But then too, I got mine from a friend and I knew she prepared it properly.

Maria