Kombucha tea

I remember last year when I was in California it seemed like there were different things I'd never seen before. It's usually like that when I go home, I go to the store and lots of the products have changed their packaging, so at first they are almost unrecognizable.  But some things are really brand new to me on the market, and I don't know what I'm ingesting.  

Anya's Kambucha starter

One of these things I found out what it was, I was at Mt. Ranch and someone opened the fridge and showed me some bottles there and invited me to help myself.  "Kambucha tea, it's healthy, have some."  My baser desires would have steered me towards a Classic Coke, (THEY at least stick to the same basic shaped bottle and label and I can always recognize a Coke when I come home).  But I tried the Kambucha, unfortunately I drank straight from the bottle, so was obliged to down the whole vinagary contents myself. 

It's really slimy

The recipe that Anya gave me is like the ones you read on line:

• boil 2 liters of water, add a small amount of tea leaves 
• add 3 tablespoons of sugar
• after it's cooled off add tea mixture to the culture
• in the summer the drink is ready after 3 days, in the winter it takes a week

a pot of tea to feed our starter

pour into a 3 liter jar

here's how the Medusa looks after a day in the dark hallway feeding on its sweet tea to keep it alive.

If you notice in the picture Anya is holding a pancake type of an object, that is "the mother", as it's called. It is a slimy, weird, slippery, jellyfish-like thing, a combination of yeasts and bacterias.  We hope we survive to report what it tastes like and how healthy we are after drinking it.