I had a small head of cabbage so I added some carrot to fill the jar. I let the salt do most of the work this time, letting it sit until a lot of the liquid was drawn out. 2% salt. 800g veg and 16g sea salt. Using my new fermenting lids and weights.
Used this link as a guide.
06.15.18 – apparently carrots smell like death and dying as they ferment too.
old batch next to new batch
The process is basically the same as growing the SCOBY except it only ferments 7-10 days. I followed the directions from the kitchn here, but only a half batch. I used Trader Joe’s English Breakfast Tea.
The scoby’s been hanging sideways for the past few days and today it started floating more towards the top (still sideways). The new layer is forming nicely on the top. I gave it a taste and it’s still very much sweet tea.
So… I haven’t touched it since 04.10.18. I did bottle that first batch and let it carbonate for 2 days(?) and started a new batch. The carbonation wasn’t quite enough so I’ll try 3 days next time. My second batch has been sitting in the counter since April 10 so that helped the SCOBY grow nice and big. Today I started a new batch, this time using half black tea and half green tea (China green tips). I also bought a fresh bottle of GT’s Kombucha to use as the starter.
The SCOBY started to slip sideways into the tea so I decided it was time to take it out and start a fresh batch of kombucha. It’s not very thick yet, but parts of it seem to be more than 1/4″ thick.
I finally tried Kombucha for the first time last week. I got GT’s Gingerade from Trader Joe’s and loved it! It was like a slightly sour ginger soda. I decided immediately that I’d like to try to make it myself so I got to researching how to get my hands on a scoby. I found this article from The Kitchn on how to grow my own. All I needed was some black tea, sugar, and a bottle of unflavored kombucha. The unflavored variety was harder to find than I expected. None at the stores I usually go to. I finally tried Martindale’s today and there it was! And it was on sale! I’m excited to get this experiment started. Also excited that the unflavored Kombucha was just as delicious as the flavored ones I’ve tried so far.
Ingredients
7 cups water (I used about 6 cups – the jar was looking too full)
1/2 cup white granulated sugar
4 bags black tea – I used Tazo Awake
1 cup unflavored, unpasteurized store-bought kombucha
Bowl half the water and steep the tea and add sugar. Stir to dissolve. Add the rest of the (cold) water and let it come to room temperature. Add Kombucha, making sure the blobby part is included. Stir, cover with cloth and secure with rubber band. I will check back in a few days!
So many peppers! We got 3 different kinds of peppers in our CSA this week. One were these giant cayenne peppers. I’ve only ever seen cayenne peppers that were small and skinny. These were about 8 inches long and an inch thick. Not sure how well they will dehydrate so I decided to try to make hot sauce. Lo and behold, the recipe I found has you ferment the peppers first! Same method as my previous fermented peppers, then you purée the whole thing into a sauce. I think I will strain it a little before I purée, then add liquid to get a consistency I like.
09.15.17 – I puréed this today. I ended up with a pint of sauce after straining out most of the liquid.
