I’d love to know what ya’ll know - this comn saturday I plan to have my first baby! 
Also I would like to know more specifically if a mother and/or baby can eat teas other than black tea or do they require black tea to grow?
And, if anybody would like to know about my baby’s current and upcoming diet, bio/ecosphere, mother/father and grandparents I’d willingly love to talk about that and/or perhaps anything else if anybody wants me to expound.
ours,
Neighbor Scout
please hurry
My baby arrives tomorrow, and unfortunately black tea and I don’t get along. So please post any substitute teas.
the tea can also be green tea, and is delicious. kombucha also works to a certain extent with honey.
Congratulations!
Unfortunately, I know nothing of what a new mother or newborn baby need, so I can’t offer much help. Expounding might help, since I think the resounding silence issued from a general ignorance to match my own.
I’ll echo Lonnie and say that black, green, oolong, what-have-you kind of tea leaf will do just fine with your kombucha baby. Don’t forget to add sugar or your baby will die! :o
Wonderful, thanks you three.
Please, does agave nectar, maple syrup, honey and/or stevia substitute well for sugar (I mean cane sugar)?
And, folks, of course, please keep feeding us those kombucha facts/myths and what-not. Thanks.
Your results will vary with the different teas and sugars, sure. But I guarantee your little kombucha family will perish on stevia! They need sugars to eat.
Also, some would call the product something other than kombucha if you use something besides black tea and white sugar. . . I won’t argue, I just throw it out as a bit of context.
My hot tip? Surface area. Gallon jars–easier to wrangle, less surface area. Big round bowl–lots of surface area, though kinda challenging to pour off.
I know someone who uses a sun tea jar. It’s brilliant: it has a spigot on the bottom, and it doesn’t get narrower at the top, so you can peel off your babies neatly and easily.
[quote=“Neighbor Scout, post:6, topic:782”]Wonderful, thanks you three.
Please, does agave nectar, maple syrup, honey and/or stevia substitute well for sugar (I mean cane sugar)?
And, folks, of course, please keep feeding us those kombucha facts/myths and what-not. Thanks. :)[/quote]
Agave nectar substitutes wonderfully for canesugar,imo.
Hmm, I guess I need to look around some more before I just go posting stuff. I just made a huge post one this on the fermented foods thread, here it is again:
I was trying to figure out if honey sweetened beverages would be good as electrolyte replacement drinks. I haven’t sorted that out, but in my search I ran across a claim that kombucha has electolytes. Anyone know if that is true?
I got my Kombucha culture from a woman who teaches workshops on it. She went to the trouble of testing it with every sweetenter she could find and typed up the results. Her name is Gretchen Westlight and the handout says permission granted to share with credit, so here goes:
these were fermented for 12 days.
Taste comparison is to kombucha made with sugar/evap cane juice
Sweetener Culture Appreance Beverage Description
Turbinado Thick, healthy Fairly normal tasting
Agave Syrup Thick, healthy Fizzy, a little sour
Sucanat Thick, healthy Fizzy, sour
Rapadura Thick, healthy Fizzy, sour
Brown sugar Medium, healthy Fizzy, sour
Light Corn Syrup Thick, healthy Watery,bitter,not much fermented
Maple Syrup Thin, weak Sour, not much fermented, fizzy
Xylitol Very thin, somewhat healthy Very mild, not much fermented, fizzy
Fructose Thin, “anemic” Not much fermented, tased like plain tea
Stevia Thin, moldly Didn’t risk tasting it
Splena Thin, moldly Didn’t risk tasting it
Barley Malt Thin, medium-dark Somewhat cloudy, sediment, SOUR
Brown rice syrup Thick, pale Cloudy, sour vinegary, lots of sediment
Honey Thin, weak Cloudy, lots of sediment
Blackstrap molasses Thick, dark and muddy YUCK! GAG!!!
When I was reading about honey I learned that sugar is sucrose, which is fructose and glucose stuck togther. The sugar in honey is about 38% fructose, 30% glucose and 1% sucrose. Gretchen’s results with pure fructose would suggest that the kombucha organism doesn’t like plain fructose, so mabye that is part of why using honey was not as good as using sugar?
My question tho, is: what was the original kombucha sweetener source? I really doubt it was processed sugar.
As for honey, most store bought honey that you can find in supermarkets are processed in such a way that they are mostly fructose. This allows them to stay in the liquid form that we have come to expect honey to be in. I’ve been buying unprocessed raw honey, from a local honey producer, which is very heavy, thick, and granular. You may have more luck using raw honey than supermarket honey. Also, some types of honey have more fructose than others. Sage and eucalyptus for example.
Yeast doesn’t consume fructose as readily as other sugars, which is why it would result in less fermentation. You could leave it for longer, perhaps… I have yet to make kombucha. Lots of wine/beer/distilled stuff, though. And for those, raw honey is always better.
I have a quick question too:
Is their a way to make a scoby(mushroom) from scratch without kombucha? Like maybe adding vinegar to tea with some yeast or something? ???
I went to a seminar that Sandor Katz (author of Wild Fermentation) put on. He said that while you can brew without refined sugar without killing your creature right away, the health benifits are not as great, and the mother becomes sickly after a few batches. He wasn’t a big fan of Kombucha in general, though he had been in the past.
[quote=“kveldulf, post:12, topic:782”]I have a quick question too:
Is their a way to make a scoby(mushroom) from scratch without kombucha? Like maybe adding vinegar to tea with some yeast or something? ???[/quote]
I seriously doubt it. Good luck though. I have several friends that brew the stuff. you want me to try and send you a mother?
according to this video that i found, you can make a kombucha mother by making the tea as you would normally and then pouring an unpasteurized bottle of kombucha tea (like one you’d buy from the store) on the top and letting it sit. eventually it will make a mother. so if you have access to a health food store or co-op you might be able to get started. i’ve seen plenty of places have the bottle of kombucha but not a mother for sale.
watch the video if you can, they explain it more that me:
How on earth then did scobies get started in the first place?
Ah, creation stories!.. maybe we’ll never really know the origins of kombucha mothers. Let’s make up a mythology. 
PS. Where did Neighbor Scout go? Too bad he left. 
Yeah, using unpasteurized kombucha totally works. If I forget a cup of kombucha somewhere for a few days, I will discover it with a baby mug sized creature covering the top.
a baby mug sized creature
That sounds terrifying. Like a leprechaun? or a changeling?
;D
I’ve seen that creature lurking in the bottom of a bottle of raw apple cider vinegar, too. :o
Hey All,
I decided to try to raise a kombucha mother by starting with unpasteurized kombucha. I’ve tried kombucha before and it didn’t work out. I ordered a kombucha mother from GEM cultures and they sent me a little white pad floating in vinegar. I followed their directions and I think I killed it. Anyways, this time I started with a bottle of unpasteurized kombucha, and mixed it with some tea and sugar. Now I got a thin film on top of my tea that folds and jiggles like a jelly-fish when I touch it. So far, so good. But there are also little brown bubbles of yeast in there, which I’m not sure is so good. Will I end up with alcohol or kombucha?
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r205/xelkarin/imag0094.jpg
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r205/xelkarin/imag0095.jpg
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