Month: April 2016

Categories
Ketogenic Diet

Kombucha – the first batch

HICI5407[1]

My first batch of Kombucha is ready, and to quote Anakin Skywalker from The Phantom Menace….YIPEE!!!!

For those that don’t know, Kombucha is fermented sweet tea. Sounds weird I know, but I am brewing it for its health benefits. So I figured even if it tasted horrible, I would just down it as a tonic. However I was pleasantly surprised. When I get more experienced with the brewing process, it should be a very enjoyable drink.

The taste of the first batch was a little sour though. This is probably down to the fact that the instructions recommended leaving it to ferment for 7-10 days and I left it for 14 days. Overall it was a success. It tastes a little bit like White Wine. So I think I will drink the first batch with a bit of Soda Water, and make Kombucha Spritzer’s. I am using a Continuous Batch method, so the container is already filled back up with Sweet Tea. I will just leave it 7 days this time, so it should be sweeter.

So how did I get onto the Kombucha Train? Well I started a Ketogenic Diet in January’16. The first 6 weeks were a breeze. Then TRAIN CRASH… for 2 weeks I had really bad digestive issues. So I tracked what I was eating, to see what I was doing wrong. I fathomed that I was not getting enough Fibre and no apparent sources of Probiotics. As well as eating a lot of Cheese and Cream. So I tweaked my diet a bit. I started having a vegetable smoothie, which includes an Avacado, Spincah, Corriander, Mint, Basil, Psyllium Husk and Flax Seed. Therefore getting a large portion of Fibre straight away. Then after my salad for lunch, I have some natural yoghurt with a hand full of berries and nuts. This gets some probiotics into my system. But to take the probiotics to the next level, I have started making sauerkraut and now have my Kombucha.

 

The below stated benefits of Kombucha are taken from;

http://draxe.com/7-reasons-drink-kombucha-everyday/

 

Beneficial Probiotics in Kombucha

An article published in the journal Food Microbiology established that the following probiotics make up this health elixir:

  • Gluconacetobacter(>85 percent in most samples)
  • Acetobacter(<2 percent)
  • Lactobacillus(up to 30 percent in some samples)
  • Zygosaccharomyces(>95 percent)

 

I bought my Kombucha Kit from;

http://happykombucha.co.uk/collections/continuous-brewing-kits/products/medium-kombucha-continuous-brewing-kit