Preface
What if I told you there exists a drink made from water, tea, sugar, living cultures, polyphenols (antioxidants), organic acids, bacteria, and yeast? What if I told you one of the first historical records we have of it from China around 221 BCE during the Qin Dynasty, being revered as the "Tea of Immortality"? What if I told you it's pretty simple, fun, and cheap to make at home? If you're still reading then welcome to the club of kombucha lovers! We're glad you're here 😀
Kombucha is a delightful effervescent drink made from tea that has been fermented with a SCOBY. No, not that crime solving canine - a Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast, often referred to as "the Mother". With each brew, more layers of SCOBY will be built up - as if birthing babies which will grow up to be delicious drinks some day. Kombucha is often mistaken for a "mushroom tea"; technically the SCOBY is in the fungus family, but there are no 🍄 here (unfortunately).
I have to be honest - the first few times that I tried kombucha (from the store, mind you) I was not a fan, at all. It tasted a bit tangy, but not exactly what I'd call "delicious". I tried several of the "major" brands, but simply did not care for them very much. Much later I disovered the reasoning for this is that it's pastuerized; the pasteurization process effectively creates "dead" kombucha. You effectively get a brew with much less flavor and far inferior health benefits. So, I figured it just wasn't for me. That all changed when I met a colleague who gave me a SCOBY and gave me the 'bucha bug. So, I did some research and did some fermenting and did some tasting and fell in love with the results (and the process too)!
Aside from brewing the 'bucha, I also enjoy the world of software engineering. In software engineering you typically start with a problem and then devise a solution that can easily be repeated. Often times the use of a tool called a framework is used to provide a defined way of handling certain issues/problems. The way frameworks do this is by providing building blocks, which can be utilized together in any number of ways to create any number of outcomes. The aim of this book is to be a framework of sorts for the brewing of kombucha 🍾