life

“YOU WOULDN’T DOWNLOAD KOMBUCHA!”

April 14, 2025August 20, 2025 Leave a comment

Remember when I was brewing water kefir and accidentally almost made my Handsome Assistant lose an eye? As much as I loved the process (and the product), I also found that water kefir required a lot more attention than I am accustomed to from my colonies of semi-feral microorganisms. So, I’d been considering going back to making kombucha.

And remember those PSAs about video piracy from back in the day?

Joke’s on them. I would 100% download a car.

(Also, hello again! I apologize for my unannounced hiatus last week. It was my Handsome Assistant’s birthday, the world is on fire, and I was not feeling my best. I am better now and 100% back on my bullshit again.)

Anyhow, I was originally introduced to kombucha by a very sweet lady from Russia that I used to work with back when I still did Laboratory Stuff. (Predominantly a series of small, purposeful, semi-controlled explosions.) She brought me part of her SCOBY, and I used that for ages. Eventually, I fell out of the practice when my then-partner and I moved.

The trouble is, getting back into making kombucha hasn’t been super easy. Tracking down a live SCOBY isn’t always the simplest process and having them shipped through the mail can be tricky. (Of course, this is true of anything living that has to go through the mail. Bugs. Plants. Small children.)

Fortunately, there is a solution: Just kind of make your own, with a little help from the bottled stuff.

The majority of bottled kombucha on the market is raw. It has to be, in order to do the whole “probiotic” thing. This means that, even without a SCOBY, it contains what you need in order to brew more kombucha.

I’ve read posts that claim that bottled kombucha has been somehow “weakened,” and isn’t as strong as the starter culture used to produce commercial kombucha. I have my doubts about this because this would mean that it also wouldn’t be very effective as a probiotic. I’m also not sure of what kind of process would selectively weaken a probiotic culture in order to… install some kind of microbial DRM, I guess?

Even if this were the case, it doesn’t actually matter. As anyone who’s started a sourdough culture or accidentally left a bottle of juice out for a few days can tell you, the bacteria and yeasts responsible for fermentation are all around us. The trick is to select for those, and not pathogenic bacteria or toxic fungi. If you start with bottled raw kombucha, you’re already starting with something that has the low pH and natural compounds needed to keep down populations of unwanted microorganisms. It might take a couple of rounds for a SCOBY to get to full strength, but it’ll get there. I mean, the first kombucha ever made didn’t have a SCOBY to start with. Even if all you have is a bottle of kombucha, you’re ahead of the game.

The process is easy:

A close-up of a jar of tea, showing a thin SCOBY "skin" on the surface, — If you look at the surface of the tea, you can see a thin SCOBY formed from the bottled kombucha.

Get a bottle of kombucha. Make sure it’s raw. Flavor doesn’t really matter. Drink about half to two thirds of it. Leave the goopy stuff at the bottom.
Clean a nice, wide mouth jar. Rinse it thoroughly.
Brew up some nice, strong tea in your jar. I prefer green. (While you technically can make kombucha from herbal tea, this isn’t really recommended. If you do want to do so, you’re advised to cycle between a batch of herbal kombucha and a batch of the regular kind. To start with, you’re better off working with actual tea — the stuff made from Camellia sinensis, without any other additives.)
Add a bunch of sugar. It should be very sweet, albeit not syrupy. Don’t worry about the sweetness, because the kombucha will eat most of the sugar anyway.
Allow the tea to cool to room temperature, or just slightly above. Too much heat will kill off the culture.
Swirl the bottled kombucha thoroughly to incorporate the goopy stuff into the liquid. Pour the bottled kombucha into your tea and sugar mixture.
Cover the jar with a bit of cloth, a sturdy paper towel, or a coffee filter. Secure it with a rubber band.
Put it someplace clean, warm, and dry, out of direct sunlight.
Ignore it for a while. You’ll eventually begin to see a thin, translucent “skin” forming on the top. This is a baby SCOBY! With time, it’ll get thicker.

After a week or so, your SCOBY should be a bit more substantial. Brew up more tea and sugar and transfer it to a new jar to allow it to continue to grow. The old SCOBY will break down, and a new one will form on the top. If conditions are right, it’ll gain some strength with each successive iteration. It’s a good idea to cut the SCOBY into halves so you can have two separate batches running at once — that way, if one goes weird, you’ll still have a backup.

So far, this process has been working out well for me. The SCOBY is SCOBYing, and I’m coming up with ideas for flavoring a second ferment. I’m thinking a ginger peach or raspberry and rose.

life

Reskilling: In which I make a cool little guy.

July 1, 2024June 29, 2024 J.1 Comment

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For the past few years, ever since reading Dana O’Driscoll’s Sacred Actions: Living the Wheel of the Year through Earth-Centered Sustainable Practices, I have been on a reskilling bent. To be honest, it’s also one of the things that helps ease my climate anxiety (and anxiety in general) — increasing my ability to be self-sufficient, gaining skills I can use to help others, and learning how to do things that I can potentially barter with if everything goes pear shaped.

Honestly, Etsy has been a huge help when it comes to this kind of thing. I’ve learned so much about fermentation, soapmaking, pottery, and so much more from kits and patterns that I’ve picked up there. (It’s also been a huge help for hard-to-find supplies, but more on that at another time.)

All of this is to say that I made a cool little guy, and I am going to take him on Adventures.

Image taken from the shop listing, by Tatiana Skalozub.

My Handsome Assistant bought me this kit from an Etsy shop called TSminibears. I’d had it favorited for a while, and he surprised me with it over winter. I was initially a bit intimidated — the finished doll is only a few inches tall, which means lots of tiny, fiddly bits to cut out (while maintaining the proper seam allowances, natch), sew, turn out, stuff, attach, et cetera. So, I put off starting it.

Finally, I got over my initial inertia, traced the pattern, and got to work. As is so often the case, actually starting to do the thing was the hard part. Once I did that, the process seemed to fly by.

The written instructions of this kit are fairly sparse, but that’s okay. The bulk of what you need to know is in the form of a YouTube video, where the creator walks you through the entire process of assembling the pieces, stuffing the crow, adding details, and so forth. As someone who’s had to both write and follow written instructions before, I know it can sometimes be difficult to describe exactly what steps you need to do, and what the desired result should be. This is especially true when it’s an art project, where so many things can influence the outcome and there’s a pretty broad tolerance for minor errors or stylistic choices.

I found myself choosing to skip a few of the steps, myself. I knew I’d probably want to make him some tiny clothes at some point, so I left off the bits that I thought might interfere with this. (For example, the feathers on his head. That might make wearing tiny hats or hoodies difficult. Also, not gonna lie, I kind of fell in love with his very spherically domed, Charlie Brown look and didn’t want to change it.) I stuffed him with a bit of wool with a tiny Herkimer diamond for a heart and, even with some steps skipped, I think he turned out awesome.

I mean, look at him.
He’s adorable.

I can’t wait to make him many tiny scarves.

If crows aren’t your thing (which, how dare), there are a ton of other kits for elephants, dragons, bunnies, a triceratops, and even a bizarrely cute cobra and weirdly endearing mussel. If you’d like to learn more about making stuffed toys and aren’t sure where to start, this is definitely a good place. Take your time, make sure you know which direction the faux fur lays, and follow the instructions on Skalozub’s videos, and you will also make a cool little guy.

life

The Mead Experiment. An Experimead, if you will.

June 9, 2023June 1, 2023 J.Leave a comment

Last equinox, my spouse and I went to a wonderful celebration with another local Pagan group. There was dancing, singing, amazing food, and lots of great conversation — including one about brewing. Somewhere along the line, Spouse became intrigued by the process. One of the people we were talking to makes mead regularly, and made it sound simple: Get a gallon jug of water, empty about a third of it, fill it with honey, and shake it more than seems reasonable. Allow time to pass, et voilà! Mead.

I’m all about reskilling, so I was absolutely encouraging of this new interest. Brewing is both a method of preservation, and, if things go really pear-shaped, a way to create a valuable trade good.

I only had one condition: Based on my own learning process with water kefir, I wanted Spouse to do it as strictly as possible for at least the first go-’round. That meant getting the right equipment, like a hydrometer, buckets, a big pot for boiling the honey and water, cultivated yeast, the whole nine. There are a lot of valuable skills to pick up, like knowing how to sterilize equipment, accurately and precisely measure ingredients, and encourage the growth of only the fermentation organisms that you want. Once he had them down, I figured, it’d be easier and safer to do things like eyeball measurements and work with wild yeasts.

He agreed, and so we converted our downstairs half-kitchen into a kind of mad science lab, which I think is both fun and excellent.

Anyway, did you know that if you miscalculate the amount of honey you initially need, subsequently miscalculate the amount of yeast, then catch your error and try to compensate by adding extra honey, you’ll end up with something that’s both delicious and capable of stripping the paint off of an aircraft carrier?

In other words, the experiment was a success. He did create drinkable mead, though I’m pretty sure he got it to well over 20% ABV.

I guess it’s like the difference between cooking and baking. Cooking is improvisational — if you don’t like an ingredient, leave it out. If you love it, add extra. Baking is chemistry, and deviating from the base recipe will leave you with an inedible brick. There’re some things you have to do to make sure your yeast doesn’t get outcompeted by mold, but, even if you add too much of one thing or another, you’ll still get something tasty and alcoholic.

Next time, I think he’s going to try to make a melomel (especially after our apples and blueberries ripen). I really want him to try making acerglyn, a kind of mead made using grade B maple syrup and honey. I love maple syrup, and I really want to taste the effect that deep, caramelly flavor would have on the final product. Heck, maybe both! An acerglyn with apples, star anise, and cinnamon sounds incredible.

Man, now I’m hungry.