Home Brew 2

Now that the Mild Wife and I have started making our own kombucha, the whole process has led to a steady stream of laughs. We mostly started it as a way to try to save some money, but it has led to a whole mess of chuckles throughout the whole process. It has been quite the pleasant surprise, I have to say.

First of all, I should point out that I generally don't like getting my hands dirty. I don't know why, but this has been one of those things that's always been part of my personality. You know how some kids would play in mud or get stains on stuff throughout the house? Generally speaking, I stopped doing that by the time I hit elementary school. I can deal with it if my hands are sticky or greasy, but it's not my favorite feeling in the world. I usually end up washing my hands shortly thereafter.

I mention this because when you brew kombucha, you have to scoop out the SCOBY from your brew jar at some point. The SCOBY is the culture that ultimately turns sweet tea into kombucha, so you need that stuff. You also want to protect it as much as possible, so the instructions I've seen say to grab it, with very clean hands, and put it into a smaller container along with some of the kombucha liquid. I think the idea is that you don't want to use a metal ladle because that can eat into the flesh of the SCOBY if you're not careful.

You're probably seeing the problem by this point. Sure, I can wash my hands after I fish out the SCOBY, but I still have to stick my hands into a jar of liquid and grab a rubbery disk-like object. It's easily my least favorite part of the whole brewing process. In fact, the Mild Wife has commented that I make a face every time I have to do it. If she happens to be around when I have to do this, she will usually laugh at my facial expressions. In fact, she has suggested that she may very well film the whole thing one of these days.

The other thing worth mentioning, though, is one that makes me laugh. Whenever we brew our kombucha, we usually do a secondary fermentation in order to get some of the extra fizziness. The first time we did this, I simply added a little bit of sugar, but it's pretty common to use fruit for the source of sugar in the secondary fermentation. Since the first batch came out fairly well, I figured I'd try using some pineapple sauce for the second batch. I mean, we had some in the house anyway, so it seemed like a reasonable thing to do.

The instructions that came with the kit say to add 2 to 3 tablespoons of your fruit, so I measured it out a couple of tablespoons for each bottle. I didn't really have a good reason to choose 2 instead of 3 tablespoons at first, but after futzing with a funnel and the bottle neck in order to get the pineapple into the bottle, I definitely chose to do less work. It just wasn't worth the hassle to keep messing with the fruit to get an extra tablespoon of fruit into the bottle.

As it turned out, that bit of laziness was an unexpectedly good decision. When I opened up the first bottle, I realized that the pineapple was a VERY good source of sugar. In fact, it was so good that I had ended up with a lot more carbonation in the bottle than expected. When I popped off the top, the liquid came rushing out with reckless abandon. You know how if you shake a bottle of soda it sprays out when you finally release the pressure? It was like that, only I hadn't shaken the bottle at all. I had inadvertently made a kombucha geyser. I'm not even kidding, the liquid probably spewed an inch or two above the bottle as soon as I released the pressure.

After I finally cleaned everything up and wiped down all of the surfaces, I was still left with enough kombucha to drink. It tasted fairly good, but the whole process had been quite the ordeal. Still, the Mild Wife and I have resolved not to do that again, or to at least be a lot more careful about opening the first bottle of a brew (say, by doing so over the sink).

All in all, this kombucha thing has turned into quite the process. Not only do we get a beverage out of the process, but there's a comedy act included, too. Dinner and a show, indeed.