Kombucha, namely the mushroom of long life in Japanese (Kom-Bucha) is a symbiote, a yeast and bacteria living in symbiosis.
It has been used for milenia as a general digestive medecine.
The good thing is you can breed this "beast" with sweet tea, using clean spring water, organic brown sugar, and green or black tea, herbal teas, medecinal herbs or choice.

about kefir..i got 4 tablespoons of grains about 2 months ago. now i brew it everyday and they're 16 tablespoons now..maybe more!

with them i usually brew 3 liters of kefir each day and i drink about 1,5 a day....i'm warried about their growth,i've to spread it to friends now to get rid of it! lol

it has a very nice taste imho and i'm loosing some weight and also i've intestinal problems like Irritable Bowel Syndrome anymore. so i'm very happy with it! as summer drink it's the best: i put some lemon juice and pledge in it's awesome!

The kefir grains are edible and a mega dose of probiotics. so you can just add some to your smoothie or chew some up. Good way to take advantage of their growth.

I love kefir and been making it from raw goats or cows milk. I drink a few cups a day.

My father drinks milk where he lets the kefir sponge one or 2 days. Actually it's not milk anymore, since it transforms the lactose into something else, from what i know.. maybe it's good for lactose intolerants.

He has being doing that 10 years, he's 63 now. He mixes every morning, garlic and kefir-milk with some spearmint leaves (to remove the garlic odor) and with some fruit sometimes.. It tastes horrible, but he swears for that medicine

mhh kiang that sounds nasty! lol
here a pic!

excellent !!

So, after all the kombucha or kefir grains lives in a liquid culture and have exchange with it.
If you can beneficiate from medecinal virtues of the brewed plants, there's whole bunch of different kefir/kombucha you may try.
I wouldn't nonetheless use other mushrooms not to mess with the SCOBY.

I hear you can at the end of the culture, add seeds to sprouts and ferment in it, so maybe a tryptamine rich brew (either mimosa or acacia RB or chacruna or chaliponga leaves i.e) and drop there at the end enough rue seeds dose for the volume/brew dosage to make the magic work.
Either drop some seeds and enough rue tea in before, whatever works.
How about activity of freshly sprout rue seeds ?

I highly recommend Sandor Katz's books if you're getting interested in fermentation. There's all sorts of great goodness in fermented food. However, technically, scobies are not mushrooms ... even if kombucha tastes great. I'm very partial to home made kimchee, miso and sauerbraten; too much sugar in kombucha for me to make it a regular item of consumption.

A medicine friend recently asked me to look after his kefir grains and I've rapidly developed a love for the beverage! I've been using coconut milk and it's simply delicious. My housemate recently started brewing kombucha too so my body is receiving a wonderful probiotic boost (and right in time, since I recently had to take antibiotics for the first time in 8 years to fight off a nasty infection and I could feel the resulting imbalance in my body and consciousness). Ferment more things!

Kefir has been part of my diet on and of for almost 3 years now. Love it and must say it's an excellent post workout drink! I use it also when making my morning vegetable/fruit shakes. Why spend money in store for yogurts and such when you can use some raw natural milk and make your own KEFIR.

I drink both (or all 3)but kombucha more so. I enjoy it more and has better qualities at least than water kefir. I have made milk kefir with water grains though. They just fail after about 6 brews but if I keep up the water version I have extra grains to use. I have lost around 16 lbs twice from drinking about 12 oz of kombucha daily. I slacked off for awhile and gained the weight back the first time and started experiencing my gut issues again. I dont think it is too sugary? longer ferment and it only uses 1 cup per gallon in the first place.Anyways I swear by it. I dont really eat or drink other sugary things though either.

I had my water Kefir grains sitting in the fridge for about 6 months and the culture died. They wouldn't ferment the sugar and there was no change in PH so I'm almost certain they were dead.

I was going to tip the lot and source some more but I remembered something Dom had written on his Kefir website about how he revives sick cultures at times.

I made a batch of sugar water for them to ferment and I added a few milk kefir grains with the Tibicos grains. The first batch fermented slowly but it eventually fermented all the sugar. After a few batches the Tibicos started to propagate again and now it works better than it ever did, it even tastes better than it did before too.

So it seems like the Kefir grain matrix can be re- inoculated with a new culture and resume growing.

Being a western industrial capitalist, I buy my Kefir at Lidl for 0,39€ per cup.

That stuff is tasty and filling...but is that really Kefir? It tastes like Sahnejoghurt. Recently i have started to buy kefir drinks on a regular basis. It is great to mix in some fruits like strawberries or peaches. I also recently tried to add frozen berries and blend it up - Instant milkshake/ice cream.

Yes it is. See: https://de.wikipedia.org...9EKefir.2C_mild.E2.80.9C

Of course it lacks some qualities compared to homebrew Kefir, but it's less work intensive and under a strict microbiological control. That what matters most for me.

I also like the Actimel rip-off yogurts from Lidl, they are 0,25€ each cup and contain all the necessary Lactobacillales. No need to buy fancy brands or make a mess in the kitchen.

This thread inspired me to try working with Kombucha myself. Thanks!

I'll get one later this day or tomorow.

I'm also jumping on the kombucha bandwagon and am going to experiment. I'm curious if honey can be used in place of sugar in fermentation.

i have been making Kombucha and Kefir in the past

you can get a clean culture from ebay for example

they like a steady temperature without much change, Kombucha is a little bit easier to make then Kefir

for the Kefir you should use the freshest milk that you can get, pasturized does not work as well as fresh

you can use most teas with the Kombucha, just get enough sugar in there. I personally like it with canesugar.
Honey can be used too, but cheap honey works better then high quality (and high price) medicinal honey.

the Kombucha is ready when its sour and the Kefir when its a thick liquid Joghurt
just filter, wash and reuse the cultures, if they change a lot in color then throw them away and buy some new


bought products have been sterilized, but you want to consume the living microorganisms for the proper effect

Some facts:

Lopitz-Otsoa F, Rementeria A, Elguezabal N,
Garaizar J: Kefir: a symbiotic yeasts-bacteria
community with alleged healthy capabilities.
Rev Iberoam Micol 23 2 (2006) 67-74

Hertzler SR, Clancy SM: Kefir improves lactose
digestion and tolerance in adults with lactose
maldigestion. J Am Diet Assoc 103 5 (2003) 582-7

Rodrigues KL, Caputo LR, Carvalho JC, Evan-
gelista J, Schneedorf JM: Antimicrobial and
healing activity of kefir and kefiran extract. Int
J Antimicrob Agents 25 5 (2005) 404-8

^^Hey thanks for those. I had a little look around and it seems scientific studies on these things seem pretty thin on the ground for some reason, at least for kombucha, lots of anecdotal claims etc (not knocking them, just making an observation). Found this nice review though...

Dufresne, C. & Farnworth, E. (2000) Tea, Kombucha, and health: a review. Food Research International, 33 (6), 409-421.

http://www.sciencedirect...le/pii/S0963996900000673

A long history of use definitely adds intrigue and I can clearly see the theory behind why these things may be beneficial. Raw milk is far superior nutrition wise to pasteurised, and this kefir adds another angle to this...wish I had easy access to raw milk.

You're welcome. Yes, downside of industrial Kefir is that it lacks some qualities present in natural kefir. The upside is, you get a standardized drink where all parameters are known (at least at the manufacturer side).

Another paper:
"Kefir: A Probiotic Dairy-Composition, Nutritional and Therapeutic Aspects." In: Pakistan Journal of Nutrition 2 (2): 54-59, 2003

It describes the industrial process. So Bindu's statement isn't quite correct.