kombucha coffee * a new brew

Kombuchee? Coffucha? Still trying to decide what to call this new staple in our house. A friend suggested Kombucino, I like it.

So folks, this was my new kitchen experiment this week and it turned out really {really} good! I've been brewing and drinking kombucha tea for quite some time now and recently I came across this post at Cultured Food Life about using coffee instead of tea and I knew I had to give it a try (did you all know I have a slight coffee addiction?...) Fermenting coffee this way makes it less acidic so it is gentle on tummies and you also get all the lovely probiotics that are found in kombucha tea. Plus the iced coffee tastes divine and makes a very tasty treat!

If you have brewed kombucha this will all make sense. If you have not read these posts to get all caught up ::

kombucha - breed your own scoby

kombucha - brewing, bottling and flavoring

counter top science experiments! SCOBYs on the left, kombucha coffee in progress on the right.

you will need ::

freshly brewed black coffee (either a gallon or half gallon)

sugar (1 cup for a gallon of coffee, 1/2 cup for 1/2 gallon) 

a scoby

The process is very similar to brewing kombucha tea. I brewed a half gallon of coffee, poured it into a glass jar and stirred a half cup of sugar into it while it was still hot. Once the sugar is dissolved set your sweetened coffee aside until it cools to room temperature. Once it has cooled put your scoby on top of the coffee and cover with a clean cloth secured with a rubber band. Set it on a counter top out of direct sunlight and let it work it's magic. I started tasting mine after 3 days. It was still pretty sweet but on day 5 it was only mildly sweet and ready to bottle. I strained it through a small funnel lined with a piece of cheesecloth (totally optional) into a half gallon mason jar and popped it into the fridge. You will serve this brew cold or at room temperature as heating it will kill all those good probiotics and such. I saved a cup or so of the fermented coffee to add to my next batch. I am very anxious to find out how it will effect the next jar. 

My scoby was pretty gnarly looking when I retrieved it from the jar and it is my understanding that it works best to use a new scoby each time so this one went into the compost pail.





 

Here is my final product - mildly sweet kombucha coffee over ice with a splash of almond milk! Yum!! New favorite treat!

Cheers to healthy guts and happy tummies, friends!