BUCH!

I'm sure you've all been waiting with bated breath for some more glamor shots of my lovely Kombucha brew, so here you are!  This will be day 20.

Now, how could anyone think the 'Buch is ugly?  Or is this a case of face-only-a-mother-could-love?  Color me smitten; I can still be found perched on my counter, face pressed up against the glass, lovingly charting the carbonation bubbles and admiring new layers of the scoby.  You can see how the ghost mushroom of only couple weeks ago has transformed into this dreamy opaque brew factory and I am downright ENCHANTED.

Yesterday, I harvested the brew for actual consumption (!!!).  I test-drove it on some co-workers of mine, all inveterate Kombucha drinkers, splashing a bit of organic concord grape juice into the mix.  And the brew?  It's tasty.  

It still amazes me that one can actually set out to make the stuff and succeed, as the whole process kind of feels like calling on the magic of fairies and wizards (or microbes, whatever).

Now my role in this mystical play is to carefully keep adding more tea / sugar ("feeder solution" according to the Happy Herbalist, whose instructions read like a Dr. Bronner's bottle, but less unglued and vastly more scientific) as I draw off from the batch.  Next up, I shall attempt to make a "kombucha hotel" for a backup scoby.

PS.  It was discovered that my Fred Meyer's glass contraption is equipped with a spigot that does, in fact, rust.  I rushed out immediately and purchased a self-siphoning tube, problem solved.