by gregtpayne | Sep 21, 2015 | Favorites
While we usually blend in some green tea for this SCOBY family, I kinda forgot and went with 14 grams of David’s Breakfast tea. It looked pretty dark. This is definitely our blackest tea and almost makes a strong (vinegary) buch. Temperatures have been in the 90s this past week and after 8 days our previous batch using this tea was not used. Temperatures are cooling off now so we will ferment this for eight days as usual but we will flavor it with something that complements a strong buch.
We harvested this on 9/30 for a nine day first fermentation. We bottled it in #21-26 with 1/4 cup of Concord Grape juice and the usual tbsp of sugar. We’ll do a five day second fermentation.
by gregtpayne | Sep 19, 2015 | Uncategorized
For this batch we used 15 grams of Second Flush Darjeeling, one cup of sugar, 10 cups water and 1 1/2 cups starter buch.
We were out of town for a few days and weren’t able to harvest this batch until 9/29 for a 10 day first fermentation. It tasted strong (vinegary) but still sweet. We flavored bottles #31-33 with a tsp of ginger and a tbsp of sugar and bottle #34 with 2 tsp ginger and a tbsp of sugar.
by gregtpayne | Sep 16, 2015 | Uncategorized
We’re finding Oolong to be a light tea even when using about 50% more than other teas in our brews. However the buch is very tasty. For this batch we used 20 grams of an Oolong from Vietnam, Tung Ting.
We harvested this batch on 9/23 after 7 days (it’s been hotter than usual). Oolong is a very light tea and makes a very nice refreshing buch. We flavored it with a little less than 1/4 of blackberry puree and 1 tbsp sugar. We’re hoping it’s not too sweet.
We had to move these bottles to the fridge the morning of 9/26 for a 2.5 day fermentation. This will probably be light and sweet.
by gregtpayne | Sep 12, 2015 | Uncategorized
For this batch we used a loose leaf tea called David’s Breakfast. This was our English Breakfast batch and we thought we were getting an organic English Breakfast from DavidsTea (that’s what the girl told us anyway) but it turns out this is actually a blend of teas from Nepal and India. So our English Zen in on hiatus and we will be brewing Green Eggs and Spam (12 grams David’s Breakfast + 4 grams green) for awhile.
We harvested this batch on 9/21 and after an eight day fermentation in 90+ degree weather it was a little vinegary so we disposed of it. David’s Breakfast is a very black tea and makes very strong buch. Our usual fermentation temperature is in the 70s. In the future we’ll adjust our fermentation period for extreme temperatures.
by gregtpayne | Sep 11, 2015 | Uncategorized
For this batch we used 15 grams of Second Flush Darjeeling, one cup of sugar, 10 cups water and 1 1/2 cups starter buch. We’re all loose-leaf now!
We harvested this batch on 9/19 in bottles #4-7 (we were a little short on blueberries). We flavored it with 2 tbsp (1/8 cup) blueberry puree, 1/4 tsp cinnamon and 1 tbsp sugar.
We moved these to the fridge on 9/23 for a four day fermentation. It’s been hotter than usual the past few days so we shortened fermentation times.
by gregtpayne | Sep 8, 2015 | Uncategorized
For this batch we used 3 grams each of David’s Breakfast, Second Flush Darjeeling, Sencha Ashikubo green, Bai Hao Yin Zhen white and Rainbow Oolong.
We are putting Poi Dog on hiatus. We are producing more than we are drinking and giving away. We did not bottle this batch. We may bring it back in the future but when we tasted the Oolong alongside the Poi Dog, the Oolong won so the office will host only one jar. We may even move it upstairs and do batches #1, #2 and #3 instead of LO, RO, LB and RB. So goodbye for now Poi Dog.
by gregtpayne | Sep 6, 2015 | Favorites
For this batch we used 23 grams (more than the typical 15 g of DavidsTea) of Oolong tea from Rainbow Grocery.
We first blamed the light color on the fact that our first loose leaf Oolong was from Rainbow Grocery but DavidsTea Oolong used in our next batch was no darker. We harvested this on 9/16 and flavored 4 bottles, #91-94 with just 1 tbsp of sugar. It tasted light and still sweet so we’re looking forward to trying it after a nine day second fermentation.
by gregtpayne | Sep 4, 2015 | Uncategorized
For this batch we used a loose leaf tea called David’s Breakfast. This was our English Breakfast batch and we thought we were getting an organic English Breakfast from DavidsTea (that’s what the girl told us anyway) but it turns out this is actually a blend of teas from Nepal and India. So our English Zen in on hiatus and we will be brewing Green Eggs and Spam (12 grams David’s Breakfast + 4 grams green) for awhile.
We are running out of bottles as well as space in the fridge. We really need to cut down to 3 batches but it’s hard to let one go. We flavored this batch with 1/4 cup Strawberry puree and 1 tbsp sugar in bottles #81-84 on 9/12. We also filled a quart jar which we flavored with 2 tbsp sugar.
Oops, didn’t refrigerate Strawberry bottles until 9/16 am. Gonna be explosive!
by gregtpayne | Sep 3, 2015 | Uncategorized
This is our first batch using only DavidsTea loose-leaf. We used 15 grams of Second Flush Darjeeling in 3 hand-filled tea bags. We’re excited about moving to DavidsTea loose leaf and believe it will make our kombucha taste even better.
We bottled this on 9/11 flavored with 1/4 strawberry puree and a tbsp of sugar. We usually let our strawberry ferment three more days in bottles before refrigeration but this time we’re going to cut it to two for a couple of bottles to further reduce explosiveness.
We refrigerated this at 1:30 pm on 9/14
by gregtpayne | Aug 31, 2015 | Uncategorized
Our experimentation with loose-leaf tea continues as we replace the Choice bag of Oolong with 5 grams of loose-leaf Oolong from Rainbow Grocery. We were surprised when we used it to make our pure Oolong batch that it seemed to require a lot of tea per cup so we used 5 grams of Rainbow Oolong, 4 grams of Bai Hao Yin Zhen white, 3 grams of Sencha Ashikubo green, 1 bag Tazo English Breakfast and 1 bag Tazo Darjeeling.
We harvested this on 9/7 making #61 and 62 plain and 63-65 Grape Ape.
We moved 63-65 to fridge on 9/12
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