An old sock?!?! Yes. An old sock.
Last night I brewed the tea for my current batch of Kmobucha. I have two jugs going so I need to brew two large batches of strong, concentrated tea. I use a half cup of loose leaf tea in about two liters of water for each batch. I have one tea "bag" that will hold that much tea. I usually put the tea in and use a rubber band to keep the cloth bag closed. I've made due with other methods in the past for the other jug but decided last night that I should have bag for it. So I grabbed an old pair of socks from the draw, cut off the foot of the sock below the heel and had a perfectly sized bag. I put the tea in, rubber banded the bag closed, and off we went. It worked like a charm. Yet another use for an old cotton sock.
For this round of Kmobucha I brewed a special blend of rooibos and pu erh teas. I like the flavor of both even though they are so different. The rooibos is light and almost fruity. The pu erh is dark and smoky and strong. Rooibos is free of caffeine and pu erh is chock full of caffeinated goodness. Sounds like a good pairing, right? Well, fortunately, it turned out to be a tasty brew and I believe it will make a delicious Kmobucha.
Today I threw both tea bags into a glass pitcher and filled it with water and brewed up a pitcher of this tea blend. For Kmobucha each pot of tea gets one cup of sugar. The little critters that make Kmobucha eat the sugar and thus the conversion process from extremely sweet tea to a more sour almost vinegary Kmobucha goodness. Well, the tea bags had some residual sugar permeated through them so this pitcher of tea is just slightly sweet. I don't normally sweeten my tea (why would you?), but this is quite tasty.
If you're a kombucha brewer I recommend this combination!
