January
Medium
For the pantry
20 min.
Kombucha made with unripe juniper berries
- 100 g organic white sugar
- 9 g tea of your own choice
- 1 l mineral water or birch juice
- 1 kombucha mother, also known as a SCOBY
- 100 ml kombucha brew (10 % of the total amount)
- 7 g black tea
- 7 g green juniper berries
- 1.5L preservation jar
- To make the ice tea, put 9 grams of tea in a bowl and pour cold mineral water over it. Let tea infuse for 24 hours.
- Pour 1 liter of iced tea in a pot and bring to a boil.
- Remove the pot from the heat, add black tea and green juniper berries and let steep for 15 minutes.
- Strain all the tea through a fine mesh strainer and into the jar.
- Pour the sugar in the tea and stir until completely dissolved. Let cool to room temperature.
- Add 100ml kombucha brew to cooled tea.
- Wash your hands before carefully placing the kombucha mother on the surface of the liquid. It should float to the top within a couple of days. If that does not happen, the kombucha might not be viable.
- Cover the jar with a thin cloth, such as cheesecloth, and secure it with a wide rubber band or a piece of string.
- Let the kombucha ferment for 14 to 28 days, ideally in the shade at 20 to 25 degrees C. Fermentation time depends on the exact temperature and humidity.
- Taste the kombucha after 14 days, and then taste it every day up through the 28th. kombucha will be finished when it has a good balance between acidity and sweetness.
- Once the perfect flavor is achieved, pour the liquid into a bottle and refrigerate. To increase the carbonic acid, leave the kombucha out at room temperature for a couple of days before refrigerating.
Tips
A kombucha mother can easily be bought online. Just google "SCOBY." If you know somebody who is already making their own kombucha, you can get a piece of their scoby. Every time kombucha is brewed, a new mother will propagate on the surface of the liquid. This can replace your first mother. Alternatively, you can give it away as a present! If you want to save a kombucha mother for later, you can put it in a closed jar with a bit of freshly brewed tea and sugar, and store it in the fridge. Just know that scobies propagate very quickly; you will have more than you need in no time.
Thorsten Schmidt
Restaurant Barr
Thorsten Schmidt is a Danish chef known for his sense of culinary adventure and love for experimentation. Raised in Jutland and trained in both Germany and France, Schmidt believes food to be a potential vehicle of cultural identity, pride and nostalgia. His former restaurant, Malling & Schmidt, served some of the most influential and inventive Danish food in the country. Schmidt is now a co-founder and partner of restaurant Barr. A collaboration between Schmidt and René Redzepi in the former noma restaurant space, Barr offers a convivial setting in which to enjoy high-quality comfort food and drink traditions of the North Sea.
