Kombucha is a bubbly, fermented tea that has acquired appeal in the health and wellness scene over the last years –– however what is it precisely? This week, the Reactions group breaks down kombucha’s chemistry and examines which common drinks they can become kombucha:
Video Transcript:
I enjoy kombucha, however what is it? And what is this?
Delicious. Delightful.
Kombucha is a fermented tea. It’s made by integrating tea, sugar, and a cooperative culture of germs and yeast, or a SCOBY. That mix then relaxes for about 2 weeks till it’s prepared to consume.
The scoby is actually the one doing the work here. It breaks down sugars and develops the tastes that make kombucha distinct.
What you’re seeing is mainly cellulose which’s made by germs. I like to think about this as type of a city that the germs and yeast can reside in. In that cellulose city the germs and yeast are collaborating to break down sugar through 2 kinds of fermentation: alcoholic fermentation and acetic acid fermentation.
The yeast in the scoby are primarily producing alcohol. They produce an enzyme called invertase that disintegrates the sugar, or sucrose, into its smaller sized sugar elements: fructose and glucose.
From there the glucose is broken down into pyruvate, then acetaldehyde, and lastly ethanol, launching co2 while doing so. CO2 is what makes kombucha a little bubbly, and ethanol is why kombucha constantly has which contains some alcohol label.
But don’t get too ecstatic, unlike beer yeast the yeast in scoby can’t make it through in greater alcohol concentrations, so they don’t make anywhere near as much ethanol as even the lightest beer.
The germs in the scoby transform a great deal of that ethanol into acetic acid. This provides kombucha a little bit of a vinegary kick. You require a balance in between breaking down sugar and producing alcohol and acetic acid if you wish to make kombucha that in fact tastes great.
If you don’t include sufficient sugar the scoby lacks its food source and fermentation stops. If you include a lots of sugar, or if you let it go too long, you may wind up with a great deal of alcohol and a great deal of acetic acid, which can likewise stop fermentation. So rather of a tip of vinegar your kombucha will taste like vinegar directly from the bottle.
It must be quite clear at this moment that making a kombucha implies discovering the best balance. But how fragile is that balance?
How would scoby carry out in an environment that’s currently quite acidic, like coffee, or quite alcoholic, like white wine?
I persuaded George to, yet once again, do a try out me. This time we are evaluating a lot of drinks and asking will it kombucha?
[ANNOUNCER] It’s time to play Will It Kombucha?
Sam and George will attempt to make kombucha out of a range of various drinks. If the scoby reveals substantial development, and carbonation is formed, and the pH drops to 4.6 or below, it will be thought about securely kombucha’d, which implies that Sam and George will win the reward of getting to attempt their horrible brand-new drink. Here’s Sam…
[SAM] Wait, crucial security disclaimer. We decontaminated the containers, and we didn’t consume any drink that didn’t meet these 3 requirements: the scoby grew, the pH was listed below 4.7, and there was no mold development. There’s the capacity for things to grow that might make you really ill, so if you don’t have a great deal of experience making fermented things please adhere to a relied on dish.
So this is black tea and sugar. So you can see that there’s carbonation.
[GEORGE] Oh yeah.
[SAM] You can see this brand-new development here. This is quite dark I would state it’s at a pH of about 3.
[GEORGE] That’s okay.
[SAM] Yeah so this, not so shockingly, absolutely booch’d. The pH dropped a fair bit, so i’m gonna take a little sip. Tastes actually great. Delicious. I’m 100% gonna complete this today.
[GEORGE] So what I did here was I put cocoa powder, and sugar, and scoby. This lacks the scoby. There’s an extremely outstanding mold mountain. Now let’s take a look at the cocoa-bucha variation. There is no mold development here. Oh god that smells. Oh I would state this in fact type of kombucha’d.
There’s no mold development, the scoby appears like it broadened, so it in fact it actually did um like it actually did in fact develop more of itself.
[SAM] This is a moscato, and it in fact just has an alcohol material of 7 percent. There was no brand-new scoby development. I’m simply curious if it altered the pH at all. Yeah that looks basically the exact same.
[GEORGE] So I’m going to do honey next. This is our honey scoby you can plainly see there’s carbonation there, those are the the bubbles. Let’s pH it. Hey that’s acidic.
[SAM] It’s like what like a 4?
[GEORGE] It appears like a 4. Yep, we’re ideal bang on 4. All right I’m gonna taste it. Honey bucha here we go. That’s actually great. I’m surprised. It’s like honey, it’s carbonated, it’s acidic, it’s great!
[SAM] All right I’m gonna do apple juice. Really unique layer of scoby formed. What’s fascinating is that it’s so thick that it like appeared. Oh! It’s like a disc.
[GEORGE] That actually worked.
[SAM] Yeah it actually worked. Oh yeah, I would state it’s like in between a 4 and a 5. That was in fact respectable. I was attempting so thoroughly to not like consume the scoby that was boiling down that I spilled all of it over myself. It’s respectable, it type of simply tastes like carbonated apple juice, with a bit of vinegar as a an additional taste note.
[GEORGE] Next up we’ve got our soda pop bucha. The scoby is still in the exact same shape as when I put it in, however it does look larger, so possibly something occurred. A small bit of scoby action here. I suggest something occurred, I don’t believe it kombucha’d however something did take place there. My believed here was if I simply include scoby to routine soda pop, it’s too acidic, it’ll eliminate the scoby, so I reduced the effects of some soda pop with baking soda, and after that included scoby.
[SAM] Interesting.
[GEORGE] and here is the outcome.
[SAM] Oh you got some development.
[GEORGE] I got some development.
That tastes precisely like soda pop. If you had actually considered that to me blindfolded, I would not have actually understood that there was scoby because.
[SAM] So my last one uh iced coffee with sugar. It kombucha’d. I did not believe it was going to, however there’s some extreme brand-new scoby development here.
My mind was type of blown, I actually believed that it was simply going to be too acidic of a beginning environment to be able to get any development however, smells genuine unusual. Oh wow, yeah, that was a fast modification. It’s about a 4, I would state. So yeah, this iced coffee with sugar kombucha’d. Smells a little unusual.
Oh, bad. Would not suggest.
[GEORGE] I’m gonna I’m gonna go on and taste this horrible looking cocoa-bucha. This is the one with the scoby, the scoby plainly grew, here we go.
Oh that is horrible. It tastes like if you took hot chocolate and, oh there’s like waves of like fermented grossness.
[SAM] Sounds incredible.
[GEORGE] Okay I’m gonna go clean my mouth out with meal soap.
