Amy’s Guide to Staying In
Amy Lighthouse is a self-described over-achiever, who worked at Snapchat and Apple before going into venture capital. During the initial Covid onslaught, she wrote for The Lemonade Stand offering strategies of how to cope with quarantine and staying in. Her recipes and cable television suggestions have boosted the spirits of numerous households who credit Amy with keeping a number of families from harming each other.
Cody & Mary’s Lemon Ginger Kombucha
*** Ingredients ***
Primary Fermentation
– 1 Scoby
– 1 gallon fermenting jar
– Medium saucepan
– 8 cups filtered water
– 1-1 ¼ cup sugar
– 10-12 tea bags of black tea (to taste)
– Coffee filter or cheesecloth
– Rubber band
Secondary Fermentation
– 2-4 teaspoons ginger to taste (or any juice)
– (10) lemons to taste (or any juice)
– (6) 16 0z bottles
– Funnel
– [Optional) tea steeper (for ginger)
Primary Fermentation Instructions
Boil 8 cups of water in saucepan. Add tea (10) teabags or (2) 2 ½ tablespoons of loose black tea to taste). Must have mostly black tea, other teas can be added for flavor, but the culture needs black tea to ferment. Steep tea to the desired taste or recommended on teabag. Stir in sugar.
Reduce sweetened tea to 80 degrees or to room temperature. Pour sweetened tea into fermenting jar. Add filtered water to tea mixture to top of jar. Pour SCOBY with starter liquid on top of cooled tea (liquid must be below 80 degrees or SCOBY will die).
Put coffee filter over top of jar and secure with rubber band and put in a cool dark place to ferment. Fermenting can last 7-20+ days, ferment to taste; over time the kombucha will taste more sour and eventually turn into vinegar.
Taste after 7 days and every other day until desired flavor is reached.
Secondary Fermentation Instructions
Once the Kombucha has reached optimal taste, it is time to bottle. With clean hands, put the SCOBY and baby SCOBY (separately) into glass jars with 2 cups of the tea, they can both be used for future batches.
It is now time add juice to the Kombucha for flavor and to add carbonation. Rule of thumb is 15-20% juice to 85-80% Kombucha.
For lemon ginger tea, put 2-4 teaspoons of ginger into teabags or tea steeper and put into 1 cup of hot water. Add juice of 8-10 lemons to taste. Use funnel to pour lemon-ginger mix into each of the 6 bottles to 15-20% of the bottle.
Use funnel to pour Kombucha to 1-2 inches before top of bottle. Secure top and store for 7-30 days until desired carbonation is reached.