is anyone doing kombucha?

[Stitchawl]

I just asked my wife about it. She knows 'kombucha,' but not as a fermented tea. It's common here, but as regular tea.


Stitchawl

[kindlekitten]

I think there is some sort of sea weed concoction that is referred to as kombucha there. Not exactly the same thing.

[Stitchawl]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

I think there is some sort of sea weed concoction that is referred to as kombucha there. Not exactly the same thing.

Right. It's just tea made from kombu, a common seaweed usually used as a soup base. 'Cha' is the Japanese/Chinese word for tea. People drink kombucha here fairly often, but 'my' confusion came when you spoke of "getting a starter, and all of the *stuff* that goes with it." The kombucha that is drunk (drank? drinked?) here is just seaweed tea. Pretty vile stuff, as far as I'm concerned. I hope your fermented stuff tastes better. Ought to, as it seems yours is a sweet drink.


Stitchawl

[wodin]

Originally Posted by Stitchawl

... The kombucha that is drunk (drank? drinked?)... Stitchawl

At less than 0.5% ethanol I’d hardly think it is drunk.

[doubleshuffle]

Well, if the police caught you driving with 0.5% ethanol, I'm pretty sure they'd consider you drunk...

[wodin]

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

Well, if the police caught you driving with 0.5% ethanol, I'm pretty sure they'd consider you drunk...

Naw, they'd consider you dead!

[doubleshuffle]

True dat too...

[Cyberman tM]

Originally Posted by TGS

I am convinced that many of these remedies and foods work by creating the conditions in which our own gut flora can flourish and recover from the assault that our western diet subject our digestive systems to - but of course, that's not science!

Get a bunch of people with digestive problems and give half of them just colored water and the rest this medicine stuff. (Without their knowing, of course.)
Write down what happens.
Science.

It doesn't take a nuclear powered radioisotope positron counting machine to do science.
Just more than "I've heard someone say he knew someone that thought a colleague mentioned it might not be bad".
(Of course, it helps if the group is large enough and ideally no one knows who got the placebo and who got the real stuff. That can skew the results.)

Alternatively you can try to figure out what exactly is in that stuff - though that's probably more complex than trying to document if it works or not.
My guess would be lots of Vitamin B and C, as well as likely some sort of penicillin.

In any case, I'd not try to recreate the stuff on your own. There is much that can go wrong if the wrong kind of bacteria/funghi join the fray inside that barrel.

To clarify: I'm not saying that anything that is old must be a hoax - but lots of it is, and most isn't even that old anyway.
That certain roots or whatever may aid various problems isn't really the the great epiphany - it's finding out what exactly is causing the good effect and separating that from the rest of the root that might just as well try to kill you.
(Of course, it may just as well be the same stuff. Dose and poison and all that.)