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LadyM

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Posts posted by LadyM

  1. I use a linen dish towel and a big ribbon. As for continuous brew, I generally bottle all but a cup or so of the fermented tea before adding fresh sweet tea to the original SCOBY batch. In the summer, it generally only takes about a week for the new batch to then be ready for second ferment. Though I've only ever used the taste test, no ph strips here. And FYI, I've enjoyed green and white tea best. Have fun!

  2. Well my resurrected fridge-hoteled SCOBY is working great. Also wanted to share that I finally tried adding a bit of strong hibiscus tea to the second ferment in addition to black cherry concentrate and/or pom, and it's resulted in a beautifully fizzy and dry booch. Really lovely! And I'd had trouble making my booch fizzy, which I greatly prefer.

  3. Hey gang!

    I've finally decided to get back to brewing. My enormous multiplied scoby has been in her refrigerated hotel for more than a year. Anyone foresee any problems with that? I guess I'll just forge ahead and find out.

    Any of the original gang still around? Have any fresh new flavors or other discoveries to share? So happy to be back. My GT habit was starting to break the bank again and I just needed a day off to get all my stuff together to make it happen. . . .

    Also, and I don't know why it only just occurred to me to do this, glassware ho that I am, but booch tastes so much better and feels so fancy and special when sipped from a champagne flute. I may have found the solution to my summer cocktail anxiety, at least at parties!

  4. OOh, just cracked open a bottle of ginger-cardamom-apricot. So pretty! So delicious!

     

    These both were from my second second ferment attempt. Grating the ginger made a big difference in flavor (I'd just thrown in a hunk of fresh ginger in the first second ferments, and that did little to flavor them.)

     

    I need to bottle my third batch today but I'm out of bottles! Will it work for me to use wider mouthed jars, or will that kill all the fizz? Any experience with this?

    • Like 1
  5. I get it now. I am totally obsessed with my own booch. Loving the results of my first bottling. All are nice and fizzy now--I think they just needed another couple days. The only one that's flat is the strawberry vanilla, so I put in a dab of honey and will check it in another day or two.

     

    Second bottling/second second ferment just happened and I'm having hella fun with the flavor. Can't even remember what I ended up with, but I used, in varying combos:

     

    cherries

    raspberries

    limes

    mint

    apricots

    kumquats (!) (my favorite!)

    cucumbers

    cardamom

    vanilla bean

    lemongrass

    ginger

    lemon

     

    I shall report back when I taste them. OMG is this fun or what? Not even kidding this is better than boozy cocktails. I'm realizing that's the part I love--the experimentation--not the booze, necessarily.

     

    Question: how big can you make the first ferment batch? I've got my original SCOBY and my baby in a 3-gallon jar but still keep putting in 8 cups sweet tea. I could fit nearly double that in there. any reason why I shouldn't? Would it just take longer?

     

    Thanks, experts!

     

    Oh, and thanks, Susan, for the beef jerky instructions. I went out and bought a London Broil yesterday and made my first batch of jerky in my electric oven. SO easy and delicious. Best jerky I've ever had. Ain't no thing! Merci.

    • Like 3
  6. Hey, y'all. Sorry I've been silent on this thread. It's hard to keep up with all the activity!

     

    Update: my homegrown SCOBY utterly failed. Guess I started with a bad bottle of GT. So I ordered one online and it's been going like gangbusters! I did my first bottling and second ferments over the weekend and drank my first bottle yesterday: strawberry vanilla lime. Mighty tasty but none too fizzy. It seems the sugar is the thing for fizz, right? Should I add a bit of sugar or honey to the second ferment or add more sugar to the first? Or bottle the second ferment sooner? Any of the above?

     

    Today I'll drink a blueberry ginger. Next bottling I'm trying apricot cardamom and cherry lime. We'll see what else I can come up with. I'm excited to taste my raspberry mint lime one, too. These suckers, especially once I figure out the fizz sitch, are better than cocktails!

    • Like 2
  7. Hi gang! I've hopped on the bandwagon and am attempting to grow a SCOBY in my pantry from a bottle of regular GT's and a cup of sweetened black tea. I feel like a kid again doing a science experiment. So fun!

    Though when I was in the fifth grade I never imagined I could have partners in crime from all over the world via the magic of the intarwebs. . . . Love. It.

    • Like 5
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