adabeie

Quality of glass is a big deal here as well. Heavy swing tops like those used by Grolsch are excellent. We once used glass swingtops that were really only designed to hold water to store milk kefir during a Labor Day picnic and the pressure of the active fermentation split the bottles right down the seam as they sat on the table. Not all glass is created equally. Start there. Remember, there's glass out there that's designed with withstand the pressure of champagne and other carbonated beverages.

I use it for that exact reason. I don't use it every time, but lighter sugars simply don't yield a suitably complex flavor for me. I find that cycling through sugars at various points creates a more robust flavor overall. I use dark sugar roughly ever 4-5 batches, but I mind the carbonation pretty closely. I've had batches go wrong (too yeasty, one case was very dramatic a few years ago) but the yeast makes its excitement known pretty quickly and it has been easy enough to correct through removal and dilution. I've never succeeded with water kefir, but the only starters I've been able to get my hands on so far seemed as though they were in a fairly weakened state. I've never tried any 'non-sugars' in brewing.

So glad to find this thread! I've restarted my batch after a fallow period with a lot of black tea and the darkest sugar I could fine and the culture is coming together nicely. I'm very eager to get my favorite rosemary kombucha back into my daily intake.

A trip I'm looking to put together sometime in the next two years is a big extreme.. I want to ride my bike home (to California, unless Europe distracts me).. from Korea. It's been done, and it's my kind of lovely: camping, physical exertion, exotic foods, and lots of time by myself. Probably also photography and journaling. I really have no idea how I'd do this, since even on shorter biking trips, processed foods tend to be a regular feature. Ideally I'd love to cook for myself, though depending on the gear you need to cook things, you have to weigh the costs of the extra weight on the bike, and while weight itself isn't necessarily a deal breaker (touring bikes can handles quite a load), space is often at a premium and you can't exactly take a hand blender. I imagine I'd try to keep it simple, and buy basic and pre-cooked ingredients along the way, and make the most of street food when in more populated areas. I do imagine I would have a basic mess kit and a camping stove, I consider the ability to create fire an essential, as much as being able to source clean water no matter the locale. For sake of flexibility though, if you get an invitation to dinner or to camp in someone's yard, one tends to be hungry rather than picky when it comes to food and your body becomes an absolute furnace in terms of burning through food at times like this. Still, I wonder how complaint I would be able to stay, and certainly there are vast stretches of Central Asia that have excellent vegetarian and meat based cuisines. So far, for me, avoiding soy has been the hardest. (I'm kinda in one of the soy Meccas here in Seoul.) But it's something to ponder, and something to try out on shorter trips first. I would love to hear about others who've gone the road less traveled with their Whole30/9 philosophy and were able to stick it through.