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.

Since this was on my mind about flavoring kombucha, I decided to do some Googling.. I tend to drink kombucha by the pint, using the rough Imperial measurement. (~568mL) A drop of water is about 5mL depending on the definition. A drop of bitters is usually a bit smaller, but let's say they're roughly equivalent. A drop is about 1% of that volume (568/100 = 5.68) Kombucha is, depending on the fermentation, between .5%-1.5% alcohol, usually, though I've known the rare batch to be as high as 3%. So about one drop of a pint of kombucha is alcohol. Adding bitters, which are often in the 40s in terms of ABV since alcohol is the preservative used, and which is often recommended in a series of drops, say 3, would potentially double the alcohol in a somewhat average batch of kombucha. I have no idea what the comparable effect would be in terms of sugar value. Certainly a stricter interpretation of the W30 would bar including bitters, but from where I stand, if you're already drinking kombucha, and you're including things like Larabars (which I'm not sure aren't included in the SWYPO section, but, different strokes), it seems a drop or two of bitters in a glass of seltzer is in the same general class of digression. But this sort of slippery slope thing does get people rather animated. Anyway, my two cents. Disclaimer: this math was conducted by a philosophy major.

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.

Shannon, thanks for the reminder about what constitutes a serving of eggs. I'm using the W30 printout to guide the overall meal portions but it can be inexact sometimes. I'm not sure I could get three eggs into my hand, but I am a bit on the small side.. XD

Oops, completely forgot to mention that I have been making this version with a blend of ghee and coconut oil, and some coconut cream. Trying to balance the blend of fats still, as this is the first time I've not simply used butter and coconut oil (rather than a branded MCT product).. I believe the overall fats per cup as far as the cream, ghee, and oil are concerned at a teaspoon per serving.

I'm on Day 8 now and I made a version of bulletproof coffee (no caps because it's the idea rather than the branded products I'm talking about here) for the first time with the W30. I've been using coffee and/or black tea in the morning with coconut cream, which has been nice, but I haven't made this bpc recipe in a while and wanted to integrate it into breakfast and see how it worked. So far it seems ok - and at this point, I'm finding my overall satiety better than initially, though early on I found myself eating more potatoes and such to create a sense of fullness. Now I'm also adjusting to the lag time in feeling full (whereas before I imagine I was probably overeating, since I'd eat until I felt full, when most seem to agree that it takes 20-30 minutes for the body to register satiety, hence the benefit of eating a meal more slowly.).. Anyway I mention that because I was interested in how having bpc for breakfast (and supplementing with veggies and fruit) would leave me feeling, and how long the energy would hang on. I drank 2 cups of coldbrew coffee with coconut cream over several hours yesterday (I teach and am on my feet and talking for about 6 hours straight, so long-lasting energy is crucial) and I found myself remarkably well held together. I wanted to share the bpc recipe a friend and I concocted by bringing together a few notions of good food and such. Along with sufficient ground for one cup of coffee (I use a pour-over and filter, but with the spices I think an aeropress or French press would be ideal), add (basically a pinch of each): - black pepper, - sea salt, - turmeric, - cinnamon, - cloves, - cardamom, and - nutmeg. Crack one egg per cup and pour out the white and put the whole yolk in the base of whatever vessel the coffee is going into. Slower heat seems better for making the yolk into a soft, custardy liquid rather than cooking it outright. Initially I thought this would handle the protein element, but on second thought I think getting rid of the white would remove that portion from the egg, so perhaps it's better to include the white, which additionally would whip nicely into something with more structure in terms of foam. It's quite tasty, and a long while back I used to pair it regularly with a breakfast smoothie, not that I've done that recently especially since the base was milk kefir, which I've put on hold for at least the rest of my W30. I'll take a few days of doing this and report back with my personal impression of how it leaves me feeling. (I see this is a somewhat older thread.)