Kombucha

Secondary fermentation

Kräusening

For finer bubbles and a more mellow flavor, add freshly made kombucha wort (unfermented tea + sugar) to the finished, fermented kombucha before refrigerating. Fill the jar to the top so there is as little air as possible and store for two weeks.

This is a take-off of the idea of kräusening beer. True kräusening uses freshly fermenting wort, but these instructions just use a fresh batch of tea + sugar.

With fruit

From Soren and Raquel (untried):

After the batch is done, add some fresh or frozen fruit (raspberry and pomegranite are my favorites so far), then leave that out for a day or two, strain and put it in the fridge. The sugar from the fruit has a very similar effect to the kräusening, but it also adds yummy fruit flavor!

Also:

Grating some ginger and squeezing the juice into the finished kombucha is also very tasty!

I wonder if the ginger kills the bacteria or fungus. Possibly it doesn't matter -- the benefit of the kombucha is supposedly in the chemicals released into the beverage, not the symbiotic colony itself.

Masque recipe

From Raquel from someone else (untried):

Put one of your extra Kombucha Colonies in the blender with enough Kombucha tea to make a very smooth applesauce consistency, when blended. Add Vitamin C, Aloe Vera, Vitamin E oil, and add a few drops of an Essential Oil of your choice, for fragrance. I found that just a few minutes (2-3 minutes) once a week was the right timing for me to use the Masque. Some people use it every day. It all depends on your skin type.