Kombucha Culture From Waste Materials
Enzyme and co. members are currently researching different uses to the Kombucha mother material, which can become very abundant once you start cultivating it. However, we are mostly cultivating it on sugar and tea, which are two valuable materials. How could we grow it on diverse substrates ?
Usual Culture Recipe - Control Experiment
For 500mL:
- 50g of sugar
- 5g of English Breakfast black tea, infused for 15 minutes
- 5cl of solution from the previous batch
- Put the mother in the mix when it was at finger temperature
Results:
- At day+1, the mother had sank at the bottom of the jar.
- At day+6, a new white mother had appeared on top of the culture
Replacing Tea
Used Coffee Grains Infusion
For 300mL:
- 30g of sugar
- 10g used coffee grains, infused for 30 minutes
- 3 cl of solution from the previous batch
- Put the mother in the mix when it was at finger temperature
Results:
- At day+1, the mother had sank at the bottom of the jar.
- At day+6, a new white mother had appeared on top of the culture
- At day+8, the mother was comparable with the control experiment one in terms of appearance
Future Trials
- Used coffee grains, reduced quantity, reduced infusion time
- Used coffee grains in cold mix
- Simply getting rid of any tea equivalent
Replacing Sugar
Future Trials
- Vegetable waste
- Paper
- Plastic