Here's to kombucha, the grow-your-own tea that swims well with spirits
Artichokes are one of my favorite foods, yet I've often wondered what masochist first took it upon himself to eat one. Ditto crabs, rambutans and the so-called "Rocky Mountain oyster." That some items ever became foodstuffs for humans seems explainable only by ravenous hunger. The artichoke, basically an enormous thistle, a fat fist of green shark teeth protecting a few scant ounces of delicate vegetable heart, seems designed to defend itself against our gustatory interests.
Questions about the wisdom of our ancestors' culinary choices returned to me the first time I tried kombucha. I knew that the drink was based on very old food traditions. I'd also heard health-conscious friends extol its virtues, claiming it had re-energized them, given them the skin and hair of youth, mitigated their digestive ills, baby-sat for their children and cured them of every ailment save perhaps the tendency toward hyperbole.
Still, when I peered into the clear, brownish liquid and saw little floating strands of what I now know to be culture but looked a bit like pond scum, I thought, Really? I never see strands of slime floating in my Coke Zero; if I did, I'd probably be on the phone with a lawyer, making plans to quit my day job. Accustomed as most of us are to the industrial sameness of most bottled beverages, the look of kombucha might initially give you the heebie-jeebies.
And yet the drink was delicious: tart, lightly sweet, fizzy.
The commercial brands show real variety in terms of flavor, says Daniel Lieberman, one of the founders of D.C.'s Capital Kombucha, which makes flavors including basil-lemon grass and mango-chili. Even with the mildest formulations, some people might never come around.
"I think there's a range of food products, whether it's pickles or kimchi or certain vinegars, where there's a dividing line: You either love it or hate it," Lieberman says. "Like the first time you ever eat a stinky cheese. Some people are just completely off-put by it, and other people eat it and six months later they're craving it. It's like a switch goes off in your head."
Once I mixed some kombucha with gin and tonic syrup, I was sold; the resulting highball was crisp and tart. Further experiments rang a familiar bell: Many kombuchas remind me of vinegar fruit shrubs and can be used similarly. The ones that have gone through a second fermentation stage have the added appeal of carbonation. Many of them mix beautifully with spirits.
"You're playing with that same shrub acidity with the added benefits of what kombucha brings to you," says Kavita Singh Brar, co-owner of New Heights restaurant in Washington and its tiny downstairs hoochery, the Gin Joint.
Singh Brar started drinking the stuff for its purported health benefits. A passionate exerciser, she says kombucha worked for her, helping her get back into running after she started experiencing joint pain last year. Too much was not great for digestion, but "two cups a day and I was good."
She started making her own, experimenting with different teas - she prefers a green tea base - and flavors from fruits and spices, incorporating them into the cocktail program at the Gin Joint. Kombucha mixes incredibly well with most spirits, she says. There's usually one kombucha cocktail on the Gin Joint menu at happy hour and another as a special, the flavor depending on which batch has reached its peak.
"Our bar is an 11-stool bar, so it's easier to talk ... and sell the concept" to kombucha newbies, she says. "People will try almost anything if you say 'Just try it, and if you don't like it, I'll drink it.' " The Gin Joint's pink, bubbly variation on the French 75 - made with a hibiscus tea kombucha, prosecco and floral, citrusy Damrak gin - should make a convert of most hesitaters. There are no yeast strands in sight.
I beat back renewed squeamishness when I grew my own SCOBY, the weird colony that sits atop a batch of sweetened tea and causes its fermentation into kombucha. The name stands for "symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast." (If you think that's unappetizing, try out "zoogleal mat." It's no wonder people call them SCOBYs; the scientific terms are unappealing mouthfuls, whereas SCOBY sounds like that hippie guy in college who was always playing hacky sack on the quad.)
A SCOBY is the mother of all kombucha; you can't brew your own without one. You can buy a SCOBY online, but if you're comfortable with sterilizing jars and keeping things clean, you can grow one. It's time-consuming but not difficult. Keep the environment warm - 72 to 85 degrees - and keep checking to make sure no molds are forming. It "takes some tending to, like a high-maintenance plant," says Lieberman. "You want to be saying hi to it every few days."
Mine took longer than I expected - SCOBYs want to be snugly warm, and it was chillier than optimal in our house - but after about a month, there it was, ready to start brewing. I felt an odd, uneasy pride over bringing into the world what looked like the offspring of a booger and a hockey puck.
My unease hasn't ceased now that I've brewed a few kombucha batches and found my SCOBYs multiplying like Tribbles. Right now I have one sitting atop a blueberry-ginger batch and another lurking above a green-tea-and-raspberry combination; when they're ready, I'll find their offspring, more baby SCOBYs, lurking in the jars. If I have time between making drinks, I might start naming them.
• Allan is a writer and editor. On Twitter: @Carrie_the_Red.