Cabbage, part 2:
Red Cabbage Kombucha
Cabbage has never been so hip: we make the miracle drink red cabbage kombucha with the traditional German vegetable. The fermented tea drink comes through the red cabbage in new dimensions of taste – and becomes even healthier!
Red cabbage and kombucha become cabbage bucha
First we make red cabbage juice, for which the cabbage is grated and then spun through a fast-spinning centrifuge. Thus, we obtain a pure red cabbage juice. For the kombucha we vacuumed the cabbage juice with green tea, black tea and sugar. The juice is now gently heated in a water bath at 75 °C for 20-25 minutes, allowing the earthy, woody and slightly bitter aromas of the tea to develop.
Then we let the cabbage juice cool down until it has a temperature of about 20 °C. When the vacuum bag is opened, a cabbage smell shoots into the air. The taste test shows that the earthy-woody notes of the tea harmonize very well with the cabbage juice. We ran the juice through a fine gauze cloth.
The juice has now reached the optimal temperature and we mix the two liquids, red cabbage and kombucha. We cover the glass with a cloth. Kombucha needs oxygen during fermentation, so the yeasts can decompose the sugar optimally. This process takes about 5-6 days. During production, the fungus lays down at the bottom during fermentation and forms a new mother fungus on the surface of the liquid. Thus, with each new batch of tea grows a fresh mushroom.
We’ll soon add to this post how the red cabbage kombucha turned out….
