Kombucha Fungus - Healing with Tea

Kombucha Fungus

A guide how to preserve, conserve and to use it - Kombucha tea can be applied/drunk in case of gastric complaints, indigestion and constipation or simply as a precaution, because it does not harm your body. Moreover it has a purifying effect and supports liver function.

The Kombucha tea-culture is very often called a mushroom, but it is more a fungus, some sort of steadily growing bacteria.

Kombucha tea can be applied/drunk in case of gastric complaints, indigestion and constipation or simply as a precaution, because it does not harm your body. Moreover it has a purifying effect and supports liver function.

How to prepare, conserve and remove old cultures

It was fifteen years ago, when I got a "new skin" piece of that fungus from my collegue. The fungus has already been attacked by heat, worms, rottenness but it survived all this. It is a strong fungus which is continually creating "new skin" which you can use as branch.

To prepare the tea, you have to boil 4 litres of water. After boiling you put in 10 tea bags black or green tea. Do not use flavoured teas as a basis, the fungus will not forgive!!

When you have left that 10 bags in the water for about 10 minutes, you put them out. Afterwards you have to add sugar. 100 gram sugar for each litre would say 400 gr. sugar. Then stir the pot contents thoroughly.

Now leave the tea to get cold. You have not to put the fungus in anything hot or even warm. Leave cooling for about 4 to 5 hours. Then put in the fungus.

To keep the mixture free of germs, just lay a cotton towel across the pot ouverture instead of a cover. The tea should not be firmly covered! The fungus have somewhat to breathe!

You leave that fungus mixture in a dark, dry place, not too warm nor too cold (15 degress Celsius would be fine). 8 days later you should have a glass bowl and 4 glass bottles ready. The fungus does not like any plastics or high-grade steel. Use as cooking pot enamel, if you have.

Fill the tea extract by means of a filter into the glass bottles. The filter retains pieces of the fungus. You should leave a little rest of the tea. Put the fungus into the glass bowl and cover it with the rest of the tea. The fungus must always be entirely covered with the fluid. Then put the towel across the bowl to avoid germing.

Now store the fungus at the same warm, dry and dark place as the tea. After 7 days you have to repeat the procedure.

Even if you do not drink the tea or so much of it or you are fed up for the moment, continue procedure. That will keep the fungus living for ages.

After the 7 days of rest, the fungus will have created a new branch. You can remove the old piece and only keep the new one.

But be very careful!!! This is a fungus, a bacteria and it will grow new cultures wherever you leave it. So do not throw it away without thinking. Nobody wants to have a fungus culture in the dustbin or in the garden. So the best way would be to put it into a plastic bag and then in the dustbin or thrusting it in the WC with long water flush.