Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you should know the podcast. Although Jerry's not going to be around for long, everybody, so savor her, relish her, smell her hair. Yeah, all the stuff that you like to do to people you like.
Awkward start for one on the booch.
I should probably hold on. I should probably explain Jerry's not going to be here for this recording session. She's always going to be around around Oh sure, okay, I just want to make sure people weren't like, where's Jerry going? What'd you guys do to Jerry?
Right?
I don't need email like that now?
Who does?
So, Chuck, you already let it slip. What our topic is today, which I'm surprised.
That's right. The butch aka kombucha, which is some people call it kombucha ti, but everyone calls it kombucha really in practice. But you know, we're talking about the beverage, the sort of odd tasting fizzy sweet teed probiotic drink that is very popular right now that I don't drink. Emily drinks it every day, No surprise there, although she's switching brands now. We'll get to that later.
Okay. I can't wait to hear it because I drink it almost every day too.
Yeah. I don't like the flavor, so I just don't drink it. That's just a simple one for me.
Well, you don't like anything vinegary, so of course you don't like kombucha.
Yeah, that's a good point.
You know, you don't like mustard, you don't you don't like white vinegar, I don't like pickles, you don't like apple cider vinegar. You don't like red wine vinegar.
M I mean, I'll take a little bit of that or maybe some balsamic vinegar on a salad. Oh, But other than that, vinegar is a tough sell for me.
Okay. But or the reason we're talking about vinegar is becau. Kombucha has a kind of a vinegary thing going on. It's very tart, it's very acidic. And you said something in there that I don't think I fully realized. Although I kind of knew it was one of those things where I had all the information, I just never put it together into a cohesive hole. Okay, But kombucha is fermented sweet tea. Yeah, and I mean, of course there's other stuff in there, but to make kombucha and it
just be raw, pure kombucha. All you need is sugar tea and then something called the scobie, which we'll talk about soon. And you put those things together, let them sit in a glass jar with the lid off and a little bit of muslin over the top and a dark, warm, dry, very important place for I don't know, a week, two weeks, you're going to have kombucha.
Yeah, and it sort of belongs alongside other things like yogurt and sour kraut, where the the microbes are a big part of the appeal of these things that you can put in your body.
Yeah. Can we can? I just call out the sentence that Olivia wrote because it's hilarious. Sure she's she wrote that kombucha is a food in which microbes are a feature, not a bug. It was definitely worth a hat tip at least.
Have you ever seen the Volkswagen Beetles with the license plate that's his feature?
No, it's always very I don't get out that much though.
Uh So you'd mentioned scoby. Scoby stands for it's an acronym se o BI stands for a symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast, because that's exactly what it is. If you look at a scoby, you might hurt it called a mother or a mushroom, like the mother, Like, what's it called like a mother? Yeah, But if you look at a scoby, it looks disgusting. Uh. It looks like something out of a science lab, like out of a petri dish. It's round and sort of pancakey and gelatinous,
and it looks like brain matter or something. It looks gross.
It looks like the muffin top of a jellyfish, but just the muffin top part.
Sure, that's that's another good way to put it's kind of gross too.
And that that mother, that mushroom, or that scoby is what I saw far and away, at least in America. It's most people who grew brew kombucha call it a scoby.
Yeah.
There's a specific term for it, a solid phase cellulosic pellicle.
Yeah.
And when you dig into it microbal microbially, it's astounding what it actually is. It's like a really unique kind of thing that seems to only grow in kombucha from what I could find.
Yeah, and it's what it is actually, or how it functions at least in kombucha. It's sort of the fuel that drives that fermentation process that take that sweet tea from just regular sweet tea to the fermented, bubbly, weird tasting thing that you enjoy.
Yeah, and it's really insolvable, like you can drop it in just about anything and it will hold its shape. It has a lot of tensile strength, apparently it can hold. So it's cellulose made of little tiny fibrils and there I think one hundred times thinner than the cellulose fibrils
you get from a plant. Plants are lousy with cellulose, but this cellulose is extruded from bacteria, little tiny, tiny little things of cellulose that end up getting woven together to create this large structure that can hold I think one hundred times the amount of liquid or water that plant cellulose can and it's a hundred times thinner than plant cellulose. And it's being extruded pooped out of these little bacteria that are building this thing over the course of weeks.
Yeah, it's pretty amazing. Yeah, Like, if you've made one that was the size of a hammock, you could put a house on it.
Yeah. Easy, I'm just kidding.
I haven't done a math on that.
No, it's in there somewhere, though, So Chuck, I think we should we'll hold off on how to make it a batch of kombucha, although it's not that hard. But it turns out that that that symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeese, it's a pretty good descriptor because that's what is in that scobie. And there have been studies of what's in there, and what they found is that there's an ever changing cast of characters. Yeah, but that there seem to be a couple that are really responsible for
forming the scobie and then in turn creating kombucha. One is a bacterium called chould.
You want me to do this? Sure, get Koma gatti bacteria bacter.
Yeah, I think that's okay, yep. And then that's the stuff that forms that cellulose that gives the scobi its structure. And then inside there's some yeast, and specifically the yeast from the.
Genus Bretons bretton nomosis.
Sure, and those are the ones that actually seem to do most of the fermenting.
Yeah, and we have, well, at least in this case, there was some Oregon State University researchers named Keisha Harrison and Chris Curtin, who a couple of years ago looked at one hundred and three scobi's that are used by brewers here in North America. That yeast they call it brett, and it's sort of an used to be used a lot for old ales in nineteenth century England apparently huh, not used a whole lot for beer anymore because it tastes funny except for like lambs, and also used in
barrel aged red wines. And I think in wine you just don't want too much of it. And then beer nowadays, like I said, unless it's a lambic, they usually try to get rid of it, things like a contaminant in beer these days.
Even so, it sounds old timey, I guess then the breat and that actually kind of dovetails with kombucha's image. It has an image of being like an old timey, super old timey ancient, I guess is a better word brew ferment to brew that a lot of people say dates back to all the way back to two twenty one BCE, which is when supposedly the emperor of the Chin dynasty started brewing it himself, and that it was
considered an elixir of life, a tonic for immortality. The thing is is like, if you talk to anybody in the kombucha community, they'll give you that story. But it's just a story, like there's really hazy when you start to try to trace the LINEA.
Yeah, Butcher's that's right. Uh yeah. There was another tale about six hundred years after that, from the fifth century CE, about a Korean doctor and this is possibly a name origin because this doctor was named Kambu Kombu who brought a medicinal t to emperor. Would that be in Kio? I think so, yeah, all right of Japan and said and some people say, well, that's clearly where the name
came from. Other people say, well, I don't know about that, because there's also this Japanese fermented tea from back in the day that was derived from kelp that was called kambu and then cha is t so kombucha, But there is no seaweed in in kombucha as we know it now, So I don't think anyone really knows the exact origin of the word.
No, but it is possible that that kombucha that seaweed fermented seaweed ta just got used for the wrong thing and it's kind of went off on that lineage of history and that's where it came from. Again, what we're talking about are stories. There are some ancient documents that I think mentioned that Korean doctor Kambu. Yeah, but still it's just not definitive. To get definitive, you actually have to go to Russia and Ukraine in the late nineteenth century.
Yeah, surprising.
That's finally where you can definitively start to trace the history of what we call kombucha.
Yeah, I was kind of surprised to see it there too, But apparently after World War One they were lousy with the stuff. It started to spread around Europe. Apparently in the Westfalia region of Germany, became very popular for a little while. In Italy in the middle of the twentieth century, it became so popular that a couple of things happened that there were people mixing it with holy water to use as sort of like a tonic and a fokrimony,
which priests there did not love. And there was a song that you can go listen to, you know, you can go to YouTube and listen to it from nineteen fifty five by a guy named Ronato Kerazone, and the song was called Stu Fungo Chinza or the Chinese Fungus, and it was a popular song. That's I listened to it, and it's not very good.
No, it's got a lot of didd like mixed in with it. But it's also kind of like a mambay thing. It's a it's a mess. So strangely enough, Stu Fungo Chinese did not kick off the kombucha craze in the United States or in the West. It really was kicked off by a Swiss study from the sixties. And I do mean Switzerland, not Sweden. I apparently swapped the two when I was talking about the oldest periodical in existence in the Farmer's Almanac episodes. So sorry to everybody who wrote.
In yeah, we we know that those are two different places and they're not even close together.
No, so it was inadvertent, No, exactly like I mix up the names. I'm not actually confusing Switzerland was writing like I know that much, so This was a Swiss Switzerland, Swiss study from the sixties that said, hey, this kombucha stuff that they're making over in Russia that's associated with Russian grandmothers. This stuff is it's like yogurt, man, but you can drink it. It's like drinkable yogurt. And we don't mean.
Keffer, no, we don't did. It's still popular actually in some parts of Russia. It remained popular throughout Soviet Russia. They were you know, they didn't have like, you know, American soda and stuff like that, so this is a fizzy drink they could make, which sort of sub for that. It seems like prisoners would brew it there. There was even a case here in the United States in twenty fifteen where arms dealer Victor Bout was brewing it in
a prison in Illinois. And we'll get to the alcoholic content later, but the prison officials basically said, like, you're making booze. You can't do that. So they added some time.
And apparently like kids in Russia these days, or not kids, but younger people are kind of on kombucha that they rejected when they were younger because they were like, we want American tasting sodas, and now there's a newer trend where they're like, oh no, this is sort of like cool, this is the old Russian version, and they're back into brewing it again.
Yeah, it's so it got exported somehow to the US. It blew up in the US, and we exported it back to Russia, and now Russian hipsters are into kombucha. Even though it was their grandparents like homebrew, and I think it was also not just they wanted coke and pepsi and probably mostly coke. They associated it with their grandmother giving it to them as if it were almost like medicine or a health tonic, and nobody surrounding and
drinks a health tonic. No, you rarely do. And this kind of had that association with it too that got stripped of it. Even though it's considered a healthy drink. Health tonic is really stretching how it's considered in the United States. So it got kind of repackaged and gussied up and turned into a really fun beverage that kids are really into and that will just make you immediately cooler if you're seeing out in public drinking it.
Yeah, as far as the Chinese connection, It sort of depends on who you're asking. It sounds like it may have been regional because there was this writer what was her first name, Zong is her last name for Folk Life magazine.
Her first name, Chuck is precisely Laura.
Laura. Okay, Well, she wrote about this in folk Life Magazine and asked her immigrant Chinese parents and they were like, I don't know what you're talking about. She said, well, let me ask my friend who still has a bunch of contacts in China, and her friend got in touch with her people in China and they're like, I don't
know what you're talking about. But then there was another Chinese American writer named Betty Lou and her father a like recalled, you know, fond things about kombucha from Shanghai and these big neighborhood batches. So I think theirs was green tea and honey though instead of black tea and sugar. So maybe it was a variation, a regional variation.
Yeah, they called it hong cha June. Yeah, not kombucha, but it does sound similar, and if you stop and think about it's just how it's a simplicity of what kombucha actually is fermented sweet tea. It's entirely possible that cultures that have tea and have had tea for hundreds and thousands of years and stumbled onto this, you know, independently and just called it different things, made it with
slightly different ingredients. But it seems very clear that the kombucha we drink today was exported from Russia and Ukraine in the nineteenth century.
Yeah, and before we break, I think we should cover this last little bit that's super interesting about how it regained popularity in the eighties here in the US though. Was it was for AIDS patients. There was specifically one AIDS patient. He was a act up New York member, an activist named Sander Katz who had this kombucha and it you know, those AIDS drugs early on at least, were really rough on the stomach, and it helped him
and it helped him keep his food down. It kind of settled the stomach, and then it got passed around the gay community. And I think he found out about it from a friend in like nineteen ninety four who was, you know, a home brewer and went on to write a book called Wild Fermentation in two thousand and three, and so it was the AIDS community of the Northeast United States.
It really kind of got it going again here. Pretty cool, very cool. You want to take a break, then let's do it. Okay, we're taking a break. Everybody's starting now.
All right, So now we are back in the United States. Uh, kombucha these days, well, for a while before sort of this this modern time that we find ourselves in. Who was spaceship just flew by? Uh? Someone should ask Chris Christie about that?
Oh man, that was crazy.
Did you see that?
Terrible question?
Yeah, he was pretty funny about it, though he's he is a likable guy. Uh So, kombucha for a while was and it and it's still sort of popular with hobbyists because brewing in general, and home brewing is really regained in popularity with beer and meat and all kinds of crazy things.
I also, I think there's a suspicion too among people who make kombucha that the stuff that's mass produced just can't hold a candle to the stuff you would make on your own.
Probably, But that's how it was for many many years, starting in the eighties, until about the midish nineteen nineties, when a guy who we're going to talk about a little bit now that you may have heard of named George Thomas Dave or GT. Dave started brewing kombucha at
home and his bell airhouse as a teenager. As legend has it, he got his scobie from a friend who got it from a trip to the Himalayas and his mom was drinking this stuff Dave was making going through cancer and claimed that it helped her beat cancer, which was officially part of the company's lore until they were forced to remove it after a lawsuit in twenty ten about deceptive health claims. But he is the maker. If you've seen Synergy kombucha in the store, it's the biggest
player out there. And that's the one Emily drank until today, and that's that's Gt. Dave.
Yeah, if you've ever seen kombucha in the store, you've seen Gt. Synergy. I mean, it's just there's such so many different flavors of it, and like the it's just it's clearly been around longer. It's got its thing down path. And like you said, this guy was brewing this when he was in high school and he started in ninety five. In two thousand and five, he took it National, and you can say that pretty much is when kombucha really started to make headway. Didn't take off like a rocket
quite yet. If you go back and look at the dates on a lot of the research articles that you'll find on kobucha, I'm like CNBC or Forbes or whatever, they're like twenty seventeen eighteen, and they're all like, what is this stuff? So it took a while to gain some traction, but he took it out of the health food store and started to get into grocery stores, and that was what really kind of laid the foundation for kombucha to be introduced to America as a whole.
That's right. And the sort of unfortunate part that has come out more recently is that Synergy is going through a few different lawsuits right now because allegedly it is even though this is a drink that is touted is being made with love and good vibrations, there are some lawsuits going on now because allegedly it is a terrible
place to work and Gt. Dave allegedly would purposefully hire undocumented workers so they could be taken advantage of with brutal work hours, no breaks to eat, no breaks for breaks, go to the bathroom super fast and get back to work. It's so hot in there that you're sweating into the beverage, and then you have to go to a freezing place and your clothes freeze up. Just some sounds like some pretty bad stuff happening there, allegedly.
Well you say allegedly, but you don't have to say that anywhere because as of I think this month, California judge said, nope, this is all true. I'm ruling against Gt. Dave.
Yeah. Well, yeah, that was a lawsuit from that's long standing, but there are I think some new ones, and he's been denying this the whole time. Basically, I think his quote was something like, I don't want to paraphrase it. Well I guess I have to paraphrase it, so I'll have in front of me. Sure, But basically like, yeah, you know, lawsuits are just the cross eye bear, you know, when you get popular like this, that's just how things go, right.
That this is he just dismissed them all as frivolous in that quote, like indirectly basically, although these are have been brought by multiple people in multiple lawsuits over multiple years. Yeah, so yeah, this judge apparently does not like him, and the judge is in charge of all the cases and apparently has said before that Dave lies through his teeth and is totally not credible, and if you put him on the stand, I'm going to tell the jury not to believe him.
Like this.
This judge has said this like in court. So he's having a rough time of it for sure.
Yeah, And of course I told him this. She was like, oh, well, I guess I'll find a new brand.
Well, there's so many great brands out there too, Like I mean, there's a lot of Like if you are into kombucha or you're about to be into kombucha, after listening to this, you are in a beautiful time to be into kombucha because there's a lot of good brands that you could find in just about any grocery store. And yes, indeed, it is a golden age for kombucha right now.
We love our golden ages. Sure, there's another big player in KeVita k e v I t A because Pepsi bought that one in twenty sixteen. And you know, anytime in the beverage industry, it's a tough racket anyway, So you're you're probably looking to cash out to a larger company. Is the exits strategy generally for beverages? Sure, I watch a lot of Shark Tank, that's what they say. Okay, Coca Cola got into it a little bit because they own Honest Tea.
I just got that name.
Oh Honesty. Yeah, but I don't think they make that anymore. But they do have some sort of Australian kombucha Coca Cola does, called Organic and Raw Trading Company.
They don't like to talk about it, though, I don't think they do. So it is a golden age and that's kind of reflected in the market. It's like a two and a half billion dollar industry, which is not bad. But no, it's not bad. It's expected to grow to eleven and a half billion within the next seven years because kombucha is so good and because we're living in that golden age. Apparently considered a functional beverage with energy drinks and vitamin fortified.
Waters and you who yeah, because.
It gives you great strength, yeah exactly. But one it's considered a non alcoholic. But that was up in the air until fairly recently because there's a well known story at least in the kombucha community about a I think an inspector for the main Department of Agriculture who was going through a Whole Foods and noticed that these bottles of kombucha. This was twenty ten, so he's still like, what is this stuff that they were bubbling out from
under their caps. And he's like, yeah, not a good sign. No, He's like, this is that's fermentation. These things are fermenting before my eyes. That means that it's producing alcohol by definition. And he's like, I'm gonna I'm going to test some of these and what he found exactly, he went on a seven day bender, right, and when he came to he said, these things should not be sold as not alcoholic.
To me, I went on a booch bender. Not good. No, yeah, I think if you're homebrewing it and this is you know, it's a variable product. Anytime you're making something where there it's like alive for a little while, it's it's going to be different depending on the batch and the maker and all that stuff. If you're homebrewing it, you may
get up to three percent ABV. There have been cases where I think the guy in Maine some of those went up to two point five and that's when Whole Foods was like, we can't sell it, like it's over the point five percent threshold. So Whole Foods had to pull it there.
And this was like this this industry was still in its cradle, Like this is a really dangerous thing to have happen all of a sudden.
Yeah, totally, but that's why. Kind of around that same time, the kombucha's Kombucha Brewers International was formed, which is a trade organization that basically is like, hey, listen, we need to sort of standardize this. Here's an alcohol test that everyone should be using, and we should all be on the same page about the AVV.
Right, So they really kind of swooped in to standardize things and save the day. And there is there is hard kombucha. Apparently they're crazy for it. In California, it goes up to eleven percent, which, man, that'll knock you on your duff. Yeah, But for the most part, the people who make kombucha have figured out how to keep it from going beyond the point five percent point zero five percent.
Alcohol point I think point five.
I don't know if I've ever told this story before, have I about how when I was a youngster, I really loved nick at night, and sometimes on Fridays and Saturdays, I would go to the Open Pantry, which was a convenience store across the railroad tracks from my house. Yeah, and I would buy some slim gyms, gets twigs, maybe some starbursts, really load up. And then one of the things I would get every every time was a six
pack of Kingsbury non alcoholic beer. And every time I'm like ten, eleven, twelve, maybe oh du every time I had to argue with the person checking me out at the at the register, like this is no alcoholic, it has nothing to do with any age limit. I'm allowed to buy this, And every time I was successful. I think most of them were just like, Okay, if this kid's gonna say that to me, then fine, you can
have this non alcoholic beer. And I would go home and crack some Kingsbury and need some slim jough, my watch, Stef Troop and stuff. It was amazing, good Friday.
You know, I do have a new answer now. And when they say if you could go back in time, because it used to obviously be go back and kill Hitler and do some good for mankind, but now it's go back and live next door to young Josh. So we could have been kid buddies.
Yeah, that would have been fun.
I would have been older. You would have been the one corrupting me though somehow.
Yeah, yeah, for sure, it.
Would have been pretty funny. You would have been I would have been like what he six years younger? Seven?
Uh no, I'm like five five.
You would have been the ten year old corrupting like the fifteen or sixteen year old. But I would have my license first and be like, yeah, I know you can drive install the bad place.
Yeah, let's go get some Kingsbury Chuck. Should we take a break and come back and tell everybody how to make kombucha? Because I'm ready to do that.
Yeah, okay, let's do it, all right.
Everybody, as promised, We said that we are going to teach you how to make kombucha, and it is super duper.
S really you should also, you know, really, look if you're going.
To oh yeah, there's a that's a really good point. The kombucha brewing community is really supportive and helpful and nice and not snipy or caddy. They're just very like, whatever information you need to brew your own kombucha. They'll give it to you, and you could probably also make friends with somebody who will send you your first go b Yeah, because here's the thing. You can't make kombucha without kombucha. You have to have kombucha, which I think
Chuck and I couldn't find this. That would mean that all kombucha is related in some way, shape or form, because if you just took tea and sugar and water and left it out to be inoculated with whatever yeast and bacteria in the air, you're not necessarily going to attract the same yeast in bacteria those Bretts and the other one that are in kombucha, so you'll make something that isn't actually kombucha. So to make kombucha, you need kombucha,
which means all kombucha is related. They have some sort of shared lineage over time. Okay, that's kind.
Of like ill set up. Yeah, it is, and that kind of lends itself to the hippiedippy community aspect for sure. So like you said, you need a scobie, and like you also said, you can probably find some hippie online that'll send you some.
You can buy it too. There's everything Kombocha dot Com recommends for mental holics. They'll send you a Scobe for thirteen dollars and forty nine cents on Amazon.
All right, and you get that that gross little membrane looking thing. Maybe look up a recipe that you might want to use. There are lots of recipes online, of course, But like you said, you got to have that unpasteurized, unflavored kombucha at the root of it. Uh And like you know, you kind of tease it earlier, you put that kombucha in a in a glass jar. Everything's got to be super super clean. Of course. You're gonna want
for your tea a few specific things. You want organic tea because if it's not organic, then that tea you get hasn't been washed yet and it's got pesticides and stuff on it.
No good, not just for you, but also for the Scobe because it's a living thing.
Yeah, Scobey's gonna eat that stuff. You want to use pure tea because you know it tastes better, it's the cleanest flavor, it's got the most nutrients, and you're also gonna it's gonna be caffeinated. You can't make decaf kombucha as far as I know, right.
You literally cannot because the caffeine is one of the most essential nutrients for the bacteria and or the yeast they use it to they convert it into nitrogen, which they use for all sorts of stuff during the fermentation project process. So you cannot make kombucha without caffeine.
All right, the thing gets your tea. You got your caffeine, and what else you need? Sugar?
Yep, you want to use cane sugar. I've seen and all of this, Like, you can get organic cane sugar for very little money even compared to like just cheap white granulated sugar. Splurge for that. Splurge for good loose organic tea. Use filtered water, or you can just get like a gallon of distilled water while you're at the grocery store buying chine sugar. Just it's that whole garbage in, garbage out kind of mentality. It also applies to kombucha.
Too, all right, So you've got your ingredients, You've got your Scoby from a guy named you know, Scooby Goby, Scoby Scooby Bro, Scooby Bro one two three, and you get your sweet teammate. You add your starter kombucha, you put in your scoby and then you put it in that jar like you said, with the what's it called it, the musslim over the top, Yeah, the muslin over the top, and then you put it in that dark, dry place like a cabinet or something, and let it do its
thing for how long? Like a week or so?
Yes, if you're fermenting kombucha, it takes seven to fourteen days for the first ferment to finish, all right. Then after that you bottle, and that you leave it again for another usually a few days, maybe seven days, and it does it second ferment in the bottle, and that's where the alcohol and the bubbles really start to come about, because those are both byproducts of fermentation CO two and alcohol. Again, though depending on I'm not actually quite sure how you
control the amount of alcohol that gets developed. I think it's maybe the amount of sugar you add initially, and then also how long you let it ferment to you in that second fermentation. And then to stop it from the second fermentation, you start refrigerating it, and that makes everything go dormant.
Yeah, and when you bottle it, that's when you're also gonna you know, juice it up a little bit. If you want to put some ginger or some herbs, some other kind of like fruity juices or something. That's where you can you know, experiment with your own taste and flavor profiles that chilling.
Yeah, and you want to use glass for everything. The reason why is because it's so acidic. As we'll see that, it can leech metals right out of a metal container.
Yeah.
So, and you can also leach lead out of the glaze of a ceramic container. So you basically just want to use sterilized glass, like really well washed class. And you also want to keep yourself clean, and this I'm sure is very hard for a lot of the kombucha
brewer community. Sure, but you definitely want to wash your hands thoroughly before you ever touch your scobi because again, it's a living thing, and if you accidentally get some bad bugs on it, it can grow mold, it can get weak, it can die, all sorts of stuff can happen. So you want to be very gentle and kind with your scoby and very clean too. So you want to make sure you and your glass bottles are all super clean before you make kombucha.
Yeah, Scooby bro one two three. In this video, it's like, all right, this next part man is a real bummer. But you're gonna have to take a shower.
Man. The hippies are not gonna like this.
Oh that's okay. They're surfing right now.
There's one other thing you can do too, or one other thing you're gonna have to do. You remove your scobie from the bottle or from the glass that you fermented in after the first ferment. It doesn't go into the bottles, but it's reusable. It actually will grow I wondered about that. Yes, so it actually will grow as you're fermenting new kombucha each time, because it's sitting there eating love and life. And after a while it'll grow
thick enough that you can just basically peel off. From what I understand, the bottom layer is the youngest layer, okay. And there's stuff you can do with the old scobi it's cellulo. Some people cut it up and dry it out and give it to their dogs. Some people eat it directly because it's full of probiotics, as we'll see. But you can also just toss it out or compost it. I think is another thing people do, and you take
that younger part and just start over. It's the healthiest, it's the most vibrant, it's the youngest part of the Scobie. Or you can also take that part and give it to a newbie as their first go b too, if you want to be super kind, as the hippies call it.
Yeah, or you can rub it under your arms to prevent yeasts growth there gross in your armpit. Yeah. Well, we talked a little bit about health benefits. They have done not a lot of like controlled human trials in these published papers. There was a twenty nineteen review at two hundred and fifty three papers boots that call them the Booch papers, and there.
Were there were help my dream.
I'm sorry, that's fine, but there were no controlled human trials. So it's like you can't really point to hard science, but it is, you know, it is something that contains good stuff, Like there are probiotics, and we do know that probiotics are good for your gut. We've talked about them before. I take a probiotic every day now and it's really helped my system out, like in a hugely noticeable way. Yeah. But you know, if you read the
bottle of a Synergy or another brand. If you're making that switch, you're gonna see stuff like you find on a pill bottle of other probiotics like Basillis coagulans or lacto basillis, like these really common bacterium probiotic bacteriums. It's what's going on basically.
Yes, So, yeah, we know probiotics are good for you, and kombucha as allows you with probiotics. That's the upshot
of that. And there actually was one human trial very recently, it came out in the last week from Georgetown University that found that it actually lowers fasting blood glucose levels, So it could be useful for people with type two diabetes to drink kombucha while they're eating a meal because it will keep your glucose from spiking, according to this newest trial, and it's one of the first human clinical trials ever done on kombucha.
I got two words for that, go hoyas.
There you go.
It's been a while.
Have you ever understood what the difference between a hoya and a bulldog is? Because I've never heard anything called a hoya except in the context of Georgetown.
They have never even thought about it now that I think.
But that's their mascot. It's a bulldog, but they call it a hoya like they're out of their minds.
Is it the same? Like is it supposed to be the name of the bulldog? I don't or not the name of But does it mean bulldog?
I don't know. In Georgetown it does.
Because I'm seeing that the hoya is a plant.
Yeah it is. It's called the Indian roade plant now that you mentioned it, or one of the hoyas. I think it's a family of plants.
Well, somebody, because we're not going to stop to look this up because I'm sure the ANSWER's out there. I would love a Georgetown hoyata, right and let us know.
Okay, fair enough, moving on then right?
Yeah? What about antioxidants.
Well, that tea that you make this out of is lousy with polyphenols, depending on which kind of tea you use. Apparently green and red have the highest amounts of polyphenols in the end result in kombucha. But you can't really sneeze at the polyphenols in black tea too, which is traditionally the type of tea that's been used to brew kombucha. Those polyphenols do all sorts of things, like they neutralize
free radicals in the body. And we did our episode on whether or not free radical health theory is legitimate or not. But considering that the jury is still out, if it is legit, then the antioxidants in kombucha are really super helpful.
I wonder if you could make a macha kombucha.
I don't know, I don't know. I wondered that myself from what I saw. You want loose leaf tea, but I don't know why you wouldn't be able to use macha.
Might be interesting.
Sure.
Also vitamins, there's lots of B vitamins in kombucha. Vitamins are great for you. But again, because it's a variable product, it's not like you can say, al kambucha's have this amount of this vitamin. I believe some of the leading brands taut as being like, you know, it's a great source of V twelve or whatever, but it's not like listed out on the ingredients like exactly how much. No.
And the reason why it's, like you said, it's variable because this stuff is grown, it's not manufactured, and B vitamins are a byproduct of fermentation. So unless I guess they test every single batch and create a new label every single time. Right, they can't say accurately how much B vitamins is in there, but usually it's enough to knock your.
Socks right off, as will the acid. Right.
Yes, so acids are anti microbials, and they've been found to fight off stuff like E. Coli, Shigella, salmonella, cholera. Again, this is in vitro. This is like putting some of the acids from kombucha in a petri dish with shigella and seeing what happens, and those acids kill the shigella. So this is all just like assuming that the same stuff is going to happen in the human body, because
again there hasn't been a lot of human trials. But we know that the acids that are produced in kombucha as it ferments, do have antimicrobial properties in a petri dish at least.
Yeah, exactly. As far as if it could be bad for you, probably not. I mean, it might upset your tummy a little bit, as any probiotic could initially, at least until your thumbs gets used to it. Anything unpasteurized, like if you're having if you're trading like homemade kombucha's with friends and stuff like that, there could always be a chance that there are some bacterias in there that
aren't great for you. I think you can get a pasteurized, like professionally pasteurized kombucha, but that would kill off the live culture. So it's kind of like, what's the point.
Yeah, I mean it still has the acids in it, so it's gonna have some benefits. But yeah, the kombucha brewing communities, like what, you don't want to kill off all of this beneficial bacteria. You know.
It's very anti booch.
It is super anti booch. I say, before we wrap Chuck, we we name check a few other brands because I love a few. So health Aid is really really great, Lady Apple, I would point people too, all right. Two twenty one BC, I think is made in Florida. They make a lavender one that's just amazing, and their kombucha is real mild. It's not nearly as tart, and it's not nearly as fizzy as most other kombucha's. It's not quite as dense, so it'd be a good introduction to kombucha.
Hum is another great one, and then Big Easy, Butcha, all of those make really good kombucha, and you can usually find all of those brands in just about any grocery store.
That's great. I'm going to pass those along to Emily. Do you take a probiotic in a dish or is this sort of covering your basis here?
I take mine intraveniously, okay, just a slow drip. I don't actually take a probiotic. I'm really terrible at keeping up with supplements on a daily basis. I kind of take them when I think of it. I hear probiotics definitely fall into that category for me.
Yeah, I've gotten good at it with my diverticulate problems. So I've a friend of mine sister said you should take this probiotic every day, and it really has changed my toilet routine.
What's the Do you know the brand and or what's in it?
Oh? I can picture it in my head. No, but I could always follow up if people are interested. It's sort of just a good all around probiotic and it is right in my tummy.
Nice, that's awesome.
Goodway.
Yeah, Yeah, I don't take probiotics, but I use so much fermented stuff every day that it's kind of tantamount to it.
Yeah, we should do one eventually. On the other thing that I don't enjoy, which is kimchi.
Oh man, I eat that almost every day too. There's I know you love all us I do love it. And if you're nowhere near an Asian market, there's something called Cleveland kimchi and you can find that in like you're I think you're produce section, along with like tofu and stuff like that. And it's it's really good for package kimchi.
You could make that too at home, could don't you berry kimchi?
I think so? That sounds very familiar.
All right, we'll have to look into that. That'd be a good topic.
Okay, So while we go off and think about kimchi, let's all just wait a second and pause for a listener mail.
Should I read one? Or are we really pausing?
Go ahead and read one.
Okay, Hey, guys, recentish listener discovered you during second year of the pandemic. You've gotten me through a lot, including graduate school in the beginning of my most recent career transition, which brings me to the point of this email. At a really difficul time, shifting my career trajectory from engineering to veterinary medicine in the sense of making such a major time commitment to pursue more schooling after completing a
master's degree. I desire to learn far outweighed my concerns, though, so I applied a needless to say, I was extremely nervous going to VET school through the interview process. It was an absolutely wild coincidence that you released her podcast The Large Equine History of Veterinary Medicine the day before
I had my two interviews. That episode reminded me of how much I love this field and how fascinating it is, and I accepted this as a happy coincidence at Comma Nerves a bit allowed me to go into my interviews the next day with a high sorry with the level head and renewed faith in my decision. I was accepted to both programs I interviewed for that day, as well as a few have awesome. Fast forward to today, my second day of veterinary school, and you released how We're
Learning to Talk to Animals. I have now accepted that you're somewhat my guardian angels, as you're shepherding me through this very exciting and very scary transition. Aside from those times, the podcast has given me so many laughs, fun facts, and overall sense of calm and what can be an overwhelming world. And I know you heard a lot, but I'm officially joining the ranks. You have made such a
positive impact on my life. Please keep doing it. Can't wait to see what the future scenarios that you hold my hand through. Sending love. The sign offs are getting so good. That is from Gabby.
Thanks Gabby. I remember that email. I responded to her say congrats.
It's crazy, love it, love it.
Great email, Gabby. Thanks. If you want us to sing your praises about what a great email you wrote, take your shot. You only missed the shots you don't take. You can send that shot off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
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