Probiotic Appreciation Study Group

[emptycup]

I love kombucha too! I mix mine with pineapple, passionfruit and ginger and it gives that extra sweetness and zing. 

 

I just started a brew which involved using lemongrass tea. Lemongrass ha a potent taste, so we'll see. 

 

I have some hibiscus (roselle) tea and I'm wondering if I can use this as my tea brew with sugar and add the SCOBY directly or one needs to stick to black and green tea. 

 

I'm glad I discovered this thread! :)Thank you for this!

[Seatle185]

Thank you. I have actually been brewing and am still really new to it. I am on just my 3rd brew at the moment and i am loving it! I am at the point where i have 2 huge scobys and am planning to start a scoby motel because i dont know what else to do with them and dont want to throw them away.

 

I have been experimenting a bit on the second brew, the first few times i used pom juice which was great, this last time i tried apple juice and cinnamon which has been my favorite!

[ion]

you can use just about any type of tea, but if you decide to use anything else but black tea, use one of your extra SCOBYs because it will effect the balance of the populations that are in the scoby 

 

always keep your original culture going in black tea.

Edited July 17, 2018 by ion
SCOBYs not scabies!

[ion]

On 7/15/2018 at 3:14 PM, Seatle185 said:

Thank you. I have actually been brewing and am still really new to it. I am on just my 3rd brew at the moment and i am loving it! I am at the point where i have 2 huge scobys and am planning to start a scoby motel because i dont know what else to do with them and dont want to throw them away.

 

I have been experimenting a bit on the second brew, the first few times i used pom juice which was great, this last time i tried apple juice and cinnamon which has been my favorite!

give the extra scobies to friends.

 

I used to give them out for people to start their own brews.

 

in fact I think I started a thread here after I discovered how to make a kombucha like beverage out of thin air 5 or 6 years ago.

 

I was a member of an online kombucha brewing group, and members were always asking people how to make KT from scratch.

 

I did not realize that they were asking how to make KT from a store bought brand, I thought they meant literally from scratch.

 

I wondered about it hard, came up with an idea, tried it and it worked. Tried it again and it worked again.

 

I should try it again.

 

After posting that thread I ended up sending off some cultures to interested parties along with some mushroom cultures on agar.

 

 

Edited July 17, 2018 by ion

[redcairo]

I should have known the bums would have a thread with kefir already. :-)

 

I've had serious gluten intolerance for about 20 years (that's when it kicked in). This is likely due to 'leaky-gut' which allegedly can be caused by antibiotics and other things. Who knows. All the sudden severe asthma, severe allergies, and acid reflux, sort of "fell on me from the sky" all at once, and the doctors acted like this was normal. I didn't know what it was for the first ten years. When I went lowcarb it temporarily and then 'mostly' was in abeyance, but that was because I was eating "meat and vegetables" -- not grains. But I ate things that had some gluten still (canned chili now and then for example, and some spice blends) so I still had occasional symptoms. When I figured out what the source was, I did a lot of experimenting. No doubt at all that brought it on, and it vanished if I stopped eating gluten. But it was yummy! So I'd eat it, feel crappy, things got worse till I couldn't breathe (and many other side effects like acne, brain-fog, depression, etc.) and I'd finally go off it for awhile. The symptoms kept getting worse all the time though and finally I went 100% off gluten consistently. My immune system recovered enough that then, if I got accidentally gluten'd even without knowing it, even the tiniest bit, I'd wake up feeling like I was dying but not-soon-enough, whimper and wail for an hour, and then wheeze and cough for a week. Suffice to say... gluten has been a huge impact on my health and diet for a long time.

 

After speed-reading over 3000 reviews on various kefir grains over a week, I got some quality live grains for kefir (at fusionteas.com) and tried it out. First 3 batches were tiny and I tossed, designed for recovery, grass-fed non-homogenized pasteurized milk. Next half dozen batches were eh, a little yeasty, a little sour, that reduced with every batch though. Now, a month later, my kefir (whom I have named Barney the Infinite) has his groove on, and the resulting texture is like eggnog kinda. I add swerve (a sweetener) and some extracts (orange bakery emulsion is my fave currently) after the 1st or 2nd ferment (depending on my hurry) and put it in the fridge. And I took up drinking 3oz 5x a day, and then 7oz 6x a day. I was keto, so I figured I was trashing my diet utterly but after the reviews, I was convinced that maybe, after a few months, perhaps the accidental restaurant G wouldn't have such horrible effects on me.

 

For unrelated reasons a couple weeks after that, I ended up intentionally eating something with gluten (so I didn't pass out, as I was driving and had no other food options and was suddenly thrown out of keto so had no energy and had gone too long without food). I figured I'd be miserable the next day of course so I ate what I wanted (if I'm going to suffer penance, might as well enjoy the crime!). And NOTHING!

 

Kefir wipes out my inflammation body-wide. SO well that I spent the next few weeks eating every gluten food I haven't been able to eat without abject misery, for years. More carbs than I've had in eons lol. When I was eating tons of stuff at once and ongoing, I did start getting a few MILD symptoms, bit of wheezing, but for regular intake... nothing.

 

I have never had something affect me so strongly that I KNEW it was having a dramatic effect on my body or health (well except maybe vitamin D3 when I was super low, and Co-Q10 (-ol) when I was near heart failure for a defective valve). This stuff is the bomb!

 

I've had serious symptoms for two and a half years, since my open heart surgery, of limbs falling asleep extremely and suddenly for no apparent reason, all the time. It's gone. I have no idea why it's gone. It's interfered with my life all this time and for two weeks now it hasn't happened even once. I don't know that it's permanently gone but it sure seems like it.

 

And for eons, after learning to walk again I've been trying to get to even one bodyweight squat, since I couldn't get off the ground and figured this would be the muscles I needed to do it, so I could brave venturing out alone again. I hadn't tried in a couple weeks but so far I'd only gotten to one, barely, with a lot of screaming at the effort. Now I can do about four. This is so mindblowing to me -- I have a squat cage and weight bench and rack in my living room if that's any sign of how serious I am about restoring my health -- I've been going over and doing 2 squats, several times a day, every day for three days (since I discovered this), like I just can't believe it's true.

 

It's like my health just radically improved. Radically. And it seems pretty hard to believe that the last month [edit: I guess technically about 6 weeks, sorry) of homemade kefir is what's done it, but there isn't really any other major shift in my intake or habits, so I don't know what else to attribute it to.

 

Note that I use ordinary whole milk now. Not organic. And it's doing just fine for me. I have a rule that every so often I will do one with organic just for the sake of the grains.

 

RC

Edited March 7, 2019 by redcairo

[Joolian]

On 7.3.2019 at 4:52 AM, redcairo said:

I've had serious gluten intolerance for about 20 years (that's when it kicked in). This is likely due to 'leaky-gut' which allegedly can be caused by antibiotics and other things. Who knows.

Hi @redcairo,

thanks for your post. I also suffer from gluten intolerance for some years - it also came out of the blue for me. Yet I was a heavy pasta freak - maybe that was the reason for the problem now. I also think it is due to leaky-gut - only came to know about the latter as I got new symptoms for the last months which point to an inflamed thyroid (having cold hands/ feeling cold/ etc).

Right now I am trying to heal my gut with several supplements, bone broth and homemade coconut yogurt, but kefir I don't know anything about... Will have to research it! Don't know where to start though besides googling, maybe you have a tip for me.

 

Also I was recommended to eat a lectin-free diet, as my gluten-free alternatives for the last years relied heavily on corn products, which are said to be able to create inflammation in the gut or worsen the gut lining. Have you heard from Dr. Gundry's lectin free diet?

 

Best wishes,

Julian

 

[redcairo]

Hi Julian,

 

Not his specifically, but lectin-free, yeah. The protein of grains is gluten, the protein of legumes is lectins. They are both very large proteins. If they are denatured they are usually considered less an issue (edit:) for some with only minimal responses (like sprouting grains or pressure cooking on high for 45m beans which destroys them so seems pointless to me).

 

Most people I know don't have any symptoms from things like beans, just various sorts of grains. I've done beans in and out of a lowcarb diet (not keto but VLC), but I find that while it's awesome for filling stews around meat, it tends to make me want to eat more of it, and I don't gain but I don't lose weight either with many in my diet. Edited to add: as books (like Wheat Belly) describe though, research shows some things like glutens and lectins can cause a ton of body damage while giving people no symptoms whatever.

 

There's a whole lot on kefir online, though most is the same simple stuff. Being a lunatic (obviously) I spent a few hours a day for a week speed-reading reviews for different kinds of kefir grains from different sellers, to see what might be best and what people said good and bad. Over 3000 by the time I was done (oy!). And I just googled and read everything I could find about it. And I went to youtube and watched tons of videos about it, people making it. So that's all I can recommend, I don't read a book on it or anything.

 

The "inflammation reduction" I seemed to get from it with several doses a day for a couple weeks wasn't really in those reviews so wasn't expected by me, but in bulk the reviews did support great results with the overall digestive system for tons of people.

 

RC

 

 

Edited March 9, 2019 by redcairo

[redcairo]

PS I think I'm also going to do some instant pot yogurt, but since it doesn't have a "lives forever" lifeform at the center of it, this seems a lot less fun. ;-)

 

RC

[Joolian]

Thanks. Yes, I also have the instant pot as it helps tremendously in making bone broths and I got into coconut yogurt, which to me is the best yogurt I have ever eaten. Will continue doing that...

 

Regarding kefir, I am not so sure about the milk content. Gundry and others are saying to eat only Casein A2 milk/yogurts, like sheep or goat milk. What is your opinion on it? I mean, if you think milk kefir could be "damaging" in the long run.

 

Greetings

[redcairo]

I have no opinion on it.

 

One thing I have learned is that I can only be so obsessive about my food. There is a limit, after which, we either hit the issue of "don't like it much anymore" or "can't afford it anymore" or "there isn't truly enough evidence to radically change this thing for me at this time."  Or simply, "I only have so much space for food-related paranoia after which I almost want to say screw it for EVERYTHING because it becomes too much." :-)

 

I actually have no direct access to sheep or goat milks in any case. Nor could I drink much kefir if I had to afford them. So that'll have to remain in the category of yet-too-obscure-to-worry-about for me. ;-)

 

RC

[Joolian]

Okay, thanks  That's a good view on it I think. Overthinking and avoiding things to the extreme although one maybe has desires for them, makes life difficult.

 

I have already ordered live kefir grains from a private person by the way and will try to make kefir at home the next days...

[thelerner]

On 7/15/2018 at 5:04 PM, emptycup said:

I love kombucha too! I mix mine with pineapple, passionfruit and ginger and it gives that extra sweetness and zing. 

 

I just started a brew which involved using lemongrass tea. Lemongrass ha a potent taste, so we'll see. 

 

I have some hibiscus (roselle) tea and I'm wondering if I can use this as my tea brew with sugar and add the SCOBY directly or one needs to stick to black and green tea. 

 

I'm glad I discovered this thread! :)Thank you for this!

I'll often buy Trinity kombucha and mix it 1/3 kumbucha 2/3 seltzer, thus it lasts longer and is a mellower drink.  I find its somewhat exotic flavor satisfies my alcohol tooth (or tongue) and a small 16 oz bottle lasts for 4 or 5 drinks.