I’ve become a little obsessed with making kombucha. I’ve had a brew going continuously on my bench since I made my first batch a few weeks back.
One of the concerns some of you had was with the use of sugar to feed the yeast and bacteria. As I pointed out, very little sugar is left behind. But if you’re drinking a few nips of the stuff per day, it can add up to several teaspoons. So I gave things a crack using rice malt syrup, which contains no fructose. RMS is a blend of complex carbohydrates, maltose and glucose. It’s fructose free, slow releasing and doesn’t dump on the liver like pure glucose.
I’d read that honey doesn’t work when making kombucha – the theory being the antibacterial agents kill the SCOBY (symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast). So I was a little concerned about RMS – it’s a fermented product and I had a picture of the different bacteria squabbling for attention in the bowl, eventually annihilating each other. Plus, I’d used RMS to make my Fermented Ginger-Ade and found it needed to be a blend of sugar and RMS to work properly. Oh, and having spoken to various experts and Googled the bejesus out of the topic, I found no one had tried it this way.
But, I can report back from the moldy frontline: Rice malt syrup makes a perfect kombucha.
Simply swap the sugar for the same amount of RMS in my Kombucha recipe and you’re away. You might need to leave it to ferment an extra day or two, and I think it does produce a slightly tarter result…which I personally MUCH prefer. If you’ve been off sugar a while, you’ll probably be the same.
I’ve since used this adjusted fructose-free version to make flavoured brews. Today I’m sharing my favourite: a Chai flavour.