Homebrewed and Healing Kombucha
Somewhere around 2,500 years ago, a fermented beverage of tea, sugar and a symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast was first brewed in a place we now call Manchuria. In 414 A.D., Dr. Kombu from Korea brought kombucha to Japan as treatment for the Japanese emperor Inkyo. The word for tea in Japanese is cha, so the literal translation is Dr. Kombu’s Tea.
Kombucha has survived and spread across the planet, handed down from one brewer to the next for over two millennia, enduring droughts, famines, wars, migrating families, sugar rations, tea shortages, thousands of years of civil and industrial revolutions, and, presently, our own American Food and Drug Administration. This beverage has gained in popularity in the United States since the early 2000s and is a household name for health food aficionados and beyond nowadays. But its true setting for over 2,000 years was in the closets and pantries of homes all over Eurasia, not in the drink coolers at the grocery store. …