Recipe: Ginger-Lemon Kombucha

Here's how to enhance the taste of kombucha, the fermented tea drink. With a delicate ginger and lemon flavour that's right for any season. Recipe by Busra Talia Bagbasi, vegangraphy

Kombucha is fermented twice. For the first fermentation, tea, sugar, cold water and the kombucha culture or scoby mushroom (a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast) are combined in a jar and allowed to ferment for 10 to 12 days. Sugar aids the second fermentation, which carbonates the kombucha. The first fermentation must be complete before you can follow this recipe. The second fermentation then takes around 3 to 6 days.

Ingredients:

• 1 litre of kombucha
• juice of 2 medium lemons
• 3 tbsp grated ginger
• 1 tbsp sugar

Preparation:

1. Juice the lemons and discard the seeds.
2. Peel the ginger and grate it into a bowl with the lemon juice.
3. Pour the kombucha into sturdy, thick glass bottles, leaving around 7 centimetres of space at the top.
4. Add the lemon and grated ginger to the bottles and close tightly.
5. Store the bottles in a dark place and leave the kombucha to ferment. The longer you store it, the higher the level of carbonation. Warmth speeds up the process.
6. Important: Open the bottles several times a day to release the pressure so that the bottles don't explode.
7. Be careful when opening the bottles after the fermentation process, as pressure may have built up from the carbonation. Store the finished kombucha in the refrigerator and consume within one week.