When most of us travel, we get a chance to experience the “macro-culture” of a specific place. The fun restaurants, architecture, great beer, and the things that make every destination unique.
There too, exists a tiny universe of idiosyncratic “micro-culture” on the fruits, vegetables, and in the water produced in these locations. Some perfect examples are the sourdough bread from San Francisco, the grapes from New Zealand, and the oysters from Washington.
The microorganisms in each of these places play an integral role in the development of these nuances. With kombucha, we too, have this interplay of the environment impacting flavor profiles and symbiotic cultures.
For the last four years, we have been working on developing our kombucha mother to represent the Sacramento area. It has become acclimated to our native yeasts/bacteria, temperature, water profiles, tea, and carbohydrates of choice.
Our good friend Joey T. has been mirroring this process on the East Coast. Those same factors in Philadelphia have given his culture its distinct nuances. Just as we share our cultures via experiences, Joey T. has shared his culture via a SCOBY.
When we tasted his kombucha, we thought, what if we combined our cultures to make a culture that merges East Coast funk with West Coast love.
For us to begin this process, we ordered white peony…
…and gunpowder green tea. This combination makes the perfect base for an easy drinking kombucha.
Starting with two 64oz glass Ball mason jars, we weighed out 0.5oz of each of the teas and 1 cup of sugar. Next, we heated 80oz of water to 170 degrees and allowed the tea to steep for 3 mins.
We then strained the tea…
…added 1/2 cup of sugar to each jar…
…and split the warm sweet tea into the two jars gradually adding cold water until we had 54oz of liquid in each jar at 82 degrees.
This is a safe temperature for the yeast and bacteria. Finally, 7oz of starter liquid was added to each.
After this, we added our California culture to one jar and the Philly culture to the other.
The jars were placed in a dark place at about 80 degrees. In 5 days, we will check the cultures to see if they have developed a new pellicle (another name for SCOBY). On day 10, we will taste the cultures and see if they would be copasetic as a combined culture. If so, this will be our starting house culture for Mindscape Fermentations.
As a company, we really believe in shared experiences and creative collaborations. This coast to coast culture will be the perfect manifestation of those ideologies.