Kombucha

Is this shit meant to taste nice? I just bought my first bottle and it tasted like carbonated vinegar. I could literally feel it stripping the enamel off my teeth.

I love green tea and it's health benefits but I can't get onboard with kombucha. Should I give it another go and maybe try a flavoured one next time?

Other urls found in this thread:

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7476846
jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/1152389
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1525-1497.1997.07127.x/abstract
journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0885066609332963
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

Its a health food it's not meant to taste nice.

>vinegar

That's because it basically is. The SCOBY in kombucha is similar to a mother that you use to ferment apple cider vinegar.

Kombucha is for hippies, are you a hippy?

Ignoring the crazy health-nuts, it's pretty good, but I think it's better made at home. It gets more vinegary over time, even once strained and bottled, so you need to have a continual cycle going

It's literally like drinking vinegar. How is it good?

this shit is pretty good, I like the chia seeds in it

>literally vinegar

It's less acidic than pepsi

>He doesn't lick balsamic with a dash of salt off the back of his hand for maximum flavor townage
Anyways the point of drinking it is to get the happy culture into your tum tum. It's not meant to be a mountain dew alternative.

I think it tastes good. I grew up drinking this and just make it myself so not sure how bad the bottled stuff is.

It tastes bad if you let it sit for too long and get too concentrated

I tried the gingerberry flavor of that brand in California and it was a huge step down from the Canadian version of the same brand. What went wrong, America?

In this moment, I am euphoric. Not because of any phony god’s blessing. But because, I am enlightened by this mass-produced carbonated sugary beverage.

My first try at kombutcha was a commercial product and it was a huge disappointment. Vinegary . Then I got a kombutcha mother and brewed my own that was really great and had nothing to do with the previous one. Lately I stumbled upon a local kombutcha brand that was on par with my own.

If you can't find a decent brand, brew your own. I personally prefer fruit kefir/tibicos because it's faster and easier, although quite different.

Just drink a fucking Yakult.

Kombutcha is meme pseudoscience and eastern """"""medicine""""""" garbage the same shit that makes them eat shark fin soup. At the best it does fucking nothing and at the worst if it's prepared by an amateur can fucking kill you.

Please, tell me more about your ignorance and utter hygienism, USA.

the kombucha mushroom people, sitting around all day

Maybe I need to try some flavoured stuff or make my own because it was very, very acidic. It smelt like vinegar when I first opened the bottle.

>Please, tell me more about your ignorance and utter hygienism, USA.
I've seen recent posts equating "hygienism" with Americans on Veeky Forums.

Presumably you are from Europe, which isn't much better than the US.

Also, considering the microbiota associated with kombucha is not stable or consistent across products or locales, how can you say "kombucha promotes health"?

>vinegar
Your typical industrial grade bad kombutcha.

well kombucha does contain acetic acid, so depending on the microbes it can be more or less prevalent.

>"kombucha promotes health"?
I did not say that. However, I do think it's better for health than your average sparkling soft drink.

Also, you didn't tell me more about your fear of the microbial world.

Indeed. But In my experience it's more related to the brewing method.

The question isn't "coke versus kombucha", this is an interesting false dichotomy you presented.

I have little fear of the microbial world. I am a microbiologist who has conducted some research on indoor microbiology, specifically fungal biodiversity using a variety of next generation sequencing approaches integrated in a long-term pediatric health study focusing on allergies and asthma.

You sound like you have a tenuous grasp of microbiology and the hygiene hypothesis, to the point where all microbes associated with foods and the human environment must be beneficial.

I remember you from the moldy ham thread, you didn't know what you were talking about then either.

Just drink filtered water and take your vitamins.

Kombucha rots your teeth.

>Just drink filtered water and take your vitamins.
Vitamins do nothing for the avg health person.

But my parents own a high end health food store that sells millions of dollars worth of vitamins and supplements to old decrepit Jewish women, so keep supporting our industry!

Neither does drinking kombucha, it's all marketing hippy bullshit.

Yes that's me, I had good lulz there. Since you answered genuinely, I feel bad a little and apologize for the silly emptiness of my posts.

My view of food microbial ecology is that depending on the strains, the substrate and the conditions (hygiene, for instance), microbes in food are not necessarily harmful.

More seriously, back to the topic, to your knowledge have any pathogenic strains of fungi/molds/yeasts been found in kombutcha mothers? Is there that huge of a variety in theses scoby populations?

I know the local kombutcha brand I mentioned earlier had to check the safety of its mother because of EU food regulations, and would be quite surprized if there could be problems with this kind of products.

In all honesty, I find that a lot of health claims regarding Kombutcha are, to say the least, unrealistic and close to superstition. But I favor natural organic acids over E338, aka phosphoric acid.

The benefits of probiotics are pretty well-established now. It's not going to make you live forever but aspects of healthy eating and living are all cumulative.

>I know the local kombutcha brand I mentioned earlier had to check the safety of its mother because of EU food regulations, and would be quite surprized if there could be problems with this kind of products.
>fucking scientists require you to check the safety of a food product
>would be quite surprized if there could be problems with this kind of products.
Fucking kill yourself, you wouldn't be "surprized" you have no frame of reference because you operate purely on the same superstition and hearsay that you decry the meanie butt Americans for.

There are some reports of negative health effects associated with kombucha, invariably due to improper culturing or contamination:
>Unexplained severe illness possibly associated with consumption of Kombucha tea--Iowa, 1995.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7476846

>Cutaneous anthrax associated with the kombucha mushroom in Iran
jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/1152389

>Probable Gastrointestinal Toxicity of Kombucha Tea
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1525-1497.1997.07127.x/abstract

>A Case of Kombucha Tea Toxicity
journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0885066609332963

Which of course is not surprising at all, because any fermented food or beverage can be dangerous given the introduction of deleterious strains or improper conditions.

Kombucha scoby populations probably have some commonalities, but I haven't looked into studies investigating the biodiversity. It would be interesting to conduct a worldwide survey of different kombucha cultures to see the fungal and bacterial community diversity. I'm sure this has been done or will be done within 10 years given how cheap and accessible metagenomics approaches are.

Zygosaccharomyces kombuchaensis is at least one new species described from kombucha, which is pretty interesting.

>how cheap and accessible metagenomics approaches are
Interesting. How cheap?

the booch is good. make it yourself, drink as a replacement for fizzy drinks low sugar or thirst quencher in the summer times. if it gets too acidic/vinegar the ferment went too long. don't forget to do a second ferment w added sugar/fruit etc to make it actually good/fizzy. second ferment is key.

>there'snoneedtobeupset.mkv

Take probiotic tablets and stop being a trust fund pastafarian scumbag.

Kombucha isn't good for you.

Tried it once.

Literally tasted like fizzy vomit.

Human genome's on its way to $1,000 a pop for a full sequence. Metagenomics on a culture of kombucha or something is going to be much less than that, just chuck it into an Illumina sequencer. Run that a few dozen times on various cultures from different lineages, talk some shit, and boom, you've got a paper. Of course, you need access to the sequencer.

just take probiotics or drink yakult you gaylord

For people who aren't really used to it, you can
1)backsweet it, 2)not ferment completly, 3)try other teas that aren't as bitter, 4) try double-fermenting with fruit in second rack.

(all that for home ferment, it's much better and really up to your taste!)

>Metagenomics
Nice, I wish someone would write this paper! I'm not from that field, what would you advise as a crash course? What is the precision of these analysis regarding the 'species' of microorganisms? I was told rARN 16s was not very precise...

>Based

its a source of non synthetic b12 and the fermentation part is like adding fertilizer to your small intestine making it able to absorb food nutrients better. Theres your hippy science bullshit. Take it or leave it

>a source of non synthetic b12
Well I doubt that and would like to see robust quantification data backing your statement.

Also
>implying commercial B12 is made from a hundred step total synthesis and not in bioreactors

>b12
Hm, kombutcha seems to contain propionic acid. It could be possible, after all.