The champagne of kombucha. Light, crisp, ultra carbonated.
This sounded exactly like what I want to drink all of the time. After brewing, it looked exactly like it should.
An aside, what is Jin? Google provided links to many anecdotes about this kombucha cousin. Essentially Jin is green tea + honey + SCOBY. Some authors claim you can buy a Jin SCOBY off Amazon, others scoff that those products are a kombucha SCOBY trained to live off green tea and feed off honey. Some say it’s yeastier, some purport it has a higher alcohol content. But they all seem to agree on my original statement: refreshing, bubbly, decadent.
Because I have more SCOBY that you can shake a stick at, I did not go through a transition period. In other words, I did not wean the SCOBY whatsoever. It went straight from it’s kombucha into a batch of honeyed green tea. I scaled my recipe down to a quart (1 tbsp green tea + 1/4 c honey) and treated it like there was nothing special about it.
Pros: the fermentation time was on par with regular booch. The Jin grew the most milky white, textbook perfect SCOBY I have ever produced. When bottling, this was clearly the most carbonated product I have fermented. I was stoked.
I did a two day second fermentation without releasing any gas. I wanted as much carbonation as possible. I scaled down to two days because I am still wary of exploding bottles. My one quart made one 16 oz bottle full. Perfect for a taster/treat.
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I learned I do not like Jin. Maybe the second fermentation was my first mistake, because when I opened the bottle after a few days in the fridge it was completely flat. I knew from previous experience that I did not care for the taste of a half black tea, half green tea kombucha, but I thought full on green tea–which I love hot–would be okay. I even prefer the taste of honey over most sweeteners, but this did not work for me. It tasted like honey-cardboard-malt.
Not one to give up so easily, I brewed a second batch. I scaled up to a half gallon to provide myself the opportunity to experiment further. Knowing that I have had second fermentations fall flat if the booch is too far along (not enough sugar to feed the yeast) or without the addition of fruit (sugar), I went with an old standby.
Blueberries, cut in half. Notice the excellent looking SCOBY in the background.
After 3 days, unburped, the Jin had turned a delightful maroon color. I refrigerated it hoping for improved taste and carbonation.
Both of these hopes were partially realized: the taste was much improved, the carbonation less so. However, neither of these factors were increased enough for me to want to continue the experiment. Just because you can eat (or drink) something, doesn’t mean you have to. While I tend to apply this sentiment more often to carrot greens, it was true here as well.
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Another maleficence this week: carrot marmalade.
I have a few (er, 5 or so) canning recipe books, but there is one I always go to first: Well Preserved by Mary Anne Dragan. The recipes are well written, easy to understand and produce a delicious product every time. However, they always fall short of their intended target production. Knowing this, I always slightly scale up the recipes. This being my first time making carrot marmalade, I did not scale high enough. What should have been 4-5 jars ended up 3.5 before the bottom fell out of one of them. To add insult to injury, one of the two remaining jars didn’t seal. This equated to four and a half hours of work for one 8 oz jar into the pantry.
While every experiment may not have a successful ending, you are provided the opportunity to learn what you don’t like and potentially what not to do next time. Meanwhile, I still have about 7 pounds of carrots to attend to. I’m thinking about trying carrot halwa and avoiding carrot cake because I know I will eat it all. If you have any favorite carrot recipes, I’d love to hear it.
Eat - Drink - Both 