(Today's secret word: Ch-ch-ch-chia!)
I love kombucha. I'm not big on sweet drinks, but I do like some fizz, so kombucha is perfect - tart with bubbles. I like it so much I have started making myself, so now I can have it every day. (I have no position on health benefits of kombucha, but I figure starting the day with a pint of kombucha instead of 4 oz of orange juice is at least keeping me better hydrated).
Kombucha, the basic stuff, is actually pretty easy to make. The effervescence - that's the hard bit. The standard technique is to ferment your basic kombucha, decant into bottles and add whatever flavoring - fruit juice or whatever. Cap bottle tightly, let it sit for a couple of days, and the little kombucha bugs will eat up whatever sugar there is in what you have added and produce CO2. Sometimes this happens, sometimes not so much.
Naturally, I decided to deal with this by making things more complicated. My favorite commercial kombucha has a selection of kombuchas with chia, which I also quite like. I especially like their appearance - all those chia seeds suspended evenly in a jewel-colored liquid. How hard could it be?
The first question was how much chia to add. Found something that said 2 tsp/1 cup made a drinkable solution, so I figures I would try that. My first batch was a sort of super-anti-oxident mix (e.g., whatever I had around): pomegranite juice, beet juice, orange juice and some blackberries. That seemed a bit tart, and I had a nearly-empty bottle of ginger syrup right there on the counter - so I added about 1/2 tsp of syrup to each bottle. And 1 T chia (they are 1-pint bottles, but I figured I had quite a lot in them already).
And I got fizz! LOTS of fizz - as in "have a glass ready to hand and open the bottle over the sink and hope you can get some of it in the glass as it all fizzes over". I figured it was the ginger syrup, as that had sugar, and I never usually add sugar.
So the next batch, I just used pomegranite juice, and the full 4 tsp of chia. Now, usually I let the bottles stand on the counter for a couple of days, and then move them into the fridge day-by-day as I drink the bottles from the previous batch. But I had already finished the previous batch, so I put 2 bottles in the fridge right away.. Chia was not real nicely distributed; half of it was on the bottom and half on the top, but if I turned the botlle over a couple of times before I opened it, things seemed to distribute pretty well - at least long enough for me to drink it. No fizz, but I wasn't expecting much, chilling the bottles so soon.
Last night, when I came home, I noticed that one of the bottles on the counter had lost its cap, and it (and its neighbors, and in fact everything for about a foot around) was covered in kombucha and chia. Clearly, there had been fizzing, and the bottle had blown its cap (still haven't found any side of the cap). So I cleaned it all up...and then I looked up:
Yes, that is chia on the kitchen ceiling...4-1/2 feet above the counter top. That, my friends, is SERIOUS FIZZ.
All I can think is, the cats must have had an exciting day....
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