Kombucha
is fermented tea made with a Kombucha starter culture (a scoby) and some tea from a previous batch. Once you've consumed about 90% of the liquid, it's time to make another batch. You make more Kombucha by brewing caffeinated tea and then sweetened it with sugar. Once it's cool, you pour that tea over the scoby and cover the glass jar with a thin towel secured with a rubber band. The scoby is a live bacteria and needs to breathe.
It takes 5 days for the scoby to feed off the sugars before you drink it again. Kombucha contains a number of vitamins, particularly B vitamins. There are a lot of health benefits to drinking Kombucha. If my Kombucha sits longer than two weeks before I drink it, it gets very strong (tastes like vinegar) so I add slices of ginger root and fresh fruit. Within 5 minutes the Kombucha takes on those flavors and is much more enjoyable to drink. The glass of Kombucha featured in this post has blueberries in it so that is why it looks blueish-red.