Car­ol Quash

Fer­ment­ed foods, much like the Boochie Brew kom­bucha pro­duced by Casidy Mo­hamed, of­fer pow­er­ful health perks.

Kom­bucha is a fizzy, fer­ment­ed drink made from tea, sug­ar, wa­ter, and a sym­bi­ot­ic cul­ture of bac­te­ria and yeast (SCO­BY). It pro­vides the body with pro­bi­otics, an­tiox­i­dants and acetic acid that help fight harm­ful bac­te­ria.

“Cur­rent­ly, I have four main ones. I’m al­ways ex­per­i­ment­ing with dif­fer­ent flavours and dif­fer­ent com­bi­na­tions, but pineap­ple and gin­ger is the most pop­u­lar one for sure. Pas­sion fruit as well, al­though it is a bit scarce, and man­go be­cause it’s in sea­son. I al­so have turmer­ic and gin­ger as well,” Mo­hamed told WE Life & Cul­ture.

In her quest to add more healthy con­sump­tions to her pescatar­i­an di­et, Mo­hamed start­ed fer­ment­ing and pick­ling her food. She said she start­ed mak­ing kom­bucha be­cause she doesn’t like juice and soft drinks be­cause she finds them too sweet.

“I want­ed an al­ter­na­tive be­cause any­body who knows me knows I’m al­ways drink­ing wa­ter and tea. I just want­ed some­thing that is healthy, has a lit­tle less sug­ar than usu­al, but al­so it’s not flat.”

A cer­tifi­cate in agri­cul­ture and agro-pro­cess­ing, which touched on food sci­ence, gave her the the­o­ret­i­cal push she need­ed. She said there are two stages to her fer­men­ta­tion process, which takes about two weeks. The first is the pro­duc­tion of clean kom­bucha, which peo­ple don’t usu­al­ly drink be­cause it tastes like wa­tered-down ap­ple cider vine­gar.

“So no­body is en­thu­si­as­tic about drink­ing that.”

The sec­ond fer­men­ta­tion in­volves adding flavour to the clean ver­sion. Step one in the whole process, she ex­plained, is to get the cul­ture – the SCO­BY, which is used as a base to make any type of fer­ment­ed food.

“That’s prob­a­bly the hard­est part, ac­quir­ing a good cul­ture. I got mine from a friend who is a food sci­en­tist some years ago. It start­ed off as a small jar, like those jam jars. And over time you have to feed it. It’s yeast and bac­te­ria that feed on sug­ar, so you ba­si­cal­ly make sweet tea with tea bags and sug­ar, and you feed it, you stir it, you make sure that the con­di­tions are right.”

And be­cause it is prone to con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, every­thing used in and around it must be ster­ile.

“Gen­er­al­ly, when you’re cook­ing food, you have to be clean. But this is like a dif­fer­ent lev­el of clean. You need to ster­ilise every­thing and be very mind­ful of it. It’s a liv­ing thing as well, so you have to make sure that it’s alive, make sure that it’s healthy.”

While it is fer­ment­ing, she high­light­ed, it has to be test­ed to en­sure it has the cor­rect pH, taste and does not get con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed.

“If some­thing is off, it could grow mould or may have an over­growth of yeast, which af­fects the flavour as well as the bal­ance and the ben­e­fits. So you just have to make sure that en­vi­ron­ment is right for it to sur­vive the first fer­men­ta­tion.”

For the sec­ond fer­men­ta­tion, she adds pure fruit juice. But, she said, peo­ple are free to use fresh cut up fruits, frozen fruits, fruit purees, spices, herbs, mint leaves, al­most any­thing they could think of, once it’s ed­i­ble and has flavour.

“I some­times do some­thing with whole spices, like pep­per­corns or cin­na­mon sticks. I put that in the bot­tle, let it ab­sorb the flavour, then I pour in­to an­oth­er bot­tle so that the fi­nal prod­uct would not have the stick in­side of it. I’ve al­so used limes, or­anges, grape­fruits, and ap­ples to flavour my kom­bucha.”

The sec­ond fer­men­ta­tion fol­lows the same process as the first, ex­cept at this stage Mo­hamed ad­vis­es of the im­por­tance of pay­ing at­ten­tion to the car­bon­a­tion. She prefers to use flip-top bot­tles with the rub­ber seal be­cause it al­lows her to open and re­seal in the event there is too much build-up.

“Over the days, you would ac­tu­al­ly see the bub­bles start to form on the bot­tle. And that gives you a good idea of if it’s fer­ment­ing cor­rect­ly. It’s some­thing you need to time be­cause there is the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the bot­tles could ex­plode from too much car­bon­a­tion or car­bon­a­tion hap­pen­ing too quick­ly, es­pe­cial­ly as the days are so hot right now.”

The sec­ond thing she close­ly mon­i­tors is the sug­ar lev­el.

“You want to make sure that you have enough sug­ar for the yeast to feed on it, but you al­so want to make sure that you’re not left with too much ex­tra sug­ar be­cause it kind of de­feats the pur­pose of hav­ing a healthy drink al­ter­na­tive if at the end of the day it has way more sug­ar than juice and soft drinks.”

She said clean kom­bucha by it­self al­ready does an amaz­ing job in fight­ing dis­eases; adding flavour, de­pend­ing on what it is, can on­ly add to the good­ness.

“For ex­am­ple, if I flavour with gin­ger, this would help with in­flam­ma­tion, adding to the pro­bi­otics and an­tiox­i­dants that are al­ready there.”