Brad Makes Kombucha

And you really just want to --

Oh God, oh God, oh God --

[Man] What happened, Brad?

Oh!

#*&! tragedy over here.

[Man] This your first time making Kombucha, Brad?

It sure looks like it.

(upbeat music)

(beep)

[Brad Voiceover] So here we got a good close up

of a Scoby, or the mother.

And this is the life.

This is the force behind making Kombucha.

We're going to feed the Scobies

so they can make the Kombucha.

So what we feed it with is sugar and tea.

And the ratio that was handed down to me,

the master formula,

is for one courdouve of wourder,

you add 70 grams of sugar, and 7 grams of tea.

So we're doing a times ten batch.

So, 700 grams of sugar, 70 grams of tea.

So we'll start with the sugar.

It's a lot of sugar. I mean, we're not going to lie here.

But again, the end product is actually rather dry

because the Scoby, it eats the sugar.

I'm going to do a nice gunpowder, gumpowder green tea.

And for 70 grams I'll use 60 of green and 10 grams of black.

A pinch for good luck.

And from there, that's it.

So this if for a times ten recipe.

Water already brought to a boil. I turned it off.

We pour this in. Stir it around.

Let the sugar dissolve.

You don't always over-- You're just steeping it.

You're pretty much making sweet tea.

So while that's steeping,

we'll take a peek at the girls here.

I have four different vessels, okay?

This is the Scoby. It's layered almost like a --

If you can zoom in and look at it,

it's almost layered like a laminated biscuit.

You could peel back the layers.

Or I could start peeling layers and you could give them

to a friend and they can make it at home.

Alright, Vin, quit horsing around.

Back to business here.

So I got some cheese cloth. Wonderful product.

Line that in the fine mesh shinwa.

And then we'll strain that into another vessel.

Couple more minutes now.

And then we'll refrigerate it.

What I do is, I use a little less water,

and then I'll use some ice cubes.

So they help chill it, and it will also

speed up the chilling process.

Alright, we'll put this in the sink.

This goes in here. Like so.

Come in to walk in and I find out the

ricotta's still out that I ordered last week.

Guy's out of his mind.

No, you didn't order it. I don't think you ordered it.

Please get this. Vinny, Vin is my witness.

Camera man doesn't miss anything.

Classic, I ordered it, where is it?

But he never ordered it. Today's crazy.

Today's #*&! crazy.

Woah woah, PG 13 alright?

This is a family show.

Since today's been so busy,

I haven't even been able to unpack the Freshdirect.

It shouldn't look so messy in here.

Usually this will be all unpacked.

But mean old Vinny-bo-Binny over here --

we didn't get to do that yet.

So, that might even have to wait until tomorrow

'cause we got booch to make. Come on.

We got a good steep going.

Right behind you, Claire.

So again, shinwa.

Fine mess strainer. And some cheese cloth.

(pouring)

Alright, and that's Scoby food, man.

We're going to have a couple happy girls over there.

So from here-- remember that I was saying that I

I cheated the wourder a little.

Say I needed 10 quarts, I only put 8 in.

So we could put some ice cubes in,

to help chill it, so we could do this a little quicker.

Science, man. Science.

(crunch)

Yeah.

We'll put this right in the walk-in.

Never ends, man.

(door closes)

Here we go. Coming in hot, sharp, dangerous.

Chris Morocco, he's on fire.

So we'll wait 'till that gets to about 72 degrees.

And then we'll do the old siphon into the Scobes.

You don't need to roll on this, man.

We're cheating.

I had to keep it in the walk-in,

and now we're just bringing it up to the temperature.

And once that's, you know-- we just don't want to shock it.

If it's too cold, we can shock it.

If it's too hot, it can kill it.

So we'll get it to right around where it's at.

Sorry Brad That's quite alright.

And then we'll feed them.

Stay with me, folks.

That's it.

I'm sure there's far more sophisticated ways to do this,

I don't have those.

We'll just use the old gravity to do this for us.

I get that little siphon hose that I got.

You sure you want in on Brad's World?

I do.

Alright good.

Baragh, hold this.

I don't want to do that.

There's no free rides, no free lunch on Brad's World.

You see that little hole there?

Try to sneak that down there.

Oh wait, I lied to you. Don't do that yet.

Oh my God.

Boom, right there.

[Andy] I thought I was going to do that.

We don't need you anymore, Andy.

I'm out.

So that's good. We'll fill this up all the way to the top.

And we'll do this to all of them.

And then it sits, and then it's a tasting game

until it gets to a sweet -- the perfect spot.

The balance of tart, sour, and sweet.

And then from here, it's just everyday you test it.

So I keep a straw, I slip it right down here.

Come in here and get this, Vinny.

I slip it right here down the side,

just a little pinch-pull.

(magical music)

Because it was so sour here and just because it's in there,

we haven't had time to feed them.

This will probably happen really quick.

I'll let this go for probably --

What's today, Wednesday?

Friday I'll probably bottle.

(upbeat music)

Alright, so here's the next step.

Very sophisticated tool.

Best Scobes in the biz, bud.

You don't want to touch that with your hands either.

The bacteria in your hands is very bad.

(spits)

Wammo, bammo. Right in there.

Now you want to make sure that your tea is

still a little sweet, not completely sour.

Very important for the second fermentation.

You see I only filled it a little bit,

but I have several vessels.

And I like to make a blend

because one could be a little more sour than the other,

and I really just want -- oh God, oh God!

Like I said, you always want to leave a little bit

in for Mom.

'Cause she needs it.

So yeah, you want to use a bottle that you can

seal real nice.

I like using -- The square ones are not so good.

Some of them you got to be careful.

You have to get ones that are fit for

food grade and for fermentation

because what we're doing next is

putting this tea in these bottles

with a little bit of juice, fruit juice.

And it's going to have a secondary fermentation,

and it's going to start to carbonate.

And it's going to build up pressure.

So if you have a really cheap or bad or poor

glass bottle, it can explode.

(boom)

And it has.

And this is important, you want to label them,

so you remember which flavour you go.

And you got to put the date on it.

So you can keep track of how long it takes to

do the double fermentation.

I got some really nice miscotta grapes.

Fresh, and I juiced them.

And we're going to try to make a Kombucha with that.

Now, I use a lot of already packaged bottle juices.

They're pasterized so their dead.

But they add a good flavour, and they have the sugar

which is the most important.

When you make your own, it carbonates a lot faster

because it's just -- eager to live, man.

So yeah, like I said, this aint rocket surgery.

So I don't really-- I eyeball everything, you know.

I'm not really a big measurer.

So that's how much we do.

We'll call it 'Must'. Oh, I like that.

I like to come up with little names for them,

you know, I'm really creative.

So this is apricot.

I just write 'apricot'.

And then you can mix them.

So you can really put anything in them.

We've done fresh berries, juice 'em.

And they come out fantastic.

Alright so let's bottle a few real quick,

see where we're at.

So then yeah, I got this big ol' bottling jug.

And then you just fill them up.

You want to leave --well you have to leave,

you got to leave a little bit of air on there too.

Now I let those little bubbles settle on there

and then I'll come back and top it off.

But you want to fill it to about right here.

And then that's it, you seal it up.

You want to get it tight, real tight though.

It's got to be air tight.

Like a frog's ass, water tight.

You can use just regular wine corks,

but these seem to work really well.

You can just keep resusing 'em.

But you got to push them in pretty good.

As far as they'll go.

There's that.

I was going to put a date on it,

wait about four days and then don't open it.

Just let it go. A little patience.

Booch doesn't like to be messed with,

you just go to let it do its thing.

So yeah, you add all that juice.

But when it's done, it's not real sweet

because the living organisms,

micro-organisms inside here eat the sugar.

And produce the carbon dioxide.

Science.

So that's it. Brad's Bitchin' Booch.

Oh God.

(sighs) This is going to get me fired.

(cork pops)

We have successful carbonation. Look at that.

Oh that's a beautiful thing.

(light music)