Cold infused Camomile kombucha 💛

Delicious! If you are a kombucha brewer, this is easy!

First take some dried camomile flowers.

Chamomile contains an antioxidant called apigenin, which binds to specific receptors in your brain and may help lessen anxiety and promote sleep, so keep this relaxing drink for a chilled out occasion!

The flowers are easy to forage and easy to use in flavouring drinks and salads.

Ingredients:

2 handfuls of dried camomile

1.5 litres of Spring water or filtered

90g of sugar

300 ml of Kombucha green or black tea mature starter liquid and a scoby (20% of the brew)

Instructions:

Place 2 handfuls of dried camomile flowers into 1.5 litres of filtered water to cold brew. Work out how strong you like your brew. Cold brewing allows more flavour to infuse into the water. Stir and perhaps infuse for 24hrs and then sieve out the flowers. Rather than flavouring a tea kombucha, this is making a camomile kombucha brew. I only tend to try making other kombucha brews if I have spare scobies to do so.

Then weigh out 90g of sugar (I generally use 60g per litre of kombucha brew I make) Slightly warm the brew to dissolve the sugar and to be kind to the scoby. This was to about 30 degrees. Then add a normal fermented tea kombucha scoby and 20% of a good strong kombucha green or black tea starter liquid (I use a higher percentage of starter than for a normal kombucha which is 10 to 15% for a herbal brew). This is a one off brew, as you do not have the necessary caffeine and tannins that the tea family Camellia sinensis needs to have to re use the scoby and starter to make another brew after.

Let the camomile brew as you would a fermented tea kombucha for a few days. I use a straw down the side of the scoby to try the brew to see when it is ready and check the brew tastes good. In Summer, I expect it to be ready in 7 days, I try it after 5 days or so. When the flavour is where you are happy, decant into a bottle and carbonate it before refrigerating it or just put it straight in the fridge if you don’t want the fizz.

This makes for a lovely light, floral, honeyed flavour distinct from the tea versions.

You could experiment with other flowers while we have edible flowers and plants in season like rose & elderflower, fig leaves or mint.

Credit needs to go to @chef.sam.black for the idea to cold infuse flowers for making kombucha back in 2024💛

I really love this brew and it makes for a delicious chilled drink in the Summer evenings where perhaps I would like a soothing drink with no caffeine in.

Camomile