Sequence Never Shortened

I was first introduced to the idea of kombucha during a conversation with the man who ran our local plastic free shop when he made a passing comment that he was drinking a lot less (alcohol) since he had started brewing kombucha and that it was good for you. At the time I felt I was drinking too much, so the idea fell on fertile ground and within a few days I had watched a few videos and bought the tools I needed to start.

Kombucha is slightly fizzy and tangy fermented tea which probably originated from China around 2000 years ago. You can have it plain, or you can add flavours to it during the process. It usually has < 0.5% alcohol.

The best videos I found to get me started with kombucha were from You Brew Kombucha.

You can buy it from supermarkets but it is a distant cousin to making your own - usually it is overly sweet, force carbonated, not live and expensive.

The key thing you need to brew kombucha is a starter tea and a Scoby - a Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast - basically a living colony of bacteria and yeast that eats sweetened tea (black, green or even apparently oolong). It looks like a rubbery and slimy disc (sometimes bits hang off it making it look like you have brains in jars!) I bought mine from Freshly Fermented for the pricey sum of £12.25 - a bargain if you consider I have now made 208 batches from that one purchase! You can also just ask someone you know who brews kombucha as the Scoby grows over time and needs splitting fairly regularly.

I also bought some large Kilner jars and some bottles from Amazon to put everything in.

The process is simple: (this is for black tea - green tea needs a lower temperature, more tea for less time)

1. Heat up 130g of granulated sugar in water to near boiling
2. Put in 4 tea bags and let them steep (I use Tetley Tea)
3. Remove the tea bags and pour the sweetened tea into a clean jar
4. Top up the jar with cold (ideally filtered*) water
5. Add your starter tea and Scoby (it will not like hot water, but it should now be just warm)
6. Stir then cover with a muslin held with a rubber band

*depending on where you live your water may have chlorine in it that will harm the brew. You can leave tap water standing out for half a day to allow chlorine to dissipate.

Then you leave it, away from sunshine, for 7-14 days depending on your specific conditions and taste (I do 13 days) to complete the first ferment. The yeast eats the sugar, turning it into CO2 and a little alcohol, then the bacteria turns the alcohol into an acid that makes it sour and tangy.

When the taste is right, remove the Scoby and some of the liquid (for my 2L jars, I take about 500ml) - this is what you need to start the next batch. Filter the rest of the liquid into some bottles (add your flavouring at this point) and leave for another 3+ days (again depending on conditions). As the bottles are sealed the CO2 is trapped making the kombucha fizzy - how fizzy is up to you! When they are about right - pop them in the fridge to prevent any further fermenting. If you have added any flavour - the bottles may need ‘burping’ (releasing some of the pressure) as you have likely added some more sugar for the yeast to eat.

The one key thing to watch out for is mould (any mould means the whole batch, Scoby and all needs throwing away). When I first started I struggled with this as the Scobys do crazy things during the fermentation but there is a very useful website resource that alleviated my fears. Ultimately the process is acidic and the Scoby creates a micro-environment that is not mould friendly, so with some basic hygiene the risk is low. There are some people who sanitise all their equipment thoroughly, but given the Chinese were making this 2000 years ago I just do the basics and stay observant, and I have so far never had mould!

Upping my game

Until recently I have just been doing three 2L batches of black tea kombucha on a rolling factory line which produces 5 bottles a week (so we have a glass at most breakfasts).

As I have some spare time I have been looking to up my game. Firstly I have added a nearly 4L jar into the mix - adding 6 bottles to the cycle. If it works out I might either replace the smaller 2L jars with bigger ones or add more as it would be good to produce more.

Secondly I am expanding the teas to be used - I have my first green tea batch underway and I am keen to try Oolong. You can use any tea from a real tea plant (Camellia sinensis).

Finally I really want to experiment more with flavours. In the early days I tried summer fruits and I think pineapple - the quantities were wrong and I did not burp the bottles so there was a lot of explosive kombucha! More recently I tried lemon (peel) and rosemary which was lovely. I have also been recommended apple and ginger - I am not a fan of ginger but apple and cinnamon would work. Unfortunately my family is less of a fan of flavours, so I will only be able to experiment on occasional batches.

If you have any suggestions for flavours that work well, or any questions about brewing kombucha, post a comment below.

I have always identified as a confident introvert. Until this week that is when, out on a run, I had a sudden thought that perhaps I am actually a shy extrovert. This thought rattled me more than I expected and has led me down a bit of a rabbit hole since.

Let’s back up a little bit and grab some pop-psychology definitions: introverts get their energy from themselves, and extroverts get their energy from others. This is often muddied up with confidence or being outgoing, but you can have confident introverts (like me or so I thought) or quiet extroverts.

I can definitely be shy - although I would only recently describe it in these terms, I have anxiety around people I do not know, especially in the lead up and in the replay afterwards. It is not debilitating - I have got over it whilst building my former business (every customer is a stranger to start with!) and giving presentations and talks at customer conferences and universities. Indeed, I can often come across as both confident and outgoing. There have been times however that I feel like it has held me back, particularly outside of work when social situations can be avoided - skipping post-conference drinks when I do not know anyone, making excuses to not join any groups or not being able to start new friendships.

It has been easy to attribute this avoidance to (or blame it on) being an introvert - I would go to the board game group meet up but I am too ‘peopled out’ - I need to rest etc. And I do like my own space and time, and I do find it restorative… at face value I am an introvert… except…

Energy. If we come back to energy, things get a bit murkier. As part of this fallow season I am enjoying (my adult gap-year?!) I have been doing a lot of work looking at what makes me tick. What do I truly enjoy doing? What energises me? Surprisingly I have discovered (or admitted) that it features people - I feel energised coming back from a day spent playing board games with friends, or after (some) Teams meetings with colleagues, and I enjoy working a room of customers at a customer forum. I also find myself going to the pub with a book to soak up the atmosphere. This behaviour does not match how I see other introverts describe themselves.

Have I misdiagnosed myself? Am I really an extrovert? The panic at the original thought that I might be a shy extrovert was both a reaction to the acknowledgment of the impact of my shyness, but also a reaction against being an extrovert. It is not a label that fits - not because I am not used to it, but because I do often feel like an introvert. I do not like small talk, I can spend an entire day in deep focus mode, I often need time on my own to recharge. I am both!

In what seems relatively obvious in hindsight, introversion / extroversion is a spectrum, and indeed there is a word for having traits of both - ‘Ambivert’. Basically, an ambivert’s energy comes from both people and self, depending on the specific circumstances (who, where, why etc). Equally, what drains them will also depend on the specific circumstances. As a label this fits better. I need time to sit with it but it should help me better understand who I am and how I work.

It also helps shine a big light on my shyness - this is an area I have already been working on (most recently reading ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck’). Acknowledging that being around people is more important to me than I had believed highlights this absolutely should be an area of focus. My shyness is also arguably holding me back from various ideas I have percolating.

I used to be an outdoor blogger. It was never a big blog, but two things worked in my favour. Firstly, in 2008 after being inspired by a feature on Countryfile I recorded a video of myself barefoot walking (it is still online - [www.youtube.com/watch) and the related blog post was heavily linked to across the globe (which boosted my reputation with Google). Secondly, I created Social Hiking, a platform used by other (bigger) outdoor bloggers, so I was embraced as part of the gang (culminating in a surprising nomination as Outdoor Personality of the Year - I lost to Bear Grylls!)

The blog mostly covered hikes, equipment reviews and other outdoor related bits and pieces. My love of the outdoors however was only one facet of my world (I have recently discovered the term multipotentiality which fits me nicely), and I often dabbled and failed with other blogs, one of which was called Sequence Never Shortened - a reaction to those Apple ads which show a slick user experience with a side note that the sequence has been shortened.

Having been a freelance web developer for years, I evolved my work into a business building digital solutions in the social housing sector. Whilst there were so many positives, it was also consuming, so I closed my blog, turned off Social Hiking and withdrew from social media. The last few years have been especially frantic - we started a partnership with another company, were acquired and I worked for the new owners.

Until mid-August when, by choice, I left to … well, to do nothing. Well, not nothing - I do the school run, the cleaning and a slowly increasing amount of the household chores. I have also started the process of resting, rebuilding and rediscovering who I am now away from that long held identity of work that defined who I thought I was for so long.

There is a journey to that process - a journey of indulging interests, digesting self-help books, brainstorming new paths, doing daily self-discovery rituals and grabbing opportunities when they arise. And it feels important for me to document this journey in blog form - to hold myself accountable to the world (even if no one reads it) and to flex and train my writing and creative muscles.

So - I present to you… Sequence Never Shortened, a blog about my journey of self-discovery - the full journey, not a shortened insta-friendly sequence. Expect gardening, kombucha, hiking, model painting, houseplants, self-help, technology, castles, board games, reading and a whole load more.