Kombucha Tea

[Doreen Peri]

Is anybody familiar with Kombucha Tea?

If so, what can you tell me about it?

[judih]

we were growing it for about a year.
We were told it reverses grey hair to black
extends youth indefinitely
gives energy, sobriety and propriety

it also shed a little stink on our lives with its distinctive fungal scent

after it started to wander its way to putrid, we gave up our cultivation

but it was a nice mushroom for a while.

[Doreen Peri]

Hey judih!

Yeah, I heard that stuff about a fountain of youth, too. Ponce de Leon knew there was no such thing, too. He was probably hoping he'd be able to bottle something and sell it.

But I did hear it was a good cleanser for the body and offers support to the immune system and liver. That kind of thing I can believe with herbs and mushrooms and other natural substances.

I was reading about it on the web and found a tribes group for this tea, btw.

It also got some bad press from the Center for Disease Control claiming that they highly suspected the tea itself caused the deaths of two women in Ohio (I think it was in Ohio) back in the mid-90's. Of course, the proponents of the tea say this claim is nonsense.

Have you tried it? Do you know anybody else who's tried it?

There's testimonials all over the web by people who claim it's helped their health in a myriad of ways... (who knows? maybe they're real people... quotes are all signed with initials, not full names. Ha!)

I'd like to find some first hand accounts by people who I know.

Good to see you got home safely! It was great talking to you on the phone the other night!

[judih]

yes, i'm safe.

truthfully, i tried the tea for about a week, but caved in cause of the smell.

Gad was drinking it for a year, and well, at the time, so much energy was being generated between us that it's hard to say if the mushroom was working wonders or if our sudden burst of rejuvenation came from many other concurrent sources.

We cultivated it in a huge glass jar. Looked like a brown jelly fish and definitely altered our home sweet home fragrance to yeccch...what's that smell?

Does it come in pristine tea bags? Or are you thinking of glass jar-ing your way?

We got into it, by the way, cause of friends who swore by it. The thing is that few carried on after a year. Maybe that's the lifespan of a shroom and after that, one needs a new source.

j

[Lightning Rod]

the only mushroom tea that I've had experience with was made from the cubensis mushrooms that grow out of cow patties in Texas.

Only use the ones that turn purple when you wound them.

And oh yeah, you raise mushrooms like you raise women
feed them shit and keep them in the dark

[panta rhei]

i grew it for a few months several years back - liked it for a while, then got tired of the taste and smell.
effects? none that i noticed, but a few months might just not have been long enough.

i also tried water kefir.
i liked its taste better... it's fresher and more 'sparkly', slightly sour.
you'd need kefir grains, water, sugar, a slice of lemon and a fig to make it.

there was a time, when this kefir was very hip - almost everybody had it, and it always came with a handwritten and copied note that said something like "hi - i'm kefy, your new house companion. please take good care of me....", and so on.

(just like this famous yeast dough called "hermann" that kept being passed along here in the 80's - "i'm hermann. please feed me..."...)

[alienpoet]

too bad it smells so bad ...sounds interesting. i don't even like the smell of garlic.