Cheese Making Supplies Now Available!

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted but we’ve been busy expanding our product selection and working on a new version of our website.

First, the expanded product selection.  I am excited to report that we’ve added 36 new products!  I’ll be posting about all of them over the next week or so but let’s start with the fantastic cheese making supplies.  Making cheese is a wonderful skill and an easy one to learn.  We now have a selection of cheese making supplies including:

• Starter Kits
• Starter Cultures
• Rennet (organic vegetable and animal-based options)
• Other important ingredients like citric acid
• Cheese shaping molds in various shapes
• Supplies such as cheesecloth, thermometers
• A great home cheese making book

I’d like to particularly highlight our starter kits which make getting started making cheese super easy.  In particular, the 30 minute Mozzarella and Ricotta kit is a great way to launch into cheese making.

I’ll post more over the next few days about the other new products we have available.

We’ve also been working hard on a new website.  We hope to launch it in the next week or two…stay tuned!

Which Tea for Kombucha?

Q. Which tea should I use to make Kombucha Tea?

A. There are a number of options available.  Generally the best teas to use are either black or green tea without any added oils.  Good options include English Breakfast, Ceylon, Darjeeling, Oolong and regular green tea.  You want to avoid any tea with oils such as Earl Grey or any of the fruit flavored black teas (e.g. organge spice, etc.).  Using a quality black or green tea without oils helps ensure that a proper ph balance is maintained and reduces the chances of mold.

Using different types and combination of tea can be fun as each will yield a unique taste.  For example, English Breakfast makes a very strong tasting kombucha.  Oolong, which is a partially fermented tea putting it in between the black and green categories, makes a particularly pleasant tasting kombucha and is the tea we most highly recommend.  It also makes an excellent background for adding flavors after fermentaton such as fruit juice.  Green tea also makes a rather mild kombucha.

You can use herbal teas but we strongly recommend using them in combination with green or black tea to help maintain the appropriate ph balance.  It is possible to use only herbal tea but the kombucha must be watched very carefully for signs of mold and the user would need to be aware of the dangers of this method.

We do recommmend only using organic tea when brewing kombucha due to the harsh processes used to process coventional versions of teas.  Making kombucha only requires 2 T. of loose tea per gallon of kombucha so the small amount makes it well worth sticking with a quality (and organic!) tea.  4 ounces of loose tea will generally make 9-10 gallons of kombucha.

For more information on kombucha starter cultures, a kombucha starter kit or our selection of organic teas, visit our website.