A Strange Tea: I took, I drank, I gagged

Vile and disgusting. Worse than Castor-Oil and NyQuil combined.

An encounter with kombucha (aka mushroom tea, fermented tea) took place in the early nineties. The nineteen-nineties, to be clear. In my own kitchen in Cordova, TN.

The first reported use of fermented tea began, it is said, over 2000 years ago when a bug fell into a vat of sweet tea. Bug bacteria combined with local yeast and Voila!, a symbiotic culture was created. Users maintain that the concocted, fermented tea contains miracle properties for whatever ails a person. The tea is reported to be an effective treatment for anything from digestive problems to mental illness. Even as recently (!) as AD 414, a Korean doctor healed a Japanese emperor by using kombucha. More recently, say 2016, it has been compared to other food and drink containing probiotics.

Quite frankly, my dear, I’d say drinking it is not only a symptom of mental illness, it could be the cause. Should a body wish to drink something fermented, something with medicinal properties, said body need only partake of a good glass of red wine and munch on some deep, dark chocolate.

My ex-husband conjured vats of the stuff in our kitchen for what felt like an eternity, though it was more likely for a year. The container with the scoby (the starter that looks like a jelly fish with wiggly-squiggles hanging down) occupied an entire section of our minuscule kitchen counter space. When it was time to make more tea, the entire kitchen was used for the process: tea brewing, sugar adding, cheese cloth covering, time-taking additions. The brew is to rest, unrefrigerated, for two weeks. The longer it rests or ferments, the more sour it becomes, possibly turning into vinegar.

After being shamed into doing so, I tasted the stuff. He drank a glass of this concoction each morning. “Yum! You’ve got to try this…it’s not bad, really. And it’s got all kind of benefits, including prolonging youthful appearance.”  Now, he’d said it! The fountain of youth and perpetual health in a glass of strange tea, in my kitchen.

I took. I drank. I gagged.

“I’ll just grow old, thank you very much,” I said.

He continued to drink it, vowing that it made him feel more invigorated, more robust, and more likely to leap tall buildings, though it might take two or three bounds.

Almost twenty-five years ago, when fermenting tea was part of a home-brewing rage, the tea-master I knew did not add pureed strawberries, blueberries, lime juice, mint leaves, white wine, or anything flavorful to improve the tea's taste. A current article from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette mentions that the fermented tea could be infused with strawberries, mint, and lime, suggesting, though, that the effect would not be immediate. It would require three days for the “super-fermenty, tart lemonade” tea to take on any resemblance to a pleasant drink.

The ex-husband swigged this stuff, vowing, “This tastes good…well, it doesn’t taste that bad.” Something so disgusting, worse than a combination of Castor-oil and NyQuil, is certain to either kill any lurking bacteria or speed up the process to full-blown mental dysfunction.

Based on my scientific, first-hand investigation, I believe the result to be the latter.