Coyote Ridge FarmsWelcome To Our Rural Blog

Wednesday, on Facebook, I mentioned that I bottled my latest batch of Kombucha.  It was the first time I had ever tried flavoring the Tea beverage.  Personally, I like drinking my Booch in it’s ‘Classic’ form – unflavored.  But more than one person has contacted me about trying my Kombucha, but they wanted to try their favorite, commercial flavor of Kombucha.  We started flavoring the tea with cranberry-grape.  I must admit, the cran-grape (Krape) Kombucha looked quite nice.  Like I mentioned on Facebook, it looked like a Rosé wine.

To be on the cutting edge of flavor development, I thought I would try an unconventional flavor of Kombucha.  I put together a Prune flavored tea.  I called it Kom-Boom.  I took the 1st 3 letters of Kombucha and added them to the word boom.  Why boom?  Well, what happens to your backside if you drink too much prune juice?  Dare I say, it nearly explodes… it goes BOOM!  I guess I thought if someone had a problem that only prune juice could resolve, why not get it from a delicious, naturally carbonated, probiotic beverage?!

Although I just bottled 2½ cases of my 2nd batch of home-brew, I decided to start another 6 gallons.  I have gotten a few emails and Facebook IM’s about how I’m making my beer.  First off – it ain’t hard.  I use a hopped malt extract.  It’s an ingredient kit – basically a can of goop and a yeast packet.  It’s very simple… some of the hard-core beer makers call this the Kool-Aid method of making beer.

this is the beer kit I used

The answer always seems to be a resounding “Yes!”

Since winter has hit, and hit hard, I spend a lot of time on the internet – doing research, watching DIY videos on YouTube or answering questions from folks who feel they know less about starting a farm than Carol and I.  We hear all the time, “You guys are where we wish we were.”  Carol and I usually look at each other and giggle to ourselves.  We refer to ourselves as newbies/green-horns.  It’s hard to think of ourselves as people others would like to learn from.  We make so many mistakes or think about how we should have done things differently.  We often wonder what the heck we were thinking when we did what we did… when we did it.  “Hindsight is 20/20,” they say.  They also say, “Hell is paved with good intentions.”  Whatever the case, we are not experts.  But I digress.

First, we want to apologize to our Facebook fans, as they not only read the blog entries, but also the tid-bits and minor updates on our FB page.

I’m quite excited about our latest project.  We are starting to make our own beer, here on the farm.  We have never [successfully] made our own beer before, and because of that I chose the simplest process I could find – a hopped extract from a can.  It came as an ingredient kit – extract, yeast and instructions.  When we lived in town, I made lots of wine, so having the correct fermenting equipment already on hand, really lessens the investment needed to get started making beer.

It seems that making 2 gal. of kombucha at a time is not enough for our family. I am now starting a 3rd gal.

This 3rd batch, I’m trying something a little different – I’m going with a green tea… a green tea with jasmine essential oils. We’ll see how it goes. Under our brewing/fermenting conditions here in the house, it takes 10 days to ferment and approx. 7-10 days after bottling, before we drink it.  I hope I remember that I tried a different flavor of tea, after 2½ weeks.  I have been making Kombucha Tea using a plain black tea… and I love it – no mixing with juices, no spices, nothing… just simple, straight-up, great tea flavor.

With so many batches of tea going, I just want everyone to know that I have 3 new SCOBYs developing every 10 days.  If you need one, please let me or Carol know.

The mother that helped start it all, is now dead… and Carol fed her body to the animals.  Such, is the circle of life..

Some say there are dozens of things one can do with their dead mother.  Some make them into Popsicle type treats, while others grind them up and add them to the food they feed their family.  Since I was not in the mood to mutilate the body, we simply threw her out for the chickens to peck at.

I am not without the creativity of my mother, as I am now the guardian of her 3 daughters – a responsibility I do not take lightly.  None-the-less, I will miss the matriarch of our home.  Her offspring will easily replace her.  I am, of course, talking about my Kombucha mother… she has given me 3 delicious batches of Kombucha Tea… and I am grateful.  It is now her daughter’s time to serve me my beverages.