Kombucha sorbet

Tired of drinking all that green tea and yoghurt to improve your health? – Let the fermented Eastern classic Kombucha into your life! Never heard about it? Well, read on then …

Kombucha sorbet

Kombucha is composed by fermenting tea with the help of a relatively “mushroom”-looking symbiotic culture  of multiple yeasts and healthy bacteria. The slightly acidic Kombucha was known  in Russia as from the 19th century, and has been surrounded by claims about its many health-bringing qualities ever since.

Some also claim that the beverage has ancient Chinese and/or Japanese origins, often invoking links to Ancient Oriental health benefits of sometimes dizzying magnitude.

Regardless of its history and possible health benefits, Kombucha remains a very nice, refreshing drink. Due to its slight acidity, it is perhaps somewhat more likely to appeal to adults than to children.  Myself, being very fond of Kombucha as a drink, I began to ponder what it would be like to make a Kombucha sorbet.

To prepare the sorbet, I started by making a sugar syrup. Always in a hurry, I went with the simple Bartender-method of shaking equal amounts of sugar and water until all the sugar had dissolved. If you prefer, you could of course always cook the mixture and achieve the same end-result, and then wait for the sugar syrup to cool down (For a general post on how to make sorbets, go here!).

If you feel very strongly about doing everything yourself, Kombucha can be prepared at home. The process appears almost as simple as it is fascinating, with the creation of the “Kombucha mushroom” and all. Go here or here for a couple of helpful sets of illustrative  instructions on how to best prepare and ferment your own Kombucha.

However, since it will take  almost two weeks even with the right ingredients at hand, you may want to follow my example and get hold of some commercial, ready-made Kombucha.  The one I used came with a pleasant hint of cherry flavour.

Kombucha sorbet ingredients

Since my sugar syrup was cold already from the start, I now proceeded by blending in the (chilled) Kombucha. The fermented nature of the Kombucha quickly showed in the foaming bubbles you can see in the picture.

The Kombucha sorbet base

As could be expected, the sorbet base turned out to be quite sweet. In order to balance the final result  without affecting the overall base flavour, I added the juice of 1/2 lemon – a highly recommended move!

Beautiful colour, with a few fermentation bubbles still visible

After having finished admiring  the beautiful colour of the sorbet base, I swiftly poured it  into the ice cream machine.

Churning Kombucha sorbet

The reddish waves of churning sorbet base was also quite a sight!

Kombucha sorbet

And so – the final result!  Sweeter than the original drink, but perfectly adequate for a sorbet. And definitely true to the flavour of Kombucha! Even the children, usually no admirers of the drink, turned out to be very fond of its frozen cousin😉