Fermented tea enters with force in Western gastronomy.
Fermentation is one of the oldest known techniques for food preservation. Especially in Asian countries, it is very common to apply it to fish, meat and vegetables. Paradoxically, in the 21st century it has become a culinary trend with a great projection for the future.
Of all the food fermentations, kombucha is the one that has burst in with the greatest force: its expansion is exponential. According to a legend, it is named after the combination of Kombu, the name of a Tibetan monk, and cha, a generic name that the Chinese population gives to tea. It would mean, therefore, «kombu tea».
It is a drink made from tea sweetened and fermented by a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeasts (SCOBY, for its acronym in English) that is commonly called tea fungus. It is usually obtained from black tea leaves, the result of the fermentation of Camellia sinensis leaves; but it can also be made from oolong tea leaves, semi-fermented tea, green or even white tea. Simply put the tea, sugar and «mother kombucha» with the aforementioned mixture of microorganisms in a container.
Of all the studies that have been done to determine the microbiology of kombucha, the most detailed is the one published in April 2014 by Alan J. Marsh and colleagues at University College Cork in Food Microbiology. According to this, the main bacterial genus in the colony is Gluconacetobacter (present in more than 85 percent of the samples); It also contains a prominent population of Lactobacillus (30 percent) and only trace amounts of Acetobacter (less than 2 percent). Regarding the yeast populations, they are dominated by Zygosaccharomyces (more than 95 percent).
