My first experiments with kombucha fermented plant extracts involved taking a kombucha scoby from my scoby hotel and cultivate it on a sweet tea made from 30% black and 70% green tea and molasses. After two generations of fermentation I deemed the molasses kombucha ready for use in phase 2. Separately from this, I also made a rum wash from molasses. This rum wash is identical in the way I would make a rum wash for distilling rum, with the only exception being that I did not distill it. I capped it to use as an ethanol containing nutrient source. Based on my experience making these washes and the yeast that I used, I estimate the rum wash to be in the region of 10% ABV. This will be used in small quantities to assist in plant fermentation and extraction. The use of ethanol in this process is basic, but care should be taken as most microbes cannot handle ethanol in high quantities, so use sparingly for this purpose.
After I had the kombucha cultivated on molasses and the rum wash fermentation completed, I started the kombucha fermented plant extract. For this, I had the peels and seeds of 2 papayas and about a cup full of chopped young cannabis leaves I wanted to use. Cannabis leaves will probably be a base substrate for all my kombucha ferments. To this I also added 1/2 cup of sorghum malt. I made a fresh batch of sweet tea for my kombucha using the base ingredients of molasses and black and green tea. I then placed the plant material into a fermenting vessel and filled it with half of my new batch of sweet molasses tea and half of a well fermented molasses kombucha. I topped it off with 25ml of the rum wash at 10% abv. and covered with a paper towel. The fermentation was closely monitored and all went well. The right notes of sour fermented fruits formed and after fermentation was completed, I strained the liquid from the solid matter and bottled in a mason jar. After 2 days of standing, the kombucha "scoby" formed on the surface layer as expected, but what was not expected, was the structure of this scoby. I have seen some weird shit in my life and brewed up some weird shit as well, but nothing ever came close to looking like this.
The smell quite the opposite of how it looks. It smells quite wonderful actually. You can definitely smell the kombucha signature notes, but it's much more pungent, sourly and fruity than normal kombucha.
Here is the molasses kombucha and it's scoby for comparison.
I started to use this plant extract at a ratio of 1:100 as a foliar application on a test female plant. After no initial detrimental effects were witnessed for the first few days, I upped the ratio. For the last week did a foliar application at a ratio of 1:40 every morning at 05:00 and every evening at 19:00.
The test subject is a female swazi from my selection of bag seed. She is about 14 weeks old and is in a 20L pot using soil. Initially, I thought she was an auto, seeing as all her siblings were autos. She went into flower just a little bit later that the rest of them, but whereas they completed their flowering cycle, she started to re-veg again... So, she is now the subject of testing and experimentations... Any advise on how to care for her addionally will be welcomed. I cannot let her get huge as she has to stay hidden behind a wall, hence the training going on here... This was her this morning after a week of twice daily foliar feeding on my experimental kombucha fermented plant extract. I must say, I looks promising. She isn't getting any other food or special treatment. I'm going to keep to a ratio of 1:40 for adding to water in the soil and start doing this for the next week when watering. We had a lot of rain recently, so I haven't watered her in about 10 days time.
I will continue to post my progress and findings here. For my next recipe, I delved a bit deeper into proper sour mashes, like when making whiskey, using sorghum malt and banana peels. This one is currently busy fermenting and will replace the papaya and cannabis leaves extract when it is done.