Cranberry Spearmint

Cranberries are a quintessential holiday food. There's so many ways you can use them: In sauces, drinks, garnishes. This cranberry-infused booch recipe is actually dual-purpose: It uses a cranberry sauce that we adapted as a second ferment ingredient for kombucha. So you can make enough of the sauce to for the dinner table (we recommend pairing it with a yummy veggie roast like this one) and as a flavoring for your booch.  Read on for the full recipe.

 

Tea Base: Sencha or any other good quality green tea and Assam (2.5 tbsp each of loose-leaf total, per 1 gallon of spring water)
Second ferment ingredients (for the Cranberry sauce): Organic fresh cranberries (8oz); Spring water (4oz); Brown sugar (4oz); Spearmint leaves (2 oz, fresh or dry; we used fresh for this recipe).

Process:
Brew your kombucha to your usual tart/sweet preference.

To make your cranberry sauce: Put all the ingredients in a large saucepan and bring to a boil. Let boil until berries start to pop (about 5 minutes). Stir as they cook. Let cool. Once the sauce cools, you can further puree it into a finer mixture in a food processor or blender. Set aside about 1/2 cup of the sauce for the kombucha; store the rest in the fridge.

When you are ready to bottle, add the mixture, via funnel, to your bottle. You can place a fine mesh strainer into the funnel and press the sauce into it to remove the small bits of spearmint and cranberry skin. Once you have about 1 tbsp worth of sauce in your bottle, pour in your finished kombucha, seal the bottle well, and store it at room temp for 4 days.

The brew will be quite fizzy, so be sure to burp your bottle on day two.