{"id":128,"date":"2019-04-24T23:40:16","date_gmt":"2019-04-24T23:40:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iris.siue.edu\/biowire\/?p=128"},"modified":"2022-07-01T17:17:30","modified_gmt":"2022-07-01T17:17:30","slug":"chemistry-students-demonstrate-kombucha-brewing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iris.siue.edu\/biowire\/2019\/04\/24\/chemistry-students-demonstrate-kombucha-brewing\/","title":{"rendered":"Chemistry Students Demonstrate Kombucha Brewing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

From the Ground Up, a student club at SIUE, hosted a kombucha brewing event on campus recently at the Biotechnology Lab Incubator on University Park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the Ground Up is a group of science students dedicated to outreach. They created the group with the intention of raising community awareness of the bioeconomy at large. The group focuses on agriculture, nutrition, beverage, and fermentation sciences, and often hosts informative and fun projects designed for the public. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The student-led club did a demonstration to teach students how to make kombucha and offered some scientific insights about this highly popular but mysterious fermented drink. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The history of Kombucha goes back thousands of years and is said to have originated in China where this particular fermentation process originated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fermentation can be described as when an organism \u201ceats\u201d sugar and releases oxygen, along with other products such as alcohol. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Although alcohol is a product of the kombucha fermentation process, commercial kombucha contains less than 0.5% alcohol. Thus it is not considered an alcoholic beverage like beer, wine, or spirits, although the process of making it is highly similar. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In order to make kombucha, you need what is referred to as a \u201cmother\u201d or SCOBY, which stands for, symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast. The SCOBY used during this demonstration was on a disk made of cloth, although paper towels, coffee filters, or napkins can be used.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The SCOBY contains the yeast and bacteria which together start the tea fermentation process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The SCOBY is placed in a glass container filled with black tea for one to four weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf your SCOBY turns black, they actually turn black when they die,”said Shea Walker, a leader in the From the Ground Up club.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the seminar, the question was also brought up as to whether we could make a fermented coffee with the same process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019re going to have a weird tasting SCOBY!\u201d, Cat Akley warned. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The debate lasted for quite some time resulting in Dr. Robert Dixon, Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry, coming in and speaking on the subject. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJust the opposite, it could be a growth inhibitor,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even though Kombucha has been consumed since ancient times in China, it has just recently become widely popular and commercialized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kombucha is said to have health benefits such as increasing the amount of antioxidants in consumers’ diets. For those present, this was a chance to get close to the ancient science of fermentation in action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the Ground Up, a student club at SIUE, hosted a kombucha brewing event on campus recently at the Biotechnology Lab Incubator on University Park. From the Ground Up is a group…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":162,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sb_is_suggestion_mode":false,"_sb_show_suggestion_boards":false,"_sb_show_comment_boards":false,"_sb_suggestion_history":"","_sb_update_block_changes":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/iris.siue.edu\/biowire\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2019\/04\/kobucha-101.jpg?fit=4032%2C3024&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iris.siue.edu\/biowire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iris.siue.edu\/biowire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iris.siue.edu\/biowire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iris.siue.edu\/biowire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iris.siue.edu\/biowire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/iris.siue.edu\/biowire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":273,"href":"https:\/\/iris.siue.edu\/biowire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions\/273"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iris.siue.edu\/biowire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iris.siue.edu\/biowire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iris.siue.edu\/biowire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iris.siue.edu\/biowire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}