Kombucha is not konbucha

[Benjamin Barrett]

I tried kombucha for the first time today. The ingredients do not include seaweed. Sure enough, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kombucha notes that "Kombucha is an effervescent fermentation of sweetened tea that is used as a functional food." The etymology section says that the word might derive from the Japanese 昆布茶, but they are completely different drinks.

Benjamin Barrett

Seattle, WA

[Masako Sato]

Hi,

The wiki page is describing 紅茶きのこ、not 昆布茶。The link to Japanese page leads to 紅茶キノコpage.

I have a packet of 玉露園昆布茶 here. 昆布is included as an ingredient.

Masako Sato

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 2:36 PM, Benjamin Barrett さんwrote:

[Benjamin Barrett]

Thank you for noticing that! The Japanese article says that 紅茶きのこ can be made from either 紅茶、もしくは緑茶. 

The type I had was oolong-based. The ingredients are oolong tea, "kombucha," ginger, pear and other flavorings. The ingredients in the "kombucha" are water, cane juice, oolong tea leaves, yeast and bacteria cultures. 

The English article says that kombucha is effervescent, though I don't see that in the Japanese version. (I don't trust Wikipedia completely, though, I bet there are kombucha drinks without carbon dioxide.)

Both articles note Acetobacter and Zygosaccharomyces as ingredients.

Benjamin Barrett

Seattle, WA

[Peter Clark]

In the Chinese version I found "康普茶". Is this read "kompucha" or "kombucha", by any chance?
 
Peter Clark

[Benjamin Barrett]

Wiktionary gives kāngpǔchá.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%BA%B7#Mandarin
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%99%AE#Mandarin

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%8C%B6#Mandarin

That would have been very interesting.

Benjamin Barrett

Seattle, WA

[Alan Siegrist]

Peter Clark writes:

> In the Chinese version I found "康普茶". Is this read
> "kompucha" or "kombucha", by any chance?

The standard Pinyin reading of this would be kangpucha or kāngpŭchá with the tonal diacritics.

Regards,

Alan Siegrist
Carmel, CA, USA

[Peter Clark]

The thing is, this appears to be a tea that has been around for a very long time, and known by Westerners.
A standard reading may not be what we are looking for.
 
Peter Clark

[nmjap...@cybermesa.com]

American kombucha is made from a living starter (some call it a "mushroom"
due to its appearance). Every version I have tasted, both homemade and
commercial, has been effervescent.

Benjamin, I think the oolong in your bottle means it is oolong-flavored,
not oolong-based; kombucha is available in many different flavors, but
AFAIK the starter stuff is what it's based on.

I don't have any information to add about ingredients, but despite the
similar words, I have never thought of it as being associated with kombu
seaweed or Japanese kombucha.

By the way, though I am not in the US at the moment, it seems to me that
the seaweed commonly available in "healthy" food stores is often spelled
"konbu."

+++++
Stephen Suloway

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[Hào Anh Lê 黎英豪]

There's a faster way to get the pinyin for Chinese characters, and it
is with Google Translate (don't hate me, that's about all they're good
for).

Hào Anh Lê

[Alan Siegrist]

It appears to have been introduced to the West via Mongolia and then Russia,
so perhaps effects from translation and or transliteration into our out of
these languages are seen in the final English spelling.

[Doreen Simmons]

It's awkward that it can be anglicised as the same word as the Japanese drink which definitely is made witrh kombu seaweed.  I habitually keep a tin of it in each of my workplaces for summer use, though only the ume-flavoured variety. The brand I use is Itoen. Incidentally, although the 'n' is clearly written, I have noticed for years that ordinary Tokyo people, including shopkeepers,  pronounce it 'kobucha' -- just checked it in a conversation with the friendly cleaner lady who observed that we should all drink two litres of water in the summer, and agreed that daily drinks of misoshiru and kobucha were also a sound idea.

 

Never heard of the American fizzy one that you're talking about -- nor did I when I lived in Singapore long ago.

 

FWIW, Doreen Simmons

[Todd Van Horne]

What's called 紅茶キノコ in Japan is what most Americans know as kombucha.
It's riding a fad wave in America right now, but hit a little bump a
couple years ago when native alcohol levels were too high. Now, in
some places, regular kombucha must be sold in liquor stores and
"reformulated" kombucha is available in grocery stores. Enthusiasts
claim that the new stuff isn't as good as the real stuff.

It's made by adding live kombucha starter and/or the "mushroom"
previously described to a mix of brewed tea and sugar, and fermenting.
Although it's possible to use any kind of tea, a brown or black tea
will result in better propagation of further batches, so I would bet
that the oolong mentioned before is not a flavoring but the tea used
in fermentation process.

If you tell American enthusiasts of the drink that kombu actually
means kelp, the conversation may end abruptly.

Todd Van Horne
freelance interpreter, brown rice sprouter, fermenter

[Chika K. Cox]

アメリカのKOMBUCHAっていわゆる　紅茶きのこ　なんですよねぇ。
日本でも昔、大流行しました。

こちらに来て驚きました。
どこでこの混同が起きたのやら。

Chika

[Kirill Sereda]

I enjoyed the effervescent drink throughout my childhood thanks to my Grandmother who maintained a "chainyj grib" (lit. "tea mushroom") culture for over 20 years in our family in Russia, where 紅茶きのこ has been used for at least 200 years. The Chinese online encyclopedia Baidu has the following to say about the origins of 紅茶きのこ (红茶菌 in Chinese) http://baike.baidu.com/view/57756.htm :

红茶菌是一种有着悠久历史的民间传统酸性饮料，它的产生可以追溯到我国古代的秦朝。东晋义熙10年（公元414年）为了给赞王医治消化不良症。19世纪初，红茶菌被东南亚商人带到沙皇俄国。80年代被俄国人带到苏联，并在苏联的高加索一带培养应用。直到90年代，日本的一位俄文女教士从高加索带回日本进行培养。最后又由日本流传到世界各地。

(which says basically that it appeared in China during the Qin Dynasty (3rd century BC), that its first medical use, for the treatment of digestive disorders, was recorded during the Eastern Jin Dynasty (in 414), and that it was adopted in Russia in the 19th century and used in the Caucausus region of the Soviet Union in the 80s [this probably refers to the widespread use of "chainyj grib" in the tea-growing Republic of Georgia], after which a Japanese professor of Russian (!) brought it from Russia to Japan, from where it spread to other countries of the world.)

Incidentally, other Chinese websites report that the drink was originally invented by certain Tungus (Manzhou) peoples in Northern China.

Kirill Sereda

[Benjamin Barrett]

Fair enough. I shouldn't have said "based" :)

FWIW, I just did a search on Google Books. I found a possible citation in 1923 (http://ow.ly/bJ0N8), and a clear one in 1927 (http://ow.ly/bJ0Wh), pushing back the 1995 claim of Wikipedia by decades.

 BB

[Emma Sack]

こぶちゃ。

I thought that was a Kansai way of saying it. Good to know they also use that pronunciation in Tokyo!

From Emma Sack 

サック 笑舞

iPhoneから送信

[JimBreen]

I have enjoyed the kombucha discussion, and since I am
ever on the lookout for useful dictionary entries, I have just
added:

紅茶キノコ;紅茶きのこ;紅茶茸;紅茶菌 [こうちゃキノコ, (etc)]
(n) (not related to 昆布茶) kombucha; drink of northern Chinese
origin made by fermentation of tea, sugar and powdered mushroom

Apart from Eijiro, which has: "black tea fungus", the only dictionary
reference I can find is in the Kenkyusha 医学英和辞典, which has
n 紅茶キノコ (＝ mshroom) 《酢酸菌 Acetobacter xylinum
などの共芝菌と酵母菌のゼラチン状の塊りで, 健康法として,
砂糖入りのさました紅茶に入れて発酵飲料をつくって飲む;
そうしてつくった飲料》.

Jim

[Chika K. Cox]

そしてこの紅茶きのこの「キノコ」の部分が「ナタデココ」として売られていると知ったときにはちょっとショックでした。

http://antiagingsalon.net/02/2008/01/001648.html

 

 

Chika K. Cox

 

 

[Oroszlany Balazs]

"

made by fermentation of tea, sugar and powdered mushroom"

A paragraph from Sandor Katz's new book The Art of Fermentation (which I would recommend to anyone who is interested in home fermentation or a fan of 石川雅之's もやしもん):

"Konbucha is a sugar-sweetened tea fermented by a community of organisms into a delicious sour tonic beverage, sometimes compared to sparkling apple cider. Kombucha is typically producaed by a SCOBY, also known as a mother, that takes the form of a rubbery, disk, which floats on the surface on the tea as it is ferments. The community of organism can also be transfered via the komucha liquid itself, which can generate a new SCOBY. The kombucha mother closely resembles a vinegar-making by-product, mother-of-vinegar, and is composed of many of the same organisms; indeed, some analysts have come to the conlclusion that they are exactly the same."

So I think "powedered mushroom" is misleading, as it contains no mushroom, just a mixed (and living) colony of fungi and bacteria (see SCOBY (Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeast ): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCOBY )

Balazs Oroszlany

[Kirill Sereda]

Balazs wrote:

 

>>So I think "powedered mushroom" is misleading,

 

I agree; there is no powdered mushroom. Initially the mushroom is simply a glob of bacteria and fungi, later, it turns into a flat disk that grows and ultimately covers the entire surface of the liquid in the jar where you grow it. It constantly processes the tea and sugar in the solution below, generating an effervescent, golden Sauternes-like drink.

 

Kirill Sereda

[Alan Siegrist]

Oroszlany Balazs writes:

 

So I think "powedered mushroom" is misleading, as it contains no mushroom, just a mixed (and living) colony of fungi and bacteria (see SCOBY (Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeast ): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCOBY )

 

Yes, I think you are quite correct.

 

I recently had a similar argument with someone who claimed that molds and mushrooms were essentially “the same thing” just larger or smaller because they are all classed as part of Kingdom Fungi. Well, sure, they are all fungi, them and the other 1.5 million species of fungi. But this is a little like saying whales and dust mites are “the same thing” because they are all part of Kingdom Animalia.

 

Maybe part of the confusion stems from the fact that the name of the kingdom, fungi, originates in the Latin word fungus which does in fact mean “mushroom.” But this does not in any way mean that all fungi are mushrooms.

 

Oh well.

[JimBreen]

On Saturday, 23 June 2012 19:46:26 UTC+10, Oroszlany Balazs wrote:

"Konbucha is a sugar-sweetened tea fermented by a community of organisms into .....

Fair enough. I was misled by the キノコ in the title.

I propose making that second gloss: "drink of northern Chinese origin made by
fermentation of sweetened tea". I don't want to get overly encyclopaedic, but it
needs to be accurate.

Jim