Fizzy, fermented and f’ing delicious, gut-health tonics are a staple in any wellness-focused fridge. Jun tea is the new kid on the block; relatively unknown and usually overshadowed by its cousin kombucha — until now.
Jun tea is as tart and fizzy as kombucha, but uses green tea and honey as its base as opposed to black tea and cane sugar.
Not to get too scientific here, but the primary difference between the two drinks is their SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast, PHEW), as jun is trained to feed off of honey rather than sugar — making jun a terrific source of probiotics. It’s also riddled with a tonne of B vitamins, live enzymes and acids, which makes it quite a star-studded cast of ingredients, we’re sure you’ll agree.
And if that weren’t enough, jun tea is also so much easier to make yourself at home. Because it ferments at a much lower temperature to kombucha, you can make it without all of the bells, whistles, and erm, heating equipment that is generally required to brew up a batch of ‘booch.
If you needed more convincing, Hannah Crum, AKA the Kombucha Mamma and home-brew extraordinaire says that the health benefits of jun tea are endless. It’s makes effective alkaline addition to your diet, and balanced internal pH in the same way as vinegar or lemon juice. In addition, it may speed up your metabolism, improve digestion and is the perfect choice for a pre-meal snack to keep cravings at bay. Sold, yet?
Nourished Kitchen says that the process of making jun tea is about as straight forward as they come. All you need, in addition to green tea and honey is an authentic jun culture, which can be found in specific brewing kits.
“To make Jun tea, you simply prepare a green tea, sweeten it with honey, and allow it to cool to room temperature before stirring in the jun mother culture and a bit of prepared Jun tea (both of which you can find here). Allow this to sit, lightly covered with a tea towel to keep out stray debris about 3 days before pouring into individual bottles for a secondary fermentation, which will set Jun’s characteristic fizziness.” Happy brewing, lovelies!
All about them gut-healing tonics? Give these three new gut-friendly drinks that aren’t kombucha a go.
