The mushroom is quite resilient, but it also requires certain conditions. First of all, it needs oxygen - so the transparent dishes where your mushroom will live should be covered not with a lid, but with gauze. The vessel (usually a two - or three-liter jar) should well let the light through, but you can not keep it in direct sunlight, it is better to put it in the shade. It is better to have two containers at once: one will house your mushroom, and the other can be used to pour the finished drink into.
From a large mushroom you need to carefully separate the daughter film and transfer it to a clean jar, carefully pouring warm water. After that, cover the neck of the jar with clean gauze and leave it for 24 hours at room temperature. Remember: under no circumstances should you cover the tea mushroom with a plastic lid! Nor should you pinch off pieces of mushroom, as this will traumatize it and make it sick.
A layered daughter film will remain at the bottom of the mushroom's former habitat. It should be carefully poured with warm water, covered with clean gauze and left at room temperature for 24 hours. In the next few days, white-gray convex colonies with even edges are formed on this film. These colonies will then gradually coalesce into one large one and form a thick leathery film. The film will start to spread and after two to three weeks it will already be about 10-12 mm thick.
The tea mushroom infusion will remain clear throughout the cultivation process, and the film should flake off with good care. Over time, its lower layer darkens to a brownish-brown color, and from it downward hanging strands, and at the bottom of the vessel formed a loose sediment with granular colonies of the same color. When the new mushroom is well formed, you can pour the brewed tea over it. Tea mushroom grows and develops best in a 10% sugar solution with added tea infusion. Tea mushroom infusion contains purines, substances necessary for the bacteria of the fungus to function. Therefore, it grows faster in sugar solutions with tea.
The solution with tea is prepared as follows: already used for the preparation of regular tea brew once again pour boiling water, slightly cooled and strained through a tea strainer, so that there are no floating leaves in the liquid. Then 1 liter of such water is slightly heated. This is done to make it easier to dissolve 100-150 grams of sugar in the water. Do not let the sugar lie at the bottom of the jar or be incompletely dissolved.
When the sweetened water cools, it is refilled into the jar where the tea mushroom is already. Under no circumstances should you pour sugar directly into the jar onto the mushroom, as many people do. Sugar in its undissolved form is capable of harming him, leaving him with burns.
Tea mushroom infusion is rarely consumed whole, unless you are feeding it daily and the acid concentration is very weak. In other cases, the infusion should be diluted at least in the ratio of 1: 2. Infusion should have a pleasant slightly sour taste, not cause severe tingling of the tongue and do not irritate the oral mucosa.
Already on the 7th - 10th day from the beginning of the process you can safely start tasting tea mushroom, drinking 2-3 cups a day.
When your tea mushroom has grown quite a bit (become multi-layered), it can be carefully peeled off and, having washed the separated layer with cold boiled water and transplanting it into another jar with a nutrient solution, continue cultivating the mushroom.
Feed the mushroom regularly (at least once every 2-3 days) with a weak infusion of tea with ten percent sugar.
In addition, once every two to three weeks the tea mushroom needs to be "bathed". How is it done? To successfully carry out this procedure, the mushroom should be carefully taken out of the infusion and thoroughly rinsed in cool boiled water. Then place back into the infusion.
Here is the experience of growing the mushroom as told by one of its admirers.
In 1975, a physical examination revealed I had hypertension of 160/110. I was passing through Moscow and went to a bookstore. Flipping through the book "Forest Friends of Man" taken at random, at the very end of it I noticed an article about tea mushroom, read it and bought the book.
When I returned home to Omsk, I got a tea mushroom from acquaintances and began to grow it according to the optimal recipe taken from the above article. On a three-liter jar took 10% sugar, tea brew (50-gram packet for four three-liter jars), poured boiled and cooled to + 25...+30 degrees water and put the washed mushroom with the shiny side on top (mandatory!).
Did a tea mushroom infusion at ambient temperature of +25...+30 degrees. In the winter, the jars were placed near the heating radiator. The infusion time is 10-14 days. The tea mushroom drink was then poured into a clean glass dish, strained through several layers of gauze and placed in the refrigerator.
I drank the finished tea mushroom drink for about two and a half years daily morning and evening. My whole family drank this kind of tea too, so one jar was enough for two days, no more. Often I would throw a few lemon peels into the jar during fermentation and the tea would have a grape juice flavor. Water for tea should be used clean, boiled and cooled to +25...+30 degrees. After draining the finished tea, the mushroom was rinsed in cooled boiled water and refilled the jar again.
The tea mushroom drink was consumed in large quantities and therefore it was necessary to establish its flow production - up to ten three-liter jars. In mid-1978, another health check revealed quite normal blood pressure of 120/70, which has held to this day. I wish you all the same.
The top of the mushroom should be white, shiny, and the bottom should be brownish, matte. The quality of the tea is highly dependent on the quality of the water. The presence of chlorine in the water is undesirable.
В. Pochinko, g. Omsk
Do not forget about the properties of the tea itself, the very nutrient environment in which the tea mushroom lives.
The chemical composition of tea is variable. Tea leaf can be compared to a chemical laboratory, in which all the time there are complex chemical changes, transformations of some substances into others. But these changes occur not only during the growth of the plant, but also during the processing of the tea leaf. Green tea, which, unlike black, red and yellow teas (we will talk about them in the future), does not undergo fermentation, retains more useful and extractive, i.e. soluble, substances (up to 40-50%). In addition, tea has the exceptional ability to release into solution only the most useful substances for humans, and useless and harmful leave undissolved. As a result, the infusion of quality green tea, prepared according to all the rules, is a unique concentration of valuable flavor, dietary and medicinal substances.
The tonic effect of tea is due to the presence of caffeine (theine) in it. One cup of strong tea infusion contains about as much caffeine as a headache pill. Despite the fact that there is more caffeine in tea than in coffee, it acts much milder, because it does not act independently, but in combination with another substance - tannin. As a result, theine has a more indirect, milder effect on the cardiovascular and central nervous systems. In addition, tea caffeine is not retained and does not accumulate in the human body, which excludes caffeine poisoning even with the most frequent consumption of tea. In addition to caffeine, tea contains other alkaloids - theobromine and theophylline, which have vasodilating and diuretic effects.
It is a widely known fact that tea leaves (first of all, very young, just blossoming, tender) contain a special substance - tannin. Its large amount gives the drink a bitter flavor. In some varieties of tea, by the way, this bitterness is left on purpose, but more often with the help of special technologies tannin content is somewhat reduced. It is tannin that has a tonic effect on the body, stimulates mental and physical performance, helps fight fatigue.
However, this is not all the health benefits of tea. In addition to tannin, it contains more than three hundred different substances - carbohydrates, proteins, trace elements, vitamins C, B1, B2, B[3], B5, P, K, up to 20-25 percent of tannins and essential oils that create flavor.
But that's not all. The most important component is the so-called flavonoids and other organic compounds, the maximum amount of which is found in green tea. Polyphenols such as catechin are particularly active substances in it. Polyphenols make up to 40 percent of dried green tea leaves by weight. It is believed that most of the health benefits of green tea are due to their presence.
In addition, green tea contains calcium, magnesium, iron, manganese, sodium, silicon, phosphorus and its compounds; rare vitamin P, which helps boost immunity, is 10 times more abundant in green tea than in black tea.
Together with caffeine, theophylline, nicotinic and pantothenic acids, they have a tonic and stimulating effect on almost all body systems. This normalizes the heart, improves the condition of the walls of blood vessels, improves the nutrition of the brain, maintains normal blood coagulation.
Most publications on the positive effects of tea on human health indicate that it can prevent heart disease, particularly valvular artery disease of the heart, especially in women..
