Jun Tea

A fermented tonic made with green tea and honey that’s similar to kombucha. Stories claim it’s an ancient spiritual elixir that originated from the Himalayas where it was brewed by monks and spiritual warrior nomads in Tibet. The origins of Jun are quite mysterious and surrounded with legend. Some say monks in the Himalayas brewed it for over 1,000 years. The culture was energetically charged by the spiritual environment and thought to be blessed and to be consumed as a spiritual elixir as an aid to enlightenment. However, there is no mention of Jun in Tibetan or Chinese recipe books. Even so, the culture is quite unknown and still relatively hard to find until recent times. Think of it as kombucha lite. The main difference between Jun and kombucha is that the SCOBY (acronym for symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast) is trained to feed off of honey rather than sugar from the start. If you put a kombucha culture in a honeyed tea, the bacteria wouldn't feed properly and would likely die. The Jun culture, however, is designed to use honey as its fuel source. Jun tea ferments best in green tea sweetened by honey. Kombucha tea ferments best in black tea sweetened by cane sugar. Indeed, having tasted both Jun and Kombucha tea made with green tea and honey, there’s a distinct difference in flavor profile between the two. Jun is delicate and not as concretely sour as Kombucha (even kombucha brewed with green tea and honey). In addition to both a difference in substrate and flavor, Jun typically completes its fermentation cycle faster than does Kombucha. It reproduces daughter cultures with less reliability than Kombucha, and it ferments best at a lower temperature than Kombucha does – making Jun ideal for cool kitchens like mine that otherwise must rely on a heating pad to brew kombucha most effectively.

Special Precautions of Jun Tea

Follow the Ayurveda principle of honey, which means you should not heat it above 40 degrees Celsius. The typical explanation provided is that honey digests slowly after being heated above 40 degrees and the molecules become like glue, adhering to mucous membranes and clogging the body’s channels, producing toxins or ‘ama’.

Health benefits of Jun Tea

• It has been known to support the immune, digestive and cognitive systems. Jun also contains B vitamins, organic acids and potent strains of beneficial bacterial culture.
• Due to the fermentation process involved in creating Jun, it contains a large number of healthy bacteria known as Probiotics. These bacteria line your digestive tract and support your immune system, as they absorb nutrients and fight infection and illness.
• Jun is said to build defenses against allergens (thanks to the honey).
• It also contains a multitude of live enzymes and acids and loads of B vitamins, all essential to a healthy metabolism.