This tea is popular in the Orient. It is considered an elixer of life. I spoke with a health food expert recently about getting a new culture and he thought maybe Kombucha was taboo anymore. He could not find anywhere to get cultures. He had heard informally that people were getting very addicted to the tea and when they quit drinking it felt like they were aging again.
I suppose a fountain of youth could be considered "addictive".
I will let you do your own Googling here but am sure you will hear a lot of good things about Kombucha tea.
When I lived in the mountains a few years back I found a woman who had Kombucha going. She was a bit New Age about caring for the Kombucha cultures like pets. Oh well, to each their own and I admit that I did think kindly of the shrooms while handling them; after all, I would rather have happy Kombucha than risk unhappy Kombucha. Especially since I was drinking their excrement.
When I moved I just popped a couple shrooms into a ziplock bag and let them dry out. A few years later I put a couple crumbs into sweet tea and they grew but there were a few other fungi in there so I trashed it all.
Lately I asked around and cannot find any cultures. The lady today said a woman puts up paper on the bulletin board when she has some available (I wonder if that is the same woman, still reluctant to throw out the "babies") but she has not been there lately. You can find the tea in bottles at $3-$5 a pop but of course they will not sell cultures. However, the juice, non-pasteurized and "raw" is full of spores.
So I just poured the first half bottle into a jug of sweetened tea and four days later the spores are taking off like little tadpoles:
http://www.alltheweb.com/search?cat=...rys=0&itag=crv