Learn how to make Kombucha — it’s the real foodie’s answer to soda. It’s Ginger Ale that bites back: tart, fizzy, not sweet (although you can make it so) and, because it’s a fermented drink, it’s loaded with healthy, life-giving probiotics.
Probiotics populate your gut with healthy flora and bacteria. Hippocrates is believed to have said, “All disease begins in the gut.” Well, the functional medicine world believes he was right! Guts need healthy flora to keep the body disease-free!
If you want to know how to make kombucha and keep your flora (and your taste buds) humming, read on.
We started pursuing probiotics and gut health in earnest after I got out of the hospital. My stomach was a mess before, but three weeks of intense antibiotics finished off any healthy flora that might have still been living with me.
We were introduced to kombucha by drinking Dave’s. We were in the health food store, saw a bottle and bought one. Love at first sip! Dave’s mom, Lorraine, swears kombucha helped her defeat cancer. From everything I’ve learned about curing cancer, it fits.
Before long, we really got a ♥ on when it came to kombucha: downing at least a bottle a day each, yelling, “OK, who drank the last kombucha???” if there were none left in the fridge.
Addicts.
We were either going to go broke feeding our habit or we had to learn how to make kombucha. So I watched a million videos, read too many blog posts, asked my friends and fellow chapter leaders… then one day, a friend brought me a SCOBY.
SCOBYs are GROSS, btw. Here’s a picture of my
two 5-gallon continuous brew kombucha tea (KT) jugs:
Told ya. Gross. The top is like a big mushroom (the “mother”) with fungus growing off the bottom (the “daughter”). Yeah, we drink that. In fact, we can’t wait to drink that!!!
Re. jars. No clue where to get these 5 gallon jars now. Amazon has the 2-gallon Anchor Hocking which I would use again. Or you can get creative: a friend installed a spigot on an aquarium for his massive quantities of kombucha! Jars with spigots are everywhere now. You’ll want a glass jar with plastic spigot, a top is not needed. Sometimes the spigots leak but they are better and better quality as time goes on. And spigots are usually replaceable.
I took my friend’s SCOBY, made a gallon of sweet green tea, and tossed it all in a big 1-gallon glass jar.
(This jar has no spigot. Some purists prefer a spigot-less container so there’s no plastic contamination in their KT. We go through so much of the stuff, I like a spigot.)
I also wanted to try growing my own SCOBY, so I took a bottle of Dave’s Original Raw (unflavored) Kombucha and poured that in another gallon glass jar with sweet green tea.
Then I waited.
Two weeks later, my friend’s SCOBY had turned the sweet tea to a smelly vinegary kombucha — exactly like it’s supposed to!
In the other jar, the brand new SCOBY was slowly forming. Way cool food science: bacteria forming a thin layer of SCOBY on the top of the tea. Took another month for this tea to ferment, but it did and now that SCOBY is just as big and gross as the first one.
See? I can cook.
How to Make Kombucha: Overview
- Ferment sweet tea using a SCOBY
- Drink as is. Or…
- Flavor, bottle and do a second ferment
- Chill and drink.
Okay, let’s get going. Step 1: Ferment sweet tea using a SCOBY. First, make sweet tea:
1. Ferment Sweet Tea using a SCOBY
Ingredients
24 grams (4.5 tsp.) of organic green tea
1.5 C sugar*
1 Gallon of filtered water (we ♥ our Big Berkey)
1 half-gallon Mason or Ball jar (these are available at Walmart, Costco, Target, etc.)
1 large strainer
1 Gallon size kombucha brewing jar (KBJ)*Best to use organic sugar. Non-organic cane sugar is usually sprayed with glyphosate — it’s used as a ripening agent. Horrible.
Recipe
- Bring 1/2 gallon of the water to an almost-boil (tea is better with almost-boiling water). I use this stainless steel electric water kettle — it’s fast.
- While the water is heating, put the sugar and tea in the mason jar.
- When the water is ready, pour about 1/2 of the water over the sugar and tea and stir with a wooden spoon till the sugar is melted. Then pour the rest of the water into the jar and stir.
- Cover the jar lightly (I use the metal circle part of the lid) and let steep for about 30 minutes.
- Once the tea is room temp, pour the tea into the KBJ, straining out the tea leaves with the strainer. I use the big strainer because it fits the opening of the KBJ. Set the strainer on there and pour. Little tiny flecks of tea may end up in my SCOBY, but that’s never been a problem.
- Pour the other half gallon of the filtered water into the KBJ.
- If your SCOBY is not already in there, go ahead and add it. Make sure the tea is room temp or cooler. If it’s too hot, it could kill the SCOBY.
- Cover the opening of the KBJ with a piece of fabric that has a good tight weave, like a handkerchief, a piece of sheet/pillowcase or t-shirt and secure with a rubber band to keep the fruit flies out.
Fruit fly tip: keep a little container (like a tiny food storage or monkey dish) with a drop of detergent and a few drops of kombucha or wine or sweet juice in it. The flies go for that instead of trying to get through your KT cover.
SCOBY: is it good?
Your SCOBY may sit on the bottom or rise to the top or be on the bottom most of the time and s-l-o-w-l-y rise to the top… it doesn’t matter. It will still ferment unless you got a bad SCOBY and you won’t know that for two weeks when your sweet tea doesn’t sour. Conventional wisdom holds that a SCOBY that doesn’t float is not good… just have to keep an eye on it!
Otherwise, the only bad thing that can happen is that it grows mold. Bad mold is hairy. You’ll definitely see black spots on your SCOBY (harmless), gross stuff hanging from the underneath (like what isn’t gross about a SCOBY?) BUT if you see hairy mold, you have to toss the whole thing and start over.
If you get a fruit fly in there, just dig it out. If you threw out a SCOBY every time it got a fruit fly on it, you’d never get ahead.
About PH
We used to test for ph when we first started brewing, but we don’t anymore. When the ph reaches 3 or so (our benchmark was 3.2), the first ferment is done. These days, we know when ours is ready by the smell and taste.
Once it’s fermented (you’ll know by ph, smell and/or taste), go to Step 2:
2. Drink as is, or
3. Flavor, bottle, 2nd ferment
We flavor! Adding flavor requires a second ferment to eat up the sugar in the flavoring and really get the fizz going. We add ginger and frozen grape juice, but flavoring ideas are endless. Any kind of juice really: pineapple, lemon, lime, cranberry… Some people add raisins only, or raisins and juice or dried fruit and juice… seriously, endless flavoring ideas. Master a flavor, then branch out!
The 2nd Ferment: How To Make Ginger Grape Kombucha
Ingredients
1 Gallon fermented KT
Two 1/2-gallon Mason jars
1 C. minced unpeeled ginger (because peeling it is such a pain)
2/3 C. frozen grape juice
4 32-oz bottles with tight-fitting caps (we use the Grolsch bottles)
Funnel – this base fits in the bottles.
Strainer – this is the perfect strainer for the job — see notes below.Recipe
1. Put 1/3 cup of frozen grape juice into each Mason jar.2. Add ginger to taste: mince the ginger in a Cuisinart. You can mince by hand but the finer the mince, the more ginger juice it imparts to the KT. We end up with about 1/2 cup of minced ginger in each jar. (We ♥ ginger!)
3. Fill the jars with KT to just below the rim and stir.
4. Let this sit for about two hours so the KT soaks up all the yummy ginger juice. Again, I set a metal circle from the lid on top while the ginger soaks.
5. Fill your fermenting bottles with the flavored KT, straining out the ginger as you go. This requires some finesse: you are pouring from a wide-mouth jar into a small funnel. This strainer works great because you don’t have to hold a strainer handle while you pour — so been there, what a mess! If you are a ginger fanatic like me, you’ll want to really push the KT out of the strainer and get all the lovely ginger juice into the bottle! Oh — don’t fill your bottles too full or else you’ll taste the rubber used in the seal. Yuck.
6. Set aside to ferment for 3-4 days to a couple of weeks, depending on your tastes. In the beginning, you may have to pop open a bottle now and then and have a taste to see where it is in the process. When you open a bottle and the top actually “pops” like champagne, you know you are getting good fizz!
WARNING: while it’s never happened at our house, some people have had bottles burst during the second ferment, so I set my bottles in a deep wire mesh basket for the 2nd ferment. You could use a plastic bin or a cardboard box — anything to hold the booch and glass in case of a bust.
7. Once the second ferment is done to your liking, transfer the bottles to the fridge. You’ll learn how fast or slow that 2nd ferment takes in your kitchen by trial and error. Basically, the longer the ferment, the more sugar is eaten up and the more tart the finished product.
4. Chill and drink.
Tada! I swear something happens in the fridge, something that adds to the fizz because it’s always fizzier after a day in the cold. No clue why. And I basically don’t care why… it’s so good, I’m not going to mess with delicious success!
SWEET/FIZZ NOTES:
- For a sweeter kombucha: more juice, shorter ferment.
- The longer the ferment, the more tart the finished product.
- The ferment occurs as the bacteria eats up the sugar.
- If you are going to do a shorter ferment, use less juice or the KT will be very sweet and not as fizzy.
- If you are battling candida or bugs, sugar feeds the baddies so you’ll want the result to be more tart with all the sugar eaten up by the ferment.
- By the same token, you need to add some sweet because sugar is what feeds the ferment. Isn’t it ironic that sugar feeds both the good and the bad bacteria?
You’ll get the hang of it and find your balance of sweet to fizz. Heck, homemade kombucha is practically free. Experiment! Please share your flavorings and let us know what works for you!
Pin this recipe: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/507851295455431753/
Hi Sally: We kept a Kombucha tea factory in our kitchen for a year or so. LOVED the taste of it. Every two weeks I made a fresh batch of tea, sugar and fed it to mother mushroom. When we went out of town our friend Leo came in every day to take care of it. After a long walk I’d suck down a BIG glass of cold kombucha tea. Fizzy and so delicious. Then someone told me that it contained alcohol, somewhat like beer. I thought no wonder it’s so good!! It’s fermented after all.
Eventually Mother mushroom died. Turned ugly and just turned rotten. We never got another one and I thought it was for the best as the alcohol isn’t good for me. I do miss kombucha tea. I do believe it is very good for you and it really is delicious. I don’t like soda of any type, but I love kombucha. Sally, tell me it’s not alcholic and I’ll try one of these recipes. My gut is a mess, too, after chemo treatments several years ago. Today, my gut is my biggest problem and it was always in good working order, processing all the calories I poured into myself. I was one of those people who bragged on my gut “I can eat anything!!!” No more. I’m like a baby now. Delicate. I think kombucha would be very good for me these days. I take probiotics prescribed by the doc, there must be a better way!!! Thanks for letting us know about this. Much love, June
Hey June, I think if it’s just fermented exactly the “right” way it may end up with a tiny bit of alcohol. But I’ve never gotten drunk off of it, not even a little, and I drink the heck out of it. If there’s any alcohol, it’s like O’Douls which my dear Sandford drank and didn’t bother her. In all the time I’ve been drinking kombucha, I’ve never wanted any forbidden fruits, shall we say?
Medical treatment that saves lives also kills gut goodies, no doubt about that. Love you — I can send you some mother or just buy a bottle of dave’s from Sugarapple and start over. It’s good stuff!
I’m also going to start making my own yogurt using a starter culture and I just ordered some equipment to make fermented veggies… I’ll keep you posted on all those, too. If all disease begins in the gut, I figure it can end there, too. Working on it! Love you.
Hm, I wonder if I can find this stuff (already prepared) in KW. I’d like to try it. But I’m not going to make it myself!
Go to Sugarapple and ask if they have Dave’s Kombucha — that’s a great brand. But try any brand. It takes some getting used to, but once you do, you are hooked. Let me know how you like it!
I’ll try to make it again someday… I had a lovely scoby and made a batch put the scoby in the fridge until I read not to leave it there to hibernate? So I put it on the counter BUT I had not left any tea with it, just scoby obviously a bad idea. I’m a scoby killer. Now I buy one occasionally at the hfs. I don’t like the overly sweet ones – synergy – would I like the 2nd ferments? I like the more savory flavors or just plain.
Anyway, great job! I think you’ve found your calling.
Yeah, you gotta leave it on the counter covered with some tea. My hotel is overflowing… I don’t like the sweet ones either. I like Dave’s Kombucha — the gingerade is my favorite flavor.
The first ferment is too vinegary for me but maybe we just let it go too long, then you gotta do the second ferment to bring it back from vinegar. I like the 2nd ferment with the flavors and there are seriously so many combinations of flavors. You might try just ginger, then maybe just grape… maybe just some sugar so no real “flavor”.
We are doing continuous brew so always have plenty of first ferment available to play around with. I’m going to do a post on that soon, too… Now, if I can just get my calling to pay!!!! Working on that. I’m going to do a give-away soon. That will be FUN.
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How do you test for PH?
Well, we bought this one: http://www.amazon.com/Hanna-Instruments-98103B-Replaceable-Electrode/dp/B003IKNJPW/ref=pd_sbs_indust_5. It worked great for awhile, but doesn’t work anymore. Less than a year, so if you get one, get the replacement warranty… We don’t use one now because we just go by smell. If the KT smells vinegary, it’s time to do the 2nd ferment!
Thanks for your answer. Starting 2nd ferment today with blueberry juice and ginger. Once bottled, does this have to be refrigerated or can I store it on the shelf in the pantry?
We leave it out on the shelf for a few days — anywhere from 2-7 (depending on how much kombucha we have left in the fridge.) The longer you leave it on the shelf, the more it ferments and the more sour or tart it will taste. When you put it in the fridge, it stops fermenting. So you are like a chemist: you learn after a few tries how long to leave on the shelf before it’s too tart for you.
I like to leave it on the shelf at least four days, then refrigerate it. Three days refrigeration gives mine a nice fizz. For some reason, I don’t have fizz without refrigeration.
A friend of mine only lets it sit for one day on the shelf, then chills it and his always has fizz. I think the chemistry is dependent on where you live and what bacteria is in your air!
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Where can I get 5 gallon continuous brewers like that?
We found a buying club that was doing a bulk order from http://www.infused-vodka.com/. Even in bulk, they cost $100 each. I saw some at Sam’s Club for less than $50 last year. You definitely want glass. I’d say now is a good time because of the holidays. These are usually in the “kitchen/entertainment” area of a store.
How exciting to find a likeminded Lexington neighbor! I was looking for a good kombucha recipe and stumbled onto your website. I would love to get a scoby from you if you still have them.
Hi Angie — sure! It will nice to meet you, too. I’m in Lexington on Wednesday around 11am for a few hours. Can you meet then? Or I can drop off… my numaber is eight five nine – nine four zero – fourteen sixty nine. Give me a call and we’ll work it out. Free since no mailing, too! If you can’t do Wednesday, we’ll pick another time — that’s just the first time I’ll be in town for sure.
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I just have a quick question exactly how much SKoby do you add? Thanks!
Any amount at all! I just gave a friend the top layer from my 5 gallon jug: quite skinny but great big around. Your SCOBY will grow to fit the size of your container. If I had cut out a triangle or circle of any size piece of SCOBY, it would still get the job done. The smaller the piece, the longer it takes to ferment a big amount of tea. But start with any size at all.
When I grew my own with the Dave’s Original Raw Kombucha, there was no SCOBY (except for the debris in the bottom of the bottle). A brand new SCOBY just formed! So that’s what you are doing: you are continually growing SCOBY. It gets bigger and bigger until you are begging friends to take some!
Hi! Love this post! wondering where you got those five gallon continuous brew jugs…
I got them from infused-vodka.com: http://www.infused-vodka.com/clearveronagrande650ozinfusionjar.aspx. They are $119 each — yeah, I gasped, too. However, I’ve had them for almost four years and they have NEVER leaked. They are good quality. All the money is in the spigot.
I just looked on Amazon to see what they had, if the prices had come down, and all the reviews reported leaking. And even on Amazon, the 2.5 gallon ones are $35 to $50 so I feel pretty good about these.
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This information may come in handy some day – fruit flies got into my kombucha crock during a move in the fall. When I went to bottle it there were tiny worms squirming around. Not masses of them, but enough to turn my stomach and cause me to toss the scoby. I found another scoby in the city for cheap and have carried on. I use an on-top-of-the-counter bottled water container as my continuous brew vessel and am very happy with it. I think I paid about $50 (Canadian)
Yes, that has happened to me a couple of times. My fruit fly trap has prevented this from happening since… I think fruit flies must be a hazard of keeping fresh food around the house, lol!
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