Kombucha 101

Written By Abigail Kangethe

Do you love the taste and benefits of kombucha but are tired of paying $6 a bottle for it? Or maybe you want to experiment with different flavors? Making kombucha can be made at home can be done for literally cents per bottle and is a delicious way to add gut boosting probiotics into your daily diet.

 

Follow along with kombucha 101, 102, and 103 to learn this simple process!

 

What you will need:

  1. 5L glass container for brewing

  2. Rubber bands and a cheese cloth

  3. 10 black tea bags

  4. 1 cup white or raw sugar

  5. A SCOBY, this can be purchased on line or you can get one from anyone you know who is currently making kombucha. (This can also be made from scratch See All About SCOBY blog)

  6. A cup of raw kombutcha

Kombucha step one:

  1. In a large glass container (around 3-5L) place 10 black plain tea bags and fill 1/3 way with boiling hot water. Let steep 15 min. Add one cup white or raw sugar. Stir until combined then fill until to 3/4 the way with room temp filtered water.

  2. Add one cup raw kombucha to mixture, it is very important that this is not flavored or has any fruit in it just the raw kombucha. Place a SCOBY gently in the kombucha batch when the tea mixture is room temperature. The scoby will mostly likely sink to the bottom or middle of jar but should float up over the next week while the tea ferments.

  3. Cover with a cheese cloth and tie with a rubber band making sure to seal all openings tightly and place in a room temp area out of direct sunlight to ferment for 2-4 wks. The temperature of you rkitchen will affect the time it takes for the kombutcha to ferment. If you like a more sour bitter kombucha than leave it on the longer side, where as a short fermentaiton time will lead to a sweeter kombucha batch.

  4. Continue to Kombucha Blog 102 for second half of recipe




Notes on substituting ingredients:

While I am usually a fan of exchanging ingredients in recipes based on availability - kombucha is a little trickery and requires you to use only plain black tea - not substitute with green or earl gray or anything herbel or flavored, and also requires plain sugar, white or in the raw, but wont work right if you substitute with brown sugar, honey, stevia or any other sugar replacement because the SCOBY needs pure glucose to work in the fermentation process.




But don’t worry in the the next step you can experiment and get creative wiht your kombucha’s flavor!

Persimon Kombucha

Abigail Kangethe