My Recipe #

Ingredients #

• 3 tablespoons of tea loose leaf tea
  • I have use green tea for my green tea mother and black tea for my black tea mother
• 1 cup of sugar, regular granulated stuff nothing fancy
• 14 cups of filtered water
  • Tap water may add undesirable flavors to the booch or contain anti-microbials which can harm our SCOBY
  • The amount is short of a gallon because I have gallon size brewing jars and I leave space for future flavors to be added without overfilling container

Equipment #

• Gallon sized glass brewing jar with wide mouth
• Cloth top for covering brewing jar top
  • Must allow free exchange of gases while preventing debris from entering
  • Must not shed small fibers, some cheap cheese cloth does this
• Fine mesh strainer
• Swing top bottles
• Funnel
• Starter SCOBY

Steps #

Creating the base kombucha #

1. Heat half of water (7 cups, not an exact science)
2. Brew tea for 12 minutes, 3 tablespoons listed above
   • I used to measure by weight but found that this was faster and got me the same results
   • The tea is over brewed for what would normally be used for drinking, this is intentional to extract maximum nutrients from the leaves for the SCOBY to eat
3. Remove tea bags/leaf container
4. Add remaining water (7 more cups)
5. Add sugar, 1 cup
6. Stir well
7. Wait until sweet tea cools to just above room temperature
   • If it’s too hot it will kill the SCOBY. We add the rest of the water after to help speed of up this step. Heating up all of the water is a waste of time.
8. In a separate container remove 4 cups of your mother/starter/SCOBY
   • This can include some of the pellicle too but it is not required
9. Pour your room temperature sweet tea into your mother/starter to refill the volume that was removed
10. Pour the previously removed mother/starter into your sweet tea
11. Stir
12. Put on cloth top for your open top ferment step. Place in a dark area.
13. Wait 6 days.
    • The brew should only taste slightly sweet. This step converts the sugar into acid
    • This duration is dependant on the strength of your starter, the temperature, and your personal end product taste preferences

Flavoring #

1. Add your flavoring. You can put so many different things in during this step. My favorite flavor is strawberry mint. Most flavorings work best if they are blended or reduced in a pot before hand.
2. Wait 2 more days (still cloth top ferment for access to oxygen)
   • Be careful about over ferming flavoring ingredients, their flavor changes over time and for many ingredients, like ginger or mint, over fermenting them can bring out more bitter notes than is desireable
   • Some ingredients will want less fermentation time, some work best with less. You’ll want to experiment for your personal taste preference

Bottling #

1. Add 1/3 cup of sugar to brew.
2. Stir well
   • This is our priming sugar, increase this sugar amount to increase carbonation. The amount here will give very low carbonation. Have fun experimenting with this amount to find your preferred carbonation
3. Did you remember to stir the previous step? It’s important.
4. Strain brew into your swing top bottles.
   • Any size bottle will do
   • You can use more than one size bottle because we already added the priming sugar and we won’t need to adjust it on a per bottle basis
   • A funnel will help getting things into bottles
   • I usually strain into a big bowl so I don’t have to worry about spilling the giant container everywhere
5. Close top ferment in your swing top bottles for 1 day
   • I put mine on top of my fridge cuz it’s warmer up there
6. Refrigerate for 1 day
7. Enjoy some tasty booch
   • A small pellicle may form during fermentation, this is perfectly safe to eat/drink. However, many people find the texture undesirable, I recommend straining this out when sharing your creation. Your own personal laziness will eventually kick in and you’ll find you relish the sweet little nub as part of the experience of the drink.