I’m A Kombucha Brewer!

Have you ever tried kombucha? The fermented tea that’s rich in all sorts of good bacteria to help heal your gut? No? Well, I have been on a kick lately – a I-have-to-learn-how-to-do-this-now kick. Why? Because I love the health benefits and flavor of kombucha, and because I’ve done quite a bit of research to find out that it’s actually much cheaper to make your own kombucha at home than buy it in the store.

At first, I was really weary of the idea – making a fermented bacteria-laden drink in my own home? Won’t that smell funny? Or worse – grow mold? Luckily, not yet. I have spent the past month (this has proven to be quite the exercise in patience) growing a scoby, then brewing my first fermentation, then second fermentation to create my very first batch of kombucha!

There are plenty of in-depth blogs and websites out there that you can get a lot of your questions answered about the ins and outs of kombucha brewing (my two favorite resources are here and here). For now, I’ll just share what my first experience was with growing my own scoby and brewing my first batch of kombucha.

Growing A Scoby

I don’t have any photos for this, because it just wasn’t all that exciting when I got started. I began with a $4 bottle of organic kombucha from Whole Foods (yep, $4, that’s why I’m trying this at home!). The process is as follows:

1. Make one cup of black tea. Sweeten with 1 tbsp sugar (it needs to be white sugar, but don’t worry – you won’t be drinking it – the bacteria over time will eat the sugar and you won’t be ingesting much of it at all). Let the tea cool to room temperature.
2. Add the sweetened tea to mason jar.
3. Pour in the bottle of kombucha.
4. Place a paper towel or thin kitchen towel over the jar and fasten with a rubberband.
5. Place the jar in a dark corner of your kitchen or pantry and forget about it for 2-3 weeks.

The scoby forms and looks like this after 3 weeks of growing in my pantry:

The scoby itself is pretty gross looking, but awesome at the same time. I’ve always been a freak for science experiments, so this is amazing to me. My husband was pretty grossed out by and insisted I did the “removal” of it first (you know, just in case).

Starting The First Fermentation

The next step after getting my beautiful scoby to grow was to start in on the first full batch of kombucha. Here’s the play by play for that:

1. Make as many cups of sweet tea as you want in your end result, keeping the same 1 tbsp of sugar to 1 cup of tea ratio. You can see in the photo, I made a whole bunch so I could make the most of my time.
2. Let the tea cool to room temperature then add it to a larger glass jar (you don’t want to use any jars with metal on them as it has a weird effect on the bacteria). It has to cool so that the bacteria don’t all die once you add the tea to the jar.
3. Pour the scoby and starter brew from the mason jar into the larger jar with sweet tea.
4. Cover with a paper towel and rubber band.
5. Place back in the dark corner of your pantry or kitchen for 7 to 10 days to ferment.

I let my kombucha go for a full 10 days, and the flavor still seemed weird to me. I’m assuming that it’s because this was the first brew and that over time it will work out to be a little better. It could also be that since I’m not a seasoned kombucha drinker that it was perfectly fine and I just haven’t become all that familiar yet.

Starting The Second Fermentation

The second fermentation is totally optional, but it’s the only way to season your kombucha – and since I was already in this far, I figured I might as well try out a few different flavor options. What the heck!

These steps are quite simple, just like the rest:

1. Clean and sterilize the glass containers you’re going to use for bottling. I got these cute swing top containers, but the extra that I made just went into an extra mason jar.
2. Remove the scoby from the top of the jar and place it in a bowl with about a cup or so of liquid. This is just to keep it moist while you’re working with the rest of the kombucha.
3. Add some fruit juice to the bottom of the bottles (I’m sure there’s some sort of ratio that you’re supposed to apply, but I ended up just adding about 1/2 cup into each container). This is where you can get creative flavoring your kombucha – this first batch I tried apple juice and cranberry juice, then in my “overflow” mason jar, I combined the two.
4. Use a funnel and pour the kombucha into the bottles, leaving 1 inch of headspace. Mine was already fizzy when I poured it into the containers (photo below)
5. Close the bottles up tightly and place back in a dark corner or pantry. Let it sit for another three days.
6. After three days, transfer to the refrigerator – it’s ready to drink!

The final product is actually quite tasty! I really love how the cranberry flavor came out, not so much on the apple. I’m excited to play around with the flavors more in my next batches.

There are two amazing things about this process: 1) I will always have a rotational batch of kombucha brewing in my pantry or readily available in the fridge, 2) I’m about to save myself a whole bunch of money on a drink that normally sells for $4 for 16 oz! Woohoo!

Have you ever tried brewing your own kombucha (or other fermented food)? What were your results like?