The Dummy's Guide to Making Kombucha.
July 3, 2013 8:29 AM Subscribe
I was given a scoby and I want to make kombucha. How to do this the safest and yummiest way possible? A few details within.
One of my good friends gave me a scoby today because I have been enjoying delicious commercial kombucha, but wow, does it take a wallop out of your wallet. I like DIY food projects, so I figured maybe now it is the time. But I have questions.
* What are the best containers for brewing your own kombucha? My husband floated the idea of using an old aquarium we have downstairs, but that doesn't seem very food safe to me. Maybe I'm wrong?
* How do I store the scoby if I don't have a container ready to start brewing?
* What are some common pitfalls for first-time brewers?
* I've read to not brew the tea you'll use in stainless steel/reactive pans. They recommend using Pyrex. What's the best way to brew the tea?
* And lastly, do you have any tried-and-true delicious kombucha recipes? (Bonus points for using green or white tea.)
Thank you,, Hive Mind!
(also for anyone suggesting the use of a Sun tea jar, I would love to but they are impossible to find in Quebec.)
One of my good friends gave me a scoby today because I have been enjoying delicious commercial kombucha, but wow, does it take a wallop out of your wallet. I like DIY food projects, so I figured maybe now it is the time. But I have questions.
* What are the best containers for brewing your own kombucha? My husband floated the idea of using an old aquarium we have downstairs, but that doesn't seem very food safe to me. Maybe I'm wrong?
* How do I store the scoby if I don't have a container ready to start brewing?
* What are some common pitfalls for first-time brewers?
* I've read to not brew the tea you'll use in stainless steel/reactive pans. They recommend using Pyrex. What's the best way to brew the tea?
* And lastly, do you have any tried-and-true delicious kombucha recipes? (Bonus points for using green or white tea.)
Thank you,, Hive Mind!
(also for anyone suggesting the use of a Sun tea jar, I would love to but they are impossible to find in Quebec.)
Best answer: Best containers: big glass containers. You can use an old pickle jar, or you can get realness carboys.
Store the SCOBY in a small jar full of sweetened ice tea if you don't have a container. The SCOBY don't mind.
Common pitfalls for first time brewers:
Too much sugar - the kombucha will be too sweet.
Not enough time to brew - the kombucha will be too sweet.
Not enough sugar - the kombucha will be too vinegar-y.
Leaving the kombucha alone for too long - the kombucha will be too vinegar-y.
Not timing secondary fermentation well - the kombucha will be too vinegar-y.
I brewed the tea in the biggest pot I could find. The material of the biggest pot you can find doesn't really matter since you'll be pouring the concoction into a glass vessel.
Try boiling diced ginger with your black tea. You'll get something tasty that doesn't require secondary fermentation to be interesting. Disclaimer: I always fuck up secondary fermentation.
posted by oceanjesse at 9:14 AM on July 3, 2013
Store the SCOBY in a small jar full of sweetened ice tea if you don't have a container. The SCOBY don't mind.
Common pitfalls for first time brewers:
Too much sugar - the kombucha will be too sweet.
Not enough time to brew - the kombucha will be too sweet.
Not enough sugar - the kombucha will be too vinegar-y.
Leaving the kombucha alone for too long - the kombucha will be too vinegar-y.
Not timing secondary fermentation well - the kombucha will be too vinegar-y.
I brewed the tea in the biggest pot I could find. The material of the biggest pot you can find doesn't really matter since you'll be pouring the concoction into a glass vessel.
Try boiling diced ginger with your black tea. You'll get something tasty that doesn't require secondary fermentation to be interesting. Disclaimer: I always fuck up secondary fermentation.
posted by oceanjesse at 9:14 AM on July 3, 2013
Best answer: For brewing I use a sun tea jar with a spigot so it's very easy to draw from, but any gallon sized jar with a wide mouth would do fine. I just refill it with newly brewed tea when it's getting low. When the scoby gets too big it gets torn in two.
For storage I stick the scoby in a clean jam jar with a bit of weak tea; it's very hardy. Or chuck it out and have a break then start a fresh batch from a live commercial kombucha drink.
I never hit any pitfalls, so can't help there. Really, it's as easy as falling out of bed in my experience. Don't overplate the beans.
I brew my tea in a stainless steel pan, never had problems.
My preferred recipe is just standard, unflavored but decent black tea, e.g. Trader Joe's Irish Breakfast style. I don't find Liptons tea quite as good, and green tea kombucha isn't to my taste.
posted by anadem at 9:16 AM on July 3, 2013
For storage I stick the scoby in a clean jam jar with a bit of weak tea; it's very hardy. Or chuck it out and have a break then start a fresh batch from a live commercial kombucha drink.
I never hit any pitfalls, so can't help there. Really, it's as easy as falling out of bed in my experience. Don't overplate the beans.
I brew my tea in a stainless steel pan, never had problems.
My preferred recipe is just standard, unflavored but decent black tea, e.g. Trader Joe's Irish Breakfast style. I don't find Liptons tea quite as good, and green tea kombucha isn't to my taste.
posted by anadem at 9:16 AM on July 3, 2013
Best answer: Also, try whatever teas you like! I have had fun making kombucha with herbal teas. The most important thing with kombucha is sugar dosage because that's what they eat. All the other stuff is peripheral (to the SCOBY).
posted by oceanjesse at 9:16 AM on July 3, 2013
posted by oceanjesse at 9:16 AM on July 3, 2013
Best answer: * I use a gallon size food-safe glass cookie jar for kombucha brewing. Kinda like this one. It has a nice lip around the edge to hold the paper-towel-rubber-banded over the top that I use as a cover. I think large mason jars are good solutions too, but I like the cookie jar because the mouth is wider than a typical mason jar. Just don't use anything metal, or ceramic or plastic.
* I store extra scobys in a ziploc in the fridge. They go dormant if you leave them in there for a really long time, but they are fine for a couple weeks. I usually keep two backups in the fridge in case the current batch should get contaminated.
* The most common pitfall would probably be contamination, whether from mold or unwanted bacteria or fruit flies. It would be useful for you to familiarize yourself with what a healthy scoby looks like, versus one that has gotten contaminated. Image searches are your friend in this respect. To prevent contamination, start out with very clean containers, clean hands, and clean utensils. Cover your brew with paper towels and secure with a rubber band. Don't use cheesecloth or other cloth material to cover the top, because mold spores can travel through the weave of the fabric. Also fruit flies can lay their eggs through the weave of most fabrics. That is gross. You don't want that.
* I think you can brew the initial tea in a stainless steel pan (in fact, that is what I do), but you don't want to culture the kombucha in anything but glass.
*I have been brewing with great success for a number of years with no problems -- I boil approximately a gallon of water in a large pot, add 8 teabags and a cup of sugar to make the sweet tea. Then I take the teabags out after 10 minutes or so, and let it cool down to room temperature. When the sweet tea is cool, I transfer to my glass jar and add the scoby. Cover, wait a couple weeks, and you will see a new baby scoby growing on the surface of the liquid. I usually judge whether my brew is done by the thickness of the baby scoby. It also depends on the temperature of your environment. It brews much faster in the summertime than in the winter. Some do taste tests by inserting a straw and removing a small bit, but I don't personally find that necessary. Once the brew is done, I uncover, remove both mother and baby scoby to a ziploc (with clean hands!) and add a little of the kombucha liquid to the ziploc. Then I use a (clean!) ladle to portion out the kombucha into quart-size glass jars (mason jars work great for this step) for the second brew. For the second brew, I add a couple tablespoons of sugar and sometimes flavorings like lemon/ginger or peach/ginger or cranberry/ginger, etc. You can use juice or chunks of fruit for the flavorings or just leave it plain. But do add the sugar, so that the cultures have something to eat and can add a little fizz during the second brew. Seal with an air-tight lid or it wont get fizzy. You can leave the second brew in the fridge or out of the fridge. If its in the fridge, it will take longer to develop fizz. I usually let the second brew go for a week or two because I like it tart and fizzy, but you can crack it open earlier if you want.
Once I have my second-brew bottled and squared away, I make a new batch of sweet tea for the next brew. I generally use the baby from the previous batch as the mother of the new batch, and stick the old mother in the fridge, rotating out the oldest scoby from the fridge into the compost. I also add about a pint of the previous brew of kombucha into the fresh tea to give it a kick start and keep the PH on the acidic side. You can sometimes add a couple shots of Apple Cider Vinegar (the stuff with the live mother cultures still in it -- the bacteria are very similar) to boost the very first batch. The extra acidity helps create a friendly environment for the bacteria you want, and keeps it unfriendly to unwanted intruder-bacteria.
Good luck! It is a really fun science experiment at the very least, with a tasty bonus if you do it right!
posted by fancyoats at 9:27 AM on July 3, 2013 [3 favorites]
* I store extra scobys in a ziploc in the fridge. They go dormant if you leave them in there for a really long time, but they are fine for a couple weeks. I usually keep two backups in the fridge in case the current batch should get contaminated.
* The most common pitfall would probably be contamination, whether from mold or unwanted bacteria or fruit flies. It would be useful for you to familiarize yourself with what a healthy scoby looks like, versus one that has gotten contaminated. Image searches are your friend in this respect. To prevent contamination, start out with very clean containers, clean hands, and clean utensils. Cover your brew with paper towels and secure with a rubber band. Don't use cheesecloth or other cloth material to cover the top, because mold spores can travel through the weave of the fabric. Also fruit flies can lay their eggs through the weave of most fabrics. That is gross. You don't want that.
* I think you can brew the initial tea in a stainless steel pan (in fact, that is what I do), but you don't want to culture the kombucha in anything but glass.
*I have been brewing with great success for a number of years with no problems -- I boil approximately a gallon of water in a large pot, add 8 teabags and a cup of sugar to make the sweet tea. Then I take the teabags out after 10 minutes or so, and let it cool down to room temperature. When the sweet tea is cool, I transfer to my glass jar and add the scoby. Cover, wait a couple weeks, and you will see a new baby scoby growing on the surface of the liquid. I usually judge whether my brew is done by the thickness of the baby scoby. It also depends on the temperature of your environment. It brews much faster in the summertime than in the winter. Some do taste tests by inserting a straw and removing a small bit, but I don't personally find that necessary. Once the brew is done, I uncover, remove both mother and baby scoby to a ziploc (with clean hands!) and add a little of the kombucha liquid to the ziploc. Then I use a (clean!) ladle to portion out the kombucha into quart-size glass jars (mason jars work great for this step) for the second brew. For the second brew, I add a couple tablespoons of sugar and sometimes flavorings like lemon/ginger or peach/ginger or cranberry/ginger, etc. You can use juice or chunks of fruit for the flavorings or just leave it plain. But do add the sugar, so that the cultures have something to eat and can add a little fizz during the second brew. Seal with an air-tight lid or it wont get fizzy. You can leave the second brew in the fridge or out of the fridge. If its in the fridge, it will take longer to develop fizz. I usually let the second brew go for a week or two because I like it tart and fizzy, but you can crack it open earlier if you want.
Once I have my second-brew bottled and squared away, I make a new batch of sweet tea for the next brew. I generally use the baby from the previous batch as the mother of the new batch, and stick the old mother in the fridge, rotating out the oldest scoby from the fridge into the compost. I also add about a pint of the previous brew of kombucha into the fresh tea to give it a kick start and keep the PH on the acidic side. You can sometimes add a couple shots of Apple Cider Vinegar (the stuff with the live mother cultures still in it -- the bacteria are very similar) to boost the very first batch. The extra acidity helps create a friendly environment for the bacteria you want, and keeps it unfriendly to unwanted intruder-bacteria.
Good luck! It is a really fun science experiment at the very least, with a tasty bonus if you do it right!
posted by fancyoats at 9:27 AM on July 3, 2013 [3 favorites]
Best answer: This article has good information regarding using other varieties of tea for your Kombucha brew. A summary: black tea works best, green tea is ok, herbal teas are not recommended unless you blend them with black tea.
posted by fancyoats at 9:37 AM on July 3, 2013
posted by fancyoats at 9:37 AM on July 3, 2013
Best answer: I found the free Cultures for Health Kombucha e-book to be really helpful.
I'm using the "continuous brew" method & a jar similar to this one (but without the glass lid on it).
With my most recent batch, I filled a few jars with kombucha, added enough frozen blueberries to cover the bottom of the jar and some chia seeds & let it do a second ferment for a couple days. That was pretty good.
posted by belladonna at 1:42 PM on July 3, 2013
I'm using the "continuous brew" method & a jar similar to this one (but without the glass lid on it).
With my most recent batch, I filled a few jars with kombucha, added enough frozen blueberries to cover the bottom of the jar and some chia seeds & let it do a second ferment for a couple days. That was pretty good.
posted by belladonna at 1:42 PM on July 3, 2013
Response by poster: Guys, my scoby was given to me in a sealed plastic container. I fed it some commercial kombucha and put it in the fridge. It will be fine, right?
posted by Kitteh at 3:40 PM on July 3, 2013
posted by Kitteh at 3:40 PM on July 3, 2013
My first scoby spent about a week in a glass jar with about a cup of kombucha before I got around to brewing up some tea. It was fine. I'm sure yours will be ok for a few days as long as it has enough liquid to keep it from drying out. I'd take off the lid & cover it with cheesecloth or a clean t-shirt if it's going to sit there for more than a day or two. Scoby's gotta breathe, man! :)
I brew my tea in our stainless steel pans & it's fine. Just don't use anything metal after you add it to the kombucha/scoby.
posted by belladonna at 5:51 PM on July 3, 2013
I brew my tea in our stainless steel pans & it's fine. Just don't use anything metal after you add it to the kombucha/scoby.
posted by belladonna at 5:51 PM on July 3, 2013
We live in Quebec and Mrs Cuke is a brewer. Here is her advice:
1. Go to Canadian Tire and buy a 3.5 or 7 litre cookie jar. 3.5 litre = 1 gallon = 6 bottles. She uses old Grolsch bottles for the second fermentation, and has also used the Marco's pine beer bottles. Go to a dep and ask for empties. Second fermentation happens with the bottles in a beer cooler at our place. Summer brewing is 7 days first fermentation and 3 days second fermentation then into the fridge.
2. To store the scoby she puts it in a glass jar with lots of kombucha or the sugar tea you brew. It is important to put on a lid and store it in a cool place - though she doesn't use the fridge. It will continue to grow but slowly.
3. Pitfalls - forgetting the sugar when you brew. There are 5 ingredients - water, tea, sugar, starter (10% kombucha) and the scoby. In the winter she left it too long and it got too vinegary. Make sure to give it lots of air. Don't forget the elastic and cheesecloth on top, the elastic to stop ants, fruit flies etc.
4. She brews the tea in metal but avoids touching the mother (scoby) with any metal (measuring spoons, etc).
5. Go to crudescence website or getkombucha.com for the basics. Her favourites are green tea, then add lemon and ginger for second fermentation. She also like black tea with blueberry and maple syrup in the second fermentation. Green tea with mint is another favourite. There is also a free digital book that she recommends from culturesforhealth.com.
Happy brewing!
posted by Cuke at 6:35 PM on July 3, 2013
1. Go to Canadian Tire and buy a 3.5 or 7 litre cookie jar. 3.5 litre = 1 gallon = 6 bottles. She uses old Grolsch bottles for the second fermentation, and has also used the Marco's pine beer bottles. Go to a dep and ask for empties. Second fermentation happens with the bottles in a beer cooler at our place. Summer brewing is 7 days first fermentation and 3 days second fermentation then into the fridge.
2. To store the scoby she puts it in a glass jar with lots of kombucha or the sugar tea you brew. It is important to put on a lid and store it in a cool place - though she doesn't use the fridge. It will continue to grow but slowly.
3. Pitfalls - forgetting the sugar when you brew. There are 5 ingredients - water, tea, sugar, starter (10% kombucha) and the scoby. In the winter she left it too long and it got too vinegary. Make sure to give it lots of air. Don't forget the elastic and cheesecloth on top, the elastic to stop ants, fruit flies etc.
4. She brews the tea in metal but avoids touching the mother (scoby) with any metal (measuring spoons, etc).
5. Go to crudescence website or getkombucha.com for the basics. Her favourites are green tea, then add lemon and ginger for second fermentation. She also like black tea with blueberry and maple syrup in the second fermentation. Green tea with mint is another favourite. There is also a free digital book that she recommends from culturesforhealth.com.
Happy brewing!
posted by Cuke at 6:35 PM on July 3, 2013
It will be fine for the short term the way you have it. But it's gotta eat sometime, so don't, like, leave it there for a month. If you are worried about it being in plastic, then switch it to a glass jar (like a clean, washed jar from spaghetti sauce or pickles or something). The fact that it's in the fridge means the bacterias/yeasts are less active, so you have more leeway as far as keeping it in a suspended animation sort of holding pattern. The culture will wake up when you bring it out and feed it some delicious sweet tea. Don't worry. This type of culture is pretty hardy and easy to grow.
posted by fancyoats at 6:47 PM on July 3, 2013
posted by fancyoats at 6:47 PM on July 3, 2013
I continuous brew in a glass beverage dispenser with a spigot, drawing off about half once a week or so, and topping off with fresh tea. Also, if your tap water is chlorinated, use bottled, or filter it.
I may be a bit nerdy, or just overly cautious, but I use pH test strips to check the acidity of my brew, to make sure it's safe. If the pH is correct, you really don't have to worry about unwanted stuff growing in there.
I like this site and bought my scoby there.
http://www.kombuchakamp.com/
They also have a pretty good ebook on brewing, and have been very helpful in answering questions.
Happy brewing!
posted by lawhound at 11:48 AM on July 4, 2013
I may be a bit nerdy, or just overly cautious, but I use pH test strips to check the acidity of my brew, to make sure it's safe. If the pH is correct, you really don't have to worry about unwanted stuff growing in there.
I like this site and bought my scoby there.
http://www.kombuchakamp.com/
They also have a pretty good ebook on brewing, and have been very helpful in answering questions.
Happy brewing!
posted by lawhound at 11:48 AM on July 4, 2013
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by ottereroticist at 8:58 AM on July 3, 2013