Have you been living under a rock and are unaware of what kombucha is? Well, good thing you have me to educate you ;). Kombucha is a fermented tea, usually green or back. Pretty simple, right? Right!
I started drinking the store-bought variety of kombucha daily a few years ago, but that was a short-lived endeavor once I realized that at about $2.70 a bottle it is an expensive habit [however beneficial it may be]. I had all but forgotten about the kombucha buzz when a very dear friend told me that she was brewing some herself and it sounded like a fun little experiment. A few short weeks later I had a very healthy and loved SCOBY [symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast] in my hot little hands [well, that would have been highly unsanitary. It was in a jar.] and I was ready to try my hand at home-brew kombucha.
It is markedly less expensive to make your own kombucha than it is to buy it. To make a gallon, it is about the price of 6 tea-bags and 1/4 cup of sugar. I'm sure I could be motivated to calculate that out into a nice low dollar amount compared with the $2.70 bottle amount, but I'm not. So...
Making kombucha is very easy and fun. If you were the dorky type of kid that grew salt or sugar crystals and checked on them every hour to see if they had grown, then you will love making kombucha. So, if you want to try it out, here is a basic recipe.
Home-Brew Kombucha
What you will need:
1 large glass jar [at least 1 gallon]*
1 cloth big enough to cover the opening of your jar**
1 rubber band
Large stock-style pot
Wooden or plastic spoon
* I found a couple of mine at thrift stores [just make sure to clean it really well]. Also Ball makes a great 1 gallon jar you can find at Ace Hardware Stores, though I found it a bit pricy.
** Old sheets and tee-shirt work well for this purpose, but again wash them every well.
4-6 bags of green or black tea [most flavored black and green teas will work as well, just not Earl Gray]
1/4 cup sugar [I use organic evaporated cane juice]*
1 gallon water
1 SCOBY and about 1 cup of tea that it was brewed in**
* If you are worried about the sugar content, you should know that in the final product there will be almost no simple sugar left because the SCOBY will have consumed it in the fermentation process. Also, now may be a good time to add that there may be a trace of alcohol in the final product as that is a result of the fermentation.
** This can be the hardest item to come by because you generally cannot buy one from the store [although our local organic market did sell "Kombucha Starter Kits" for a while, so it may be worth checking out]. If you do not have a friend that you can bum one off of, you can buy them online or perhaps on craigslist. You may even be able to score one for free if you request it on freecycle.org.
Okay, that was long-winded, but being concise is not generally one of my strong suits. On to the fun stuff.
1. Clean everything [jar, cloth, pot, spoon] very well with a NON-antibacterial soap, starting with your hands and arms [I like to pretend that I am going into surgery :)]. Please do not use antibacterial soap during this whole process, your SCOBY is a bacteria and you don't want to kill it. 'Nuff said? I find that the original blue Dawn works well. Place everything on a clean towel to air dry.
2. Fill pot with 1 gallon water and bring to a boil. Let it boil for 10 minutes with the lid on.
3. Take pot off burner and stir in the sugar until it is dissolved. Add your tea bags and cover the pot with the lid. Wait... Like 5-8 hours or until the tea is room temp.
4. Clean your hands and arms again.
5. Pour or place your scoby and the tea that it came with into the bottom of your jar. Remove the tea bags from your tea and add your tea to the jar. Cover with your cloth and secure with the rubber band.
6. Place your brewing kombucha on a shelf or counter where it will not be exposed to a lot of light and where it will stay at around 65 to 75 degrees. Though getting warmer than that does not seem to matter much. My SCOBY actually thrived while living with my mom, who likes to keep the house at a hellish 90 degrees. I would be more concerned about it getting much colder than 65 degrees.
7. Wait again. This time for 2 to 4 weeks. I brew mine for 4 weeks because I like it less sweet. You can taste it at 2 weeks and beyond to decide how long you want it to ferment. During this time your tea should begin to form a new SCOBY on top of the tea. That is good and completely normal.
8. At this point you have the option of harvesting your kombucha as is or putting it through a second bottled fermentation. I have only recently started bottling, so I will not go into that now. I will give instructions on that later when I have a better grasp of it. So for the purposes of this basic process, here are the final instructions: Pour your kombucha into a glass container with a plastic lid [or several smaller glass containers] and place in the refrigerator. Save about a cup of the tea and your SCOBY to brew your next batch. At this point you should have two SCOBYs, you can give the extra one away or brew two at the same time. Serve chilled.
9. Enjoy the fruits of your labor!
I may be a little over zealous and paranoid about the cleaning, but better safe than sorry. You are working with a bacteria, you don't want to add anything harmful to that and then encourage growth. That could be bad. Please be careful and if your SCOBY starts growing something weird, investigate, and perhaps chalk it up to a fail. I don't mean for this to be scary, but I don't want anyone's carelessness to harm them. Plenty of people brew kombucha every day and are fine, it is not a difficult process. Just use your judgement. I found that googling images of healthy kombucha SCOBYs when I was in doubt helped a lot. I understand it is hard when you first start out because you don't have any idea of what is normal or abnormal, so feel free to contact me with any questions. I encourage you to try it out, you will get the hang of it and learn what a healthy SCOBY looks like.
Brewing kombucha can be so much fun! Don't let the bacteria scare you off, I have never had to throw out a SCOBY. Try it. You will have fun!
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