Make Kombucha Tea

Kombucha tea is a sweetened tisane produced through fermentation. Plain kombucha has an acidic, vinegar-like flavor in addition to the original sweet tea flavor. The strength of the tea flavor can be adjusted with the amount of tea bags brewed per volume of water. Kombucha is available at most health food stores, and the organic section of some regular grocery stores. The steps below outline how to make it at home.

Ingredients

  • A kombucha "mushroom" mother, also called a SCOBY, for Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast (and sometimes referred to as "culture" in this article). You can get a kombucha "mushroom" at many different places on the Internet. Or if you're lucky, from a friend who has an extra! Once you have a mother, you will never need to buy/obtain another if you take simple steps to preserve old mothers.
  • A sample of already made Kombucha as a starter, or brewed vinegar if you don't have that.
  • Tea. Tea bags or loose leaf teas will work. Sometimes common, low-grade teas will end up tasting better than expensive teas. Teas containing oils, like bergamot oils in Earl Grey, can harm your mushroom, meaning significantly longer brewing times for satisfactory results. Many teas will work:
    • Green
    • Black
    • Echinacea
    • Lemon balm
  • Sugar sources. Regular refined white sugar or organic cane sugar works fine. You can experiment with other fermentables, like juice reconstituted with tea. Many brewers prefer organic, if available. Ribena, for example, colours mushrooms and tea.

Steps

Brewing the Tea

  1. Wash your hands very well with hot water, do NOT use antibacterial soap as this can contaminate the Kombucha and destroy the good bacteria provided by the culture. Using apple cider vinegar or plain vinegar to wash hands and any other materials you will be using is a good substitute for antibacterial soaps. Use of non-latex gloves is also recommended, especially if touching the culture directly.
  2. Fill up your pot with 3 liters (3.1 quarts) of water and put the stove to high.
  3. Boil water for at least 5 minutes to purify it.
  4. Add about 5 tea bags to the hot water. According to taste, you may remove tea immediately after brewing, or leave them in for the next two steps.
  5. Turn off heat and add 1 cup sugar. The culture will feed on the sugar, making it a necessary part of the fermentation process. Sugar will start to caramelize if water continues to boil, so that's why you turn off the heat.
  6. Cover and let tea sit until it is room temperature (around 75ºF/24ºC will do). It will seem to take a long time to cool, but adding the culture when the water is too hot will kill it.

Adding the Culture

  1. Wash a jar well in the sink with very hot water, rinsing thoroughly. If you don't have much extra water for cleaning and rinsing, put 2 drops of iodine into the jar, add water, and swirl it all around to sanitize. Rinse out jar, cover, and keep waiting. You also could put the jar into the oven for about 10 minutes at 285°F or 140°C if it is only made of glass or ceramic.
  2. When the tea is cool, pour it into the glass jar and add the starter tea, which should constitute about 10% of the liquid. Using about a 1/4 cup of vinegar per gallon of tea also works. This keeps the pH low to prevent any foreign molds or yeast from growing while the tea is getting started.
    • To make sure it's acidic enough, measure the pH (optional). It should be below 4.6 pH. If not, keep adding starter tea, vinegar or citric acid (not Vitamin C; that's too weak) until the desired pH is reached.
  3. Gently put the SCOBY into the tea, cover the top of the jar with the cloth, and secure it tightly with rubber band.
  4. Put the jar somewhere warm and dark where it won't be disturbed. Temperature should be consistently at least 70ºF (21ºC). 86ºF (30ºC) is best if you can manage. Lower temperatures will make it grow slowly, but below 70ºF makes it more likely that unwanted organisms will start growing too.
  5. Wait about a week. When the tea starts to get smelly like vinegar, you can start tasting it and checking pH levels.
    • The culture will sink or float or do something in between. It is better that the mushroom floats on top to block aspergillus contamination.[1]
    • The best way to pull a sample is with a straw. Don't drink directly from the straw, as backwash may contaminate the tea. Also, do not dip the test strip into the brewing vessel. Instead, dip the straw about halfway into the tea, cover the end with your finger, pull the straw out and drink the liquid inside or put that liquid on the test strip.
    • If the kombucha tastes very sweet, it probably needs more time for the culture to consume the sugar.
    • A pH of 3 tells you that the brewing cycle is complete and the tea is at the correct point to drink. Of course this can vary a bit to suit your needs and taste. If this final pH is too high, then either the tea will need a few more days to complete the brewing cycle, or it should be chucked.

Finishing Up

  1. Gently remove mother and baby cultures with clean hands (and non-latex gloves if you have them) and set them in a clean bowl. Note that they may be stuck together. Pour a little of the kombucha on them and cover the bowl to keep them protected.
  2. Using a funnel, pour most of your finished tea into storage container(s). Optionally, fill it all the way to the top. If you do not, then it will take forever to get fizzy. If there isn't enough, you can either get smaller containers. Or, if there's just a slight gap, fill the rest with juice or more tea. Use only a small amount, or else you risk watering down the tea. Leave about 10% of old tea in the glass jar as starter tea to start a new batch of kombucha. Begin the cycle again: Pour in freshly brewed tea, put the culture back in, cover, etc.
    • You may use each layer of culture to make a new batch of tea; some recommend using the new layer of culture and discarding the old one. It is not necessary to put both layers of culture back into a single new batch; one will suffice.
    • Every fermentation cycle creates a new child from the mother. So once you have fermented your first batch you will now have two mothers, one from the original mother, and one from the new child. This multiplication will occur for every subsequent fermentation.
  3. Cap your jug or bottles of finished kombucha. Cap them loosely for safety, tightly for carbonation and let sit for about 2 - 5 days at room temperature.
  4. Refrigerate. Kombucha is best enjoyed cold.



Things You'll Need

  • A fermentation/incubation container. It is recommended that this container be made of food grade glass. Use of other materials (i.e. ceramic, metal and/or plastic) may leach chemicals (including lead if using ceramic) into the ferment due to the natural acidic generation within the kombucha fermentation process. Some have claimed good success with stainless steel and food-grade plastic, but glass is preferred. Anywhere between a quart to a gallon should be a good starting point. Most people start with 1oz per day, as the digestive tract may need some time to get used to the kombucha. The volume of the container thereafter should be based on the rate at which you will be consuming the beverage, as well as the available area in which you can let the ferment sit. Brewing equipment, such as 5 gallon carboys for brewing beer or wine will work very well.
  • A lint free, tightly woven cloth (such as a clean t-shirt). This will be used to cover the fermentation container to keep insects, particularly fruit flies, dust and other foreign particulates from contaminating the culture while allowing the microorganisms to breathe. The cloth will need to be larger than the opening area of the fermentation container.
  • A rubber band or string. The rubber band or string will be used to secure the cloth cover to the opening of the fermentation container.
  • Apple-cider vinegar for cleaning
  • A large pot for heating water and adding tea and sugar. Stainless steel works well. It should be large enough to hold the volume of fluid in the fermentation container.
  • Glass bottles with stoppers for the finished kombucha. You will need enough glass bottles to accommodate the volume of the ferment. The size of the bottles should be based on a serving portion that you prefer to drink.
  • Funnel. To transfer fermented kombucha to serving bottles.
  • pH Test Strips
  • Straw/small baster/pipette (to help with testing pH)

Tips

  • Some prefer the continuous brewing method in which one pours off the amount one wishes to drink and immediately replaces it with the same amount of room-temperature sweet tea. This has the advantage of simplifying the endeavor (especially if you brew in a container that has a tap at the bottom), but the disadvantage is that fermentation is not as complete or finely controlled so the beverage always contains some unprocessed sugar together with some highly-fermented tea. One should still empty and wash the container periodically to prevent contamination when using this method.
  • If you wish to speed the process, here is the fast cooling method: make your sweet tea with only 1 or 2 quarts of water but with the same amount of sugar and tea. Dilute it with purified or filtered water (not tap water) in the container to cool it and to achieve the right solution. Then add the SCOBY, cover and store as usual.
  • Be aware the the kombucha mushrooms vary widely in appearance; note this one's purple color, for example.
  • Note that some natural products that have anti-bacterial properties (such as honey) will not necessarily kill your SCOBY, but may drastically lengthen brewing time.

Warnings

  • Before you begin, make sure that you wash your hands very well, clean your workspace very well, and keep everything sterile and clean while you are working. If the kombucha gets contaminated while it is still young, you may end up growing something that you didn't mean to. This usually will just ruin the drink, but it can be dangerous.
  • Be warned when using plastic, metal, ceramic or non-food grade glass containers to make kombucha - they may (and will most likely) leach toxins, such as lead. A heavy, food-grade glass jar or large glass Pyrex container is your best bet.
  • Do not seal jars, even after fermentation seems to be complete. If you want to do an anaerobic phase, then putting a lid on loosely will make carbon dioxide replace oxygen.

Related Articles

Sources and Citations

  1. ↑ http://www.organic-kombucha.com/kombucha_mold_photos.html

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