Kombucha is a healthy drink brewed from sweet black tea, using a SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria and Yeast) and a small amount of the previous batch as the starter.
Ingredients
The ratios to make up your desired quantity of tea for a new brew:
| Water | Black Tea Leaves | White Sugar | Starter |
| 1 Litre | 4 teaspoons | 1/3 cup | 2/3 cup |
| 1.5 Litre | 6 teaspoons | 1/2 cup | 1 cup |
| 2 Litre | 2 tablespoons | 2/3 cup | 1 and 1/3 cup |
| 3 Litre | 3 tablespoons | 1 cup | 2 cups |
Instructions
- Make the sweet tea the previous night or some hours before you want
to bottle the previous and start the next brew.
- Bring the desired quantity of water to boil. If making more than 1.5L use a large saucepan which you can pour from without it dribbling to avoid the need to scoop out the finished product. Add a little extra water to make up for the amount absorbed by the tea leaves and lost to evaporation. e.g. if I want enough brew for a 1.1L soft drink bottle, I will fill that bottle to the brim then pour it into the saucepan.
- Add your tea leaves to the boiling water, and leave to steep for at least 5 to 10 minutes. I use a fine mesh cloth bag for the tea leaves. After the 10 minutes I squeeze out the bag with large tongs. It is OK to just leave the tea leaves in until the mixture is cool, but that makes the final straining step slower.
- Stir in the sugar while the tea is still hot. It takes quite a while to dissolve the sugar if you let the tea cool first.
- Leave the tea to come to room temperature. Don't even think about adding your starter or SCOBY when the tea is still hot. It is a live culture and the hot tea will kill it.
- When the tea is cool, strain and bottle the previous batch. Note that due to the acidity of the finished Kombucha it is necessary to avoid using any metal utensils. Also be sure to wash your hands well before handling the SCOBY or the batch as you need to avoid contaminating the live culture.
- Remove the SCOBY from the previous batch and place it into a clean bowl.
- Stir the batch then strain and funnel it into well sealing bottles.
- Reserve enough of the strained batch to use as the starter for the next brew.
- Seal the bottles, and label and date them. The date is useful so you know how long your next batch has been culturing, and if you are keeping them longer than a week, so you know which ones to use first.
- With the previous batch bottled, and the starter reserved ready for use, start the next batch:
- Strain the cooled sweet tea into your rinsed out brewing vessel.
- Add the reserved starter.
- Place the SCOBY on top. It doesn't matter if it sinks, but I like to float it so the new SCOBY can continue to grow on the top.
- Cover the vessel with a woven cloth to allow the mix to breath while keeping out foreign material
- Do not place near other live culture products - such as bread dough. Baking yeast is not wanted in the Konbucha mix.
- Leave the culture in either a light or dark place - but avoid direct sunlight.
Notes
How long you need to ferment the sweet tea depends on both your preferred taste of the finished Kombucha, and the temperature of your house. If the temperature is 20 to 25 degrees, one week of ferment time is pretty good. If it is warmer, maybe 5 days is enough. The longer it is left to ferment, the less sweet and more vinegary it will taste.
Fermentation does continue after the brew is bottled. The proportion of sugar remaining, the room temperature and the length of time in the sealed bottles before you drink it will also determine how sweet or vinegar sour and how fizzy the end result is.
Refrigerate and strain before drinking. A good healthy brew will grow a mini SCOBY and produce more yeast in the bottles.
Rinse the brewing vessel between uses when the yeast residue appears to have built up. Also remove and discard excess SCOBY when it gets too thick. (Too much SCOBY tends to reduce the liquid content?)
Brown threads in the brew are just yeast. Straining the starter helps reduce the yeast build up and maintain the balance of the yeast and bacteria.
If there are signs of mold on the SCOBY (black spots or white spots which are not just new SCOBY growth on the top) DISCARD the SCOBY and the brew.