Kombucha

Kombucha is Amazing...

But if you're here, you probably already know that. But did you know just how easy it is to brew incredible and healthy Kombucha at home? Probably not, or else you probably wouldn't be here either. I'll leave the why-kombucha's to the Functional Medicine experts. Let's get into how to do this!

What You Need

• Kombucha starter SCOBY + starter tea from a friend or from Amazon
• Black tea - not ANY tea, kombucha lives on BLACK tea (camellia sinensis), most decaf black teas work as well, this tea is my favorite and is extremely cost effective
• Sugar (organic cane sugar is WAY better than white sugar, believe me, I buy the 10lb bag at Costco for $7)
• A gallon glass jar
• Secondary bottling jars
  • They can be any size, but they need to be glass, airtight, able to handle pressure without breaking
  • Ideally, they will also be dark and easy to clean
  • I like to use kombucha bottles from storebought kombucha, these bottles, or even mason jars.
• A coffee filter and a rubber band
• One or more flavor enhancers (see Recipes)

LET'S DO THIS!

TL;DR:

• Brew 1gal of sweet tea, let it cool to 90º or less
• Let it ferment with the Scoby and starter for a week
• Bottle it with optional flavors and let it ferment for another week (so it gets all fizzy and amazing)
• Enjoy!

Much More Detail

Step 1: The Brew

• Brew strong tea - 8tsp (8 teabags) of black tea with 1/4 gal hot water
• Stir the tea and 1cup of sugar into your gal jar (I thought Kombucha had low sugar? Yep, the SCOBY eats it)
• When the sugar is dissolved, add cold water (preferably filtered, but not necessary) to fill up the jar leaving room for your SCOBY and starter.
• When the tea has mostly cooled down (90º or less), add your disgusting, slimy, dead-body-part-looking SCOBY and starter to the gal jar. Cooled-down is important, because you know how you cook steak to above 125º to kill everything? If you put the SCOBY into hot water, you will kill all the cultures and you just end up with week-old moldy sweet tea.
• Cover the gal jar with a coffee filter and rubber band and put it in a dark, lonely place for 1 week to rethink its mistakes

Step 2: Wait 1 Week

• You'll see odd stuff happening - it's almost always normal check the googles for pictures
• A new layer of SCOBY will form on the top, starting with bubbles, then a clear layer, maybe spots that join into one SCOBY over time.
• What is a bad sign? Fuzziness on top is bad, because that's mold. If you get mold, you didn't use enough starter liquid, or you killed your culture with bad or hot water. This is rare, it's never happened to me. Every other odd appearance is pretty much normal. The starter keeps the PH low enough so mold simply can't grow.

Step 3: The Bottling

• After 1 week, bottle it up adding any desired flavor enhancers/recipes to your bottles
  • Timing is a bit of a learned-process and greatly depends on SCOBY size.
    
  • The first time, you probably want to go a week and a half or two weeks
  • You know you bottled it too late if your brew is extremely sour, almost like apple cider vinegar
  • You know you bottled it too early if it tastes mostly like sweet tea
  • Once you get a mature scoby, 7 days is usually spot-on-perfect, it still has enough sugars to keep fermenting and make a really carbonated beverage
  • What "perfect" is is really up to you, are you looking for medicinal-grade-elixer? Go 2 or more weeks! Looking for a more-healthy soda replacement? 1 week is a good gateway-drug-level
• MAKE SURE to keep your SCOBY and about 2 cups of starter for the next batch!
• Brew up another batch, and add your SCOBY and starter to live to fight another day
• If your SCOBY is more than 1" thick, peel off some of the bottom layers and discard. Too much SCOBY will leave you with an apple-cider-vinegar-like flavor.

Step 4: The Unveiling

• After 1 week, REFRIGERATE the bottles...for real, they'll act like a shaken soda if you don't
• If your brew is nice and probiotic, you'll have a teeny baby SCOBY on top of each bottle...you'll want to scoop that off with the handle of a spoon or something and throw it away. Nobody wants that gooey surprise in their mouth.
• Enjoy

Recipes

• At the end of the day, you can add almost any juice or spice to the secondary bottles to make flavors, but here are some of my favorites
• Add 1/4"-1/2" of R.W. Knudsen Organic Cranberry Pomegranate Juice to a bottle before filling. Seriously, it doesn't take much. Plus, you don't want to add a ton of sugars.
• Add about 5 raspberries to a bottle (these will definitely need be removed before drinking, the kombucha will eat all the sugars out)
• Slice up some ginger and add it to a bottle
• Add some 1/4"-1/2" mango juice (mango ginger is also awesome)
• Use powdered ginger spice if you don't have raw ginger around
• During the holidays, powdered ginger and a bit of cinnamon is nice and horchata-like, or add 1" of a cinnamon stick for extra flamboyance