Kombucha Tea Recipe

Here's the recipe I follow for Kombucha Tea:

1. Bring 3 Quarts of distilled water to a boil.

2. Add 1 cup of sugar (I use organic raw sugar) and boil 5 minutes.

3. Turn off heat and add 4 tsp black or green tea in bags, loose or tea ball to steep for 10-15 minutes

4. Remove (strain) tea and let it cool to room temperature. Tea must be cool or it will kill the live culture.

5. Float your SCOBY; shiny side up. Don't sweat it if it sinks, it will work fine.

6. Add about 10-15 percent old batch tea on top of the SCOBY if you have it or buy a bottle of KT. I usually use 10-12 oz.

7. Let it sit for 6-10 days covered with a cloth or paper towel cover between 70-80 F degrees.

8. Don't mess with it! A thin film will form on top and grow into a new baby SCOBY. Hopefully, some carbonation will form and bubbles will rise underneath the SCOBY. I have pictures of this in older posts.

Once brewed to taste...

1. Wash hands and then rinse with vinegar. Carefully remove the SCOBYs and put them in a glass container. Don't use metal utensils. Pour off about 10 -20 oz for starter tea for the next batch or two of tea (you have two SCOBYs now).

2. I bottle my kombucha in mason jars now days. I often add ginger, but I will add only shredded ginger juice and not the actual pieces like I used too. You can also add a little bit of fresh squeezed blueberry  or other fruit juice to the individual bottles for extra flavor and fizz.

3. I usually let them sit a week or so for a second fermentation and then stash them in the fridge. Enjoy!

There are links to lot's of other recipes on the side bar as well, but this is as basic as you get.

Day Five: Kombucha Culture Experiment Growing!

Whoa!

Pretty cool huh? If I wasn't afraid of giggling everything loose, I would clean the outside of the glass jar.

I am fascinated with the tendrils of goo hanging down. She is sitting at about 75 degrees most of today.

This project is going to save me $3.00 a bottle, but cost me a fortune in electric bills!

More Goo Floating on Top

Nothing terribly exciting to report, but I thought I would post a picture of my Kombucha baby forming at Day Four.

Today the temperatures were in the low 70s outside, so the brew sat at about 76-78 most the day, even with the heater off.

Something's Growing in There!

Well, today is day three of my first batch of Kombucha. I am seeing a very fine layer of film across the surface and dangley Kombucha goo forming. The tea is pretty opaque, but if I shine a flashlight I can see the squiggles. Also, on the bottom sides of the container, I see sludge at the bottom with dark bits of sediment.

When I took off the cover off the jar to take this picture, I smelled a strong apple cider vinegar smell.

I have kept the temperature between 70 and 75 using a space heater behind my desk. Last night, after I turned off the light bulb, which was producing some heat, I think it got as cool as 68 degrees, but the weather warmed up today in the 60s. Texas is very weird; the threat of sleet yesterday and temperatures with highs in the upper 30s and today was a bright, crisp sunshiny day and I sweat working in the yard.

I bet I have more to report tomorrow, but I am pretty thrilled about all this. A baby is growing!

My First Batch of Kombucha Tea Sans Baby

This morning I set out to make my first batch of Kombucha Tea. I have been drinking GT's Kombucha for some time, but after paying $3 each I became obsessed with making my own.

I met a woman from Austria named Marianna, who brought a Kombucha culture to the US on vacation (Shhh! Don’t tell) and she made batches of the tea while she was here. She shared some with my husband and I and offered to leave me a culture, but forgot as she zipped back to Austria.

Her K-Tea was very different from GT's Kombucha in that it wasn’t as fizzy and had a sweeter apple cider vinegar taste.

I began doing research online and found a lot of great resources and recipes for making your own. The HerbalRemedies.com recipe was easy to understand and they also sell cultures and kits.

Well, I am too impatient to wait for a culture in the mail, so I began researching if you could make the tea from a bottled tea that contained some of the live culture in it and it seems you can. We’ll see with my first batch.

My last bottle of K-Tea from Marianna was sitting in the fridge begging to be consumed when I picked it up to see how much culture was floating around. I jumped with glee when I discovered a baby culture floating around in a perfect circle, so this bottle will be my starter and hopefully a SCOBY (the name for the culture disc) will grow from that little baby floater.

I am following the directions at the link above to the tea, although I bought organic raw sugar and organic black tea. I found a cool one gallon jar to use at Target for $6.99 , but really any glass gallon jar will work. I don’t eat huge jars of pickles from Costco, so I didn’t have anything on hand.

It is cold as heck here in Austin right now and I don’t have central heat, so I had to set up a little Kombucha station on my desk over my laptop and with a space heater close by to maintain the heat between 72 and 74 degrees. Wish I was that warm!

Here are the steps I have taken making the recipe linked above:

1. Bring to Boil 3 Quarts of Distilled Water


2. Add 1 cup of sugar (I use organic raw sugar) boil 5 minutes.


3. Turn off heat and add 4 tsp black or green tea in bags, loose or tea ball to steep for 10-15 minutes


4. Remove (strain) tea and let it cool to room temperature. Tea must be cool or it will kill the live culture. I let mine sit covered outside in 40 degree weather (told you I am impatient).


5. In my experiment, I added 12 ounces of bottled homemade Kombucha with a live SCOBY floating in it. This is about 12 percent of the three quarts of tea. You need 10-15 percent old batch tea and the scoby if you have it.


6. Let it sit for 6-10 days covered with a cloth or paper towel between 70-80 F degrees.

Get more detailed instructions from the links on this page. While I didn't read every website in detail, I found a bunch of great resources.

I'll update as I see changes in my tea. This is exciting stuff. Now I have to think about what to bottle it up in when its done.