I wanted to start adding Kombucha stuff to the site for ages now. Finally I had to write some directions for a friend who took some scabby off my hands and it gave me the excuse to put this together.

This post will be useful if you have just picked up a new scabby off someone - probably a goggle-eyed kombucha loon like me has forced it on you or something. But if you have one and you are kombucha-curious, this is a pretty rough guide to how to take it on, with a few tips and observations from my time fermenting tea.

A few things about the scob - he’s a pretty robust customer and can take a lot of abuse, the main thing to be aware of:

  • The scoby does not like metal - so use plastic/glass utensils when working on the kombucha

Fermenting

The quantities I go with

  • 2L Water
  • 120g Sugar
  • 4 Tea bags

  • 1 cup of starter (starter is just the liquor from the last batch, or the stuff the scoby is sitting in right now)

  • Brew the sweet tea and allow to cool - they say room temperature, but sometimes I lash it in when it’s down to about body temperature and it doesn’t seem to do any harm
  • Put the sweet tea, scoby and starter into the jar and cover it with cheesecloth, or any permeable material that lets air in and out, but keeps dust and shit away
  • Leave it to ferment - the length of time depends on how sour you want it. I do 14 days, but anything after 7 days is usually ready. Note the starter and scoby you have now might have slowed down a bit, so the first batch or two might not get super sour, but it will get up to speed. The time obviously depends on the temperature etc I definitely notice summer/winter variations in what comes out.
  • After fermenting drain it out of the jar, remember to retain 1 cup for the next round (see a pro-tip on this below)
  • Put the sieved kombucha into sealed bottles - at this point you can add flavours (more on this below) or just leave it as is. Leave in the sealed bottles at room temperature for 3-5 days. The length of time here will change how much your flavours infuse and also how fizzy it gets. Last week in the hot weather I left one for 5 days and had a nice fizzy surprise when I opened the bottle. At this point transferring to the fridge should stop it getting any fizzier.

Pro-tips

  • Saving the cup of liquor for the next round. Try to take the liquor from the top of the jar, which has less of the yeasty sediment in it. At one stage I was saving time by just leaving the 1 cup in the bottom of the jar and not having to wash it out - the stuff I was brewing started to get a bit funky. This is known as beery kombucha and it tastes exactly like the kind of amateur-hour real ales you’ll get in CAMERA pubs where the guy is making the stuff in a bath tub out back.
  • Infection. At some point your are probably going to look at the scoby and thing that looks weird, has it got infected. It probably hasn’t. Scoby basically is an infection so it looks just like one all the time. Some googling of scoby infection will usually put you straight that everything is fine.
  • Holiday. You can easily leave the scoby for 4 weeks in some liquor in the fridge, it’ll be fine, it could probably even do longer if you wanted
  • Light. They say not to ferment it in direct sunlight. I have two on the go, one in a well lit room one in a pretty darkroom and honestly I don’t notice too much difference. But maybe best not to leave it right up on display in the window…for several reasons!

    Flavours

  • You can totally go wild with flavours, but I’ll sum up a few things that I have found
  • Juicy fruits impart flavour best, so for example if you put in whole cranberries they don’t give a lot of flavour, but put in raspberries and its a party.
  • A combo of a fruit and a herb often works well - e.g. strawberry and mint, cherry and lavender (lavender gives a super-punchy earthy flavour, I like it but not everyone does)
  • Chilli works great for giving it an edge
  • Ginger with the skin left on is supposed to be good for making it fizz, I think the scoby gets on with the bacteria on the ginger
  • A total fail-safe that gives great flavour - pineapple and ginger (with chilli if you like that)
  • Teas. As long as it has caffeine I don’t think it makes a difference. I have tried making kombucha with some nice oolongs and longjings and it was totally not worth it,  I could not have told the difference from a cheap green tea bag. But you can use some stronger teas to get funny flavours, I did a lapsang brew once, I don’t think it was great, but you sure as hell knew it was made with lapsang.