Homemade Kombucha Tea

Homemade Kombucha

This I have actually borrowed from the blog "BURP".
You can find the blog itself about making Kombucha here:
http://www.eatatburp.com/2010_08_01_archive.html

3 quarts filtered water1 cup white granulated sugar
4 T loose plain green or black tea
½ cup kombucha from previous culture1 kombucha SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast)
1 gallon wide-mouthed jarTea towel to cover the jar during fermentation (even an old t-shirt will work)Rubber band that fits over the mouth of your jar2 quart stainless steel potwooden spoon
funnel (for bottling)swing-top/grolsch style bottles (preferably green or brown tinted glass)

Bring 1 quart of water to a boil in your stainless steel pot. Dissolve the sugar in the boiling water. When the water boils, remove from heat. Add tea and steep for 15-20 minutes.
Add remaining 2 quarts of cold water (or water mixed with potable ice made from filtered water) to the brewed tea, along with at least ½ cup of the kombucha from the previous culture (or, if this is the first time you’re brewing, add any liquid that came with your scoby). Stir to combine.

Once liquid has come to room temperature, place tea into your one-gallon container. Place SCOBY on top (shiny side up).Place the cotton cloth over the jar and secure with rubber band. Store in a safe place at room temperature.
Kombucha will take an average of 7-10 days to brew, though you can allow your batch to ferment longer if you would like the brew to be less sweet. The longer it ferments, the dryer and stronger the acidic taste will become.Remove the SCOBYs (Once you’ve brewed your first batch, you should have two SCOBY – the mother and a newly formed baby). If you’re storing the SCOBY for future use, keep it in a similar large glass jar, and pour in enough of your freshly made Kombucha to cover it.

Using a funnel, pour finished kombucha tea into swing-top bottles, filling up into the neck of the jar. Seal and keep at room temperature for 4-5 days (this aging will improve the flavor). Then store in refrigerator to extend its shelf-life.
Flavorings like fruit, herbs, brewed herbal teas and other additions can be added during the bottling stage (but not before – or they could compromise the health of your SCOBY). Please note that fruit (or any type of sugar) will feed the active cultures and increase the effervescence of the beverage during the resting period. If you have weak Kombucha after the brewing period, let rest longer during the bottling period.


Now I will be updating this as we go along in the process of making Kombucha. We started this on Tuesday (07Sept) at around 7pm or so after we finished our dinner.***************************************************************************
09September10Last night we took a look at our kombucha that is currently being kept in a remote closet. My son insisted the he wanted to see the "mother" so I tried moving it slightly. It did shake the jar slightly so I'm hoping that that didn't bother it much. This morning I found the mother on the bottom of the jar however after a bit of research I found that this does happen from time to time so we'll see if we actually have kombucha 7 days from now.
Lots of squiglers present in water.09 September 10, SCOBY on bottom.

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11September 2010

First and foremost we added a heating pad to it that controls the temp so our kombucha gets no hotter than 80 degrees.

You can purchase these off of Amazon for pretty cheap.

Seems like our scoby is pretty happy as she has noticeably gotten bigger in the past few days.

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17 September 2010

Time to bottle! We have a nice sweet yet tangy

Kombucha starting! Our

SCOBY has developed a very thin soft baby, but it's still a baby!

We have two almost full 1 quart bottles filled with simple, plain Kombucha and then half a bottle of Kombucha flavored with 2 Scuppernong Grapes. Total brewing time for this batch, 10 full days. First 3 days it was kept at a temperature of about 70 degrees. We then got the heating pad that kept our Kombucha at about 79 degrees or so.