Kombucha Green Tea

Kombucha Green Tea

3rd batch first started 29 September

Slightly modified

1 quart water, boiled

3/4 cup white granulated sugar
4 T organic green tea

3 quarts cold filtered water
½ cup kombucha from previous culture

1 kombucha SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast) along with 2 very young baby scobys1 gallon wide-mouthed jar

Tea towel to cover the jar during fermentation (even an old t-shirt will work)

Rubber band that fits over the mouth of your jar

2 quart stainless steel pot

spoon (I have a very strong fiberglass spoon that I prefer for this)
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. Turn off heat and allow water to stop boiling. Dissolve the sugar in the hot water. Add tea and steep for 15-20 minutes.Add remaining 3 quarts of cold water (or water mixed with potable ice made from filtered water) to the brewed tea.

Add 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.

05 October. Taste test.

I can most definitely tell I used more water, less sugar on this one. So far it's not quite as sweet but it's still very tasty. Not quite ready yet however. It needs maybe a day or two more.

The heating pad we have that is meant for heating seeds to germinate them has been keeping our

kombucha at a average temperature of about 77 degrees so we read the owners manual again and reset the temp to 73 degrees. Let's hope that works.

This batch has a lot more fizz to it! Oh and baby scobys are becoming a bit more defined. I think the time that we're leaving them alone while we're in Montreal is going to do them good.

We have this odd colored part sitting among our scobys. I don't know if this is just a thick part of a immature scoby or what.

Still it's not fuzzy, doesn't look exactly like mold so I guess we're still good.

10 October. Bottling

Today we arrived home late from visiting with family however it has been 12 days (I think anyways) since we started this batch. Using more water and less sugar most definitely makes a difference in fermenting time as it took longer for this batch to get that nice characteristic, sweet, apple cider like flavor to it.

Still, we knew we had to hurry and bottle these as pretty soon we will be traveling again.

This time we decided to go with some flavored and some not. We used apple, grape and lemon ginger. For the lemon we, unfortunately didn't have any fresh lemon so we tried adding just about a tbsp full of lemon juice. Not my first choice but we didn't have much to choose from.

Front two bottles on left are apple, small bottle on far right is green seedless grape, large bottle in back on left is lemon ginger and bottle in back on right is plain.

They will be going in the fridge on Wednesday morning.