How to make Kombucha
October 5, 2008
Kombucha drink has various beneficial effects on the human body, so it’s good to know how to make it. Some label it as the elixir of life. This sparkling tea should be consumed cold. It has a quite serious history, as there are evidence showing that it was first used two thousand years ago. Kambucha has a taste unmatched by no other tea, because it’s sweetened and then fermented. The fermentation process takes away much of the sugar and caffeine normally contained in kambucha. Due to its slightly sweet, slightly tart flavor, people either love it or leave it.
Here are the ingredients required to make the kombucha drink:
- 1 kombucha culture
- 2 litres of water
- 4 tea bags, or 4 teaspoons of tea (green, white, or black tea). Traditionally kombucha was made with black tea, but many people prefer green tea because of the higher levels of antioxidants; and green tea tends to stimulate the fermentation process and yield a finished batch of kombucha quicker than black tea.
- 150 grams of white sugar, or the equivalen amount of agave nectar
- 200 ml of kombucha from a previous batch, or if that’s your first time, start with 2 tablespoons of cider vinegar.
First of all, make sure all the ingredients are clean. Wash your hands thoroughly. Clean the jars and clean all the non-metallic implements. Everything must be extremely clean, because kombucha is indeed a living culture, a mixture of yeasts and bacteria, and it could be contaminated.
Start by preparing a pot of tea with the tea bags and leave it to brew for about 20 minutes. Add the sugar and mix it until it dissolves. At that point, you should add cold so that the level of the whole liquid can increase to 2 litres. The reason for adding cold water is in the fact that hot tea can kill the culture, since it contains living bacteria.
Most likely, this is the first time you will be making kombucha, so you probably don’t have a batch from previous times. If that’s the case, use the 2 tablespoons of cider vinegar as your starter. This is done, because the cider vinegar adds the acid environment the culture likes.
Take your scoby and slide it into the bowl, it doesn’t matter if it sinks or floats. If the scoby has a side with darker color, then put that side facing down into the tea. The brown bits are yeasts. Now cover properly the bowl with a tea towel.
The process of fermentation take between 5 to 14 days, depending on the temperature. When the kombucha is ready it should it should have a balanced taste, not too sweet or too sour.
It may seem easy easy but we recommend being guided by our video series and resources we created at the Kombucha Diet Program. A lot can go wrong so let us guide you!
Kombucha and Vinegar Making
October 4, 2008
There are different preparation techniques of the amazing Kombucha beverage. Vinegar is one of the easiest culture-products for home production. It can be prepared from fresh, non-alcoholic juices like a fresh fruit juice or even using cereal grains or honey. Of course, as you probably know, traditional vinegar is made out of fruit juice, most likely apple juice with the addition of a small-amount of non-pasteurized vinegar, because it contains some active substances. What you should definitely keep in mind is that the acetic acid contained in the juice requires a certain amount of oxygen, so that it can covert alcohol into vinegar.
The Kombucha mother culture is known as Scoby and you need it to produce the beverage. Here is one of the most popular Kombucha recipes. First you need a Scoby with 1 cup fresh Kombucha tea, that you should have from a previous batch. Then you will also need 8 cups of Green tea and 1/2 cup sugar, or you can use 2 table spoons of honey instead. A clean glass container is required to mix everything up in it. You start by pouring 8 cups of tea in the glass container. Then add the sweetener of your choice to the tea and let it cool down to room temperature. Now it’s time to add the Kombucha Scoby plus Kombucha tea from the previous batch. Mix things up and place a clean cloth over the mouth of the container and secure things up using a string. This whole mixture has to fermend at room temperature between 7 to 10 days
There is another interesting method of making Kombucha tea and it involves the addition of kefiran. Kefiran is a health-beneficial soluble of milk kefir grains and when it’s added to Kombucha, the resulting brew has a smooth taste. As a matter of fact, you will be amazed by how refershing the beverage will get, when the unique properties of kefiran are added into the mix. The Scoby that forms on the surface of the brew can get really thick in just a couple of days with a somehow different texture compared to the one you will get in the recipe above.
To make good Kombucha, you have to keep some things in mind. If you find any signs of contamination on the surface, get rid of the vinegar of Kombucha and obtain a new culture. You should never culture Kombucha or vinegar with a contaminated Scoby. Never culture vinegar or Kombucha near a rubbish bin to avoid contamination. Put a clean cloth over the mouth of the brewing vessel you use.
Continuous Brewing Method
October 3, 2008
Continuous Brewing is the easiest method for making Kombucha tea. All you need is a container that can hold up two gallons, 2 cups of starter tea (from your previous batch of kombucha, or if that’s your first time, use 2 tablespoons of cider vinegar, because cider vinegar adds the acid environment the culture likes), Kombucha Mushroom, 3-5 grams of loose leaf tea, 300 grams of sugar, 3 Quarts of fresh pure water.
Through the use of the continuous brewing method, you will get all the health benefits from all the nutrients contained in Kombucha. What’s more, you won’t have to do cleaning every week, you won’t have to remove or worry about the Kombucha mushroom and most likely, mold will not even form. And because you will be simply maintaining an already established ferment, the brew that you will produce is less likely to be influenced by wild bacteria or yeasts. What you should remember about the continuous brewing method for making Kombucha tea is that the initial phase is the most critical one, so it’s the phase in which it’s most likely for a batch to go in a bad direction, hence you should be really careful.
Only through continuous brewing of kombucha, you can get the complete variation of the whole range of nutrients and acids which are being produced constantly, but at the same time have a tendency to break down during the active ferment time. A popular Kombucha researcher named Mike Roussin suggests that the greatest variety of health benefits is achieved when fermenting at 80 degrees F for 7 days, and that the longer the ferment is allowed to proceed, the more beneficial acids can form. It’s interesting to note that some of these highly beneficial acids don’t even form until the 20th day of the fermentation process. These are the very same acids which are responsible for the detoxifying properties of Kombucha. The glucose content is at its highest level around the 9th day.
You should keep in mind that a longer brewing cycle (more than 23 days) doesn’t necessarily mean better end product, because it might actually reduce the total caffeine content or deplete the fermentable sugar, and at the end, you will probably get something that’s almost undrinkable. So lower temperatures and longer brewing times do not result in greater benefits.
Temperatures lower than 65 degrees F foster the wrong bacteria and yeasts and hence the good probiotics will become ineffective. It’s all about hitting the right balance in terms of temperature and length of brewing. The most important thing about Continuous Brewing is to keep the level of Kombucha tea that in taste and character is ideal for you.
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