Making Your Own Kombucha At Home
We’ll go through on how to make your own kombucha, starting with the SCOBY and a recipe for a kombucha brew.
I think I probably killed my scoby…
But now it seems that Kombucha tea has made it into the limelight again and in a bigger way than before!
In fact it seems that there’s quite a lot of interest in the humble Kombucha drink. So much so that businesses have been created around making the stuff and marketing it in not only health stores, but cafes and shops and in an array of amazing flavours!
But even though it’s wonderful to be able to buy a bottle when I’m out, I still make my own Kombucha at home. I use it in my smoothies and I use it to make the sourdough bread starter for my gluten free sourdough bread. Now it goes without saying that Kombucha fans will tell you that this fizzy, fermented tea is good for you. There’s even been a bit of research done on it that appears to validate some of those claims and this study even shows it to have some quite potent antibacterial effects
So making your own Kombucha tea at home is a good choice. It’s super simple to make and really inexpensive.
How To Make Kombucha Scoby (Kombucha Starter)
To make Kombucha tea you will need to have a Kombucha scoby, otherwise known as a Kombucha starter. You have two choices here:
- You can buy, beg, borrow or steal a scoby from someone who brews Kombucha. Once you have one you’ve got it for life as long as you look after it as they grow and multiply readily.
- Or you can buy some Kombucha and grow your own scoby from that.
If you want to grow your own scoby, you’ll need to buy a bottle of Kombucha (or get some Kombucha from someone who brews their own) and then add some tea and sugar mixture to it. Let it sit on your bench for a few weeks and it will gradually grow a scoby on top of it.
Alternatively you can buy a Kombucha scoby on Amazon or even grab this Kombucha starter kit pictured here. It contains everything you’ll need to get started!
Brew Your Own Kombucha Tea
So this is how I make my own Kombucha at home. It’s really simple.
You will need:
- A half to one cup of kombucha and a kombucha scoby
- 6 tea bags (I use organic and unbleached bags) or 6 teaspoons of tea leaves
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 6 cups of boiling water
Place the tea bags (or tea), sugar and boiling water into a large pot and cover, then leave it to cool.
Once cool remove the tea bags or strain out the tea leaves and add to the existing Kombucha (usually left over from the last batch) and the scoby in a large jar or earthenware pot.
Cover with a lid or cloth and leave to ferment for a week to ten days.
Taste test it to see where you like it. If left too long Kombucha will taste a bit like vinegar. Not long enough and it will be too sweet. Ideally you want it to taste pleasant but with most of the sugar used up in the fermentation.
Remove the scoby and pour most of the kombucha into bottles to store in the fridge, keeping about a cup of liquid to use for the next batch with the scoby.
It really is that simple… Enjoy! 🙂
