Homemade Kombucha Tips
1. You don’t need a starter culture (often called a scoby). You can make one from store-bought kombucha. I let a cup of Rejuvenation kombucha sit in a wide-mouth jar at room temperature, covered with a paper towel. After two weeks, a thin film had formed on the surface, easily transfered to a tea-sugar mixture. More This didn’t work! The culture grew poorly. It might have worked to just pour the Rejuvenation kombucha into the tea-sugar mixture.
2. My friend Carl Willat has used empty Synergy kombucha bottles to bottle kombucha he makes himself. By bottling your kombucha, and leaving it at room temperature for a few days, you get carbonation.
February 1st, 2010 at 3:33 pm
Adding a little lemon (e.g. 1/2 tsp/bottle) seems to help add fizz.
I’m currently experimenting with boiling ginger slices in the water when I make the tea (i.e. before fermentation) to get the ginger flavor in the finished tea. I’ve added ginger slices when bottling and some ginger flavor does come out if you do a 10 day second fermentation in the bottle, but I’m hoping to get the ginger flavor without the long second fermentation.
February 2nd, 2010 at 8:13 am
Ok, here’s my ginger kombucha recipe:
When you boil the water to brew the tea, add some peeled, sliced pieces of ginger to the water. After brewing the tea (while letting the tea cool), spoon out these pieces of ginger and add them to the bottles in which you are bottling the previous batch of finished kombucha. I also as 1/2 tsp of lemon juice to each 12 oz bottle. The combination of the ginger that was released while boiling the water and the ginger that comes from the slices in the bottle gives it a nice gingery flavor even after just a day or two in the bottle (i.e. no need for a longer fermentation in the bottle). The longer the in bottle fermentation the more fizz. Personally, I like a little fizz, but not too much.
February 27th, 2010 at 2:55 pm
Have you tried any other flavors likr blueberry or raspberry and when and what part of the process have you added the flavor?