March 21, 2023
For some time now I have been wanting to experiment with making homemade Kombucha since I drink it regularly along with herbal teas.
Kombucha is fermented tea with a history that dates back thousands of years. It's made by adding a SCOBY (a symbiotic colony of yeast and bacteria—similar to the vinegar "mother") to sweetened tea. After picking up a Scoby from one of our local stockists, Happy Girl Kitchen, I started my first batch. If you know someone who is currently making Kombucha, ask them for a Scoby to avoid buying one! I followed the recipe that Happy Girl Kitchen provided:
1 quart pure water
1/4 sugar
1 tablespoon loose black tea (or 2 tea bags)
1/2 cup Kombucha Mother
Yield: 1 quart
Time frame: 7-10 days
1. Bring the water and sugar to a boil mixing thoroughly in a cooking pot. Turn off the heat, add the tea and steep approximately 15 minutes.
2. Strain the tea and let cool to body temperature. Transfer to your fermentation vessel. Glass seems an ideal container, so you can see the SCOBY doing its thing :)
3. Add the Kombucha mother, with the opaque, firm side up, along with the liquid it is stored in. Later, you will want to save portions of your mature tea and a mother to get more batches brewing.
4. Cover with a cloth and let mature in a warm location- around 70-85 degrees F.
5. Taste the liquid after a few days to 1 week. A skin will develop on the surface- the new mother is forming. The tonic becomes more acidic the longer it ages.
6. Store the finished Kombucha tea in the fridge. When it develops to the sourness you prefer, you can leave it in there for a month or so. Take out the mother and store in a jar with a bit of liquid (up to a couple months) until you're ready to make another batch.
7. Flavor the finished tea to add depth or sweetness - ginger + lemon, pomegranate juice, orange juice, fresh basil + strawberries (we used our vitamix to blend up the basil + strawberries into a puree and then added it to the bottled Kombucha).
