Notes on Simplicity: DIY Kombucha

The finished project!  My first brew of Kombucha!

Well, I explained a few days ago my love of Kombucha and a bit about what it is....though I'm still not completely sure...here's my post on the DIY project of brewing my own Kombucha.

It all started with the purchase of my new little friend, SCOBY, which is an acronym for symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast.   I purchased the scoby and a cup of starter tea from this shop on Etsy.

The arrival of my Kombucha SCOBY from Etsy

My skoby is a living organism that I feed a diet of sugar and tea and I harvest the by-product of little skoby's metabolic function, if metabolic is even the right word.  The scoby lives off sugar and tea made with pure water.  For my first brew, I started small, one liter of water boiled, and to that I added 1/3 cup of sugar and 2 spoonfuls of gunpowder green tea.

Once this concoction cooled, I strained away the tea with a non-metal strainer (no meatless in this process, it kills the SCOBY) and added this tea to the 1/2 cup of starter tea and SCOBY I purchased on Etsy. I covered the glass jar with a paper towel to keep out file and let it sit for 4 days though the recommendation was 5-10...I was too excited to wait any longer!

brewing sweet tea

strained and chilled sweet tea and scoby in kombucha tea

Everything together

Cover to keep out flies but still allow ventilation and a date to remember  start date

After four days the tea looked stringy and there was a gelatinous bubble of new growth on the top of the tea.  I tasted a little and it tasted just like the Original flavor of G.T. Kombucha!

I poured out about 2/3 of the liquid into small mason jars with a tight seal, yielding 5 servings of 4 ounces each.  Then I started a second larger batch boiling 2 quarts of water and adding to it 1/2 cup of sugar and 2 spoonfulls of gunpowder green tea.

 I thought the last batch was a little bitter so I drained the tea after about 8 minutes instead of letting it sit until the tea cooled.  Several hours later when this tea had cooled I added it back to my reserved kombucha tea and SCOBY.  I covered the jar, now full to the top.  The SCOBY sank to the bottom, which made me nervous, but I checked on-line and it seems like no problem.  When I harvested this second