Description
Nothing quite beats homemade kombucha brewed with love, care, and optimum health in mind. Learn how to make your own easy kombucha with different flavours.
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon loose leaf black tea, or 4 teabags (I use English Breakfast)
- ½ cup / 100g raw sugar (use organic if in the US to make sure it’s vegan)
- 1 SCOBY
- 1 cup starter (the liquid that comes with the SCOBY)
Instructions
- First, boil 7 cups / 1.75 litres of water. In a large bowl or jug, put in the sugar and tea (I use a compostable coffee filter so that I can strain it easier). Pour in hot water and mix well making sure that all the sugar dissolves while the water is still hot.
- You can take the tea out after 10-15 minutes or leave it in there until it completely cools. I usually leave it in for a stronger flavour.
- Once completely cooled, pour the sweet tea, SCOBY, and starter into a large jug or jar that you can easily seal with a muslin cloth and an elastic band.
- Place in a preferably warm, but out of direct sunlight spot. You can risk the kombucha going mouldy if the room temperature is too low. I place it on the kitchen bench out of the way. Try and avoid moving it too much in the first couple of days as the SCOBY needs to start doing its magic with the starter.
- It’s typically best left for at least 7-10 days (Summer) and 14-21 days (Winter). The colder it is, the longer the fermentation process takes.
- You will notice that there will be a new SCOBY forming on the top of the liquid. You can either give it to someone else with a cup of starter to begin their own kombucha process, keep it aside by creating a SCOBY hotel or throw it in the compost.
- Once it’s finished fermenting (according to the number of days mentioned above), separate 1 cup of the mix (your starter) and a SCOBY into a jar and use the rest for drinking.
- Bottle and flavour it (if desired) and leave it out for 1-2 days so that it can fizz up some more (I am a little lazy and normally skip this step), making sure to ‘burp’ the jar to let out some of the gas build up.
- Pop in the fridge and serve when cold.
- It can stay in the fridge for months. It just never lasted in my household for more than one week!
- Keep in mind that as soon as you put it in the fridge, it slows down the fermentation process so you may notice a slight difference in taste over a long period, but short term, it will taste the same.
Notes
If you start to notice white, black or green patches/spots forming on the top, that means it’s mouldy. Do not try and revive it. The mould has spread through the whole mix. Discard it and start again. This is why it’s always a good idea to keep some starter and a spare SCOBY in a plastic container in the cupboard (in plastic so you don’t have to remember to ‘burp’ the bottle as it can explode from all the gas build up inside).
- Diet: Vegan
