Kombucha by Lara

Okay, kombucha! If you don’t know what it is, don’t look for the answer here, please Google it before you decide to make your own. This is simply my way of making it! As I now have a few extra SCOBY’s living in my house (that don’t pay rent!) I have started giving them away to friends and with lengthy instructions and confused pug like faces staring back at me, I thought I would blog it for ease of reference, with pictures ek sê!

STEP 1 – Prepare your new tea

Here we have :

4-5 green tea bags, 4-5 five Roses tea bags, 1 cup of white sugar, a glass or porcelain jar. Kelly put the kettle on… Add your tea bags and sugar to the jar, add the boiling water and stir so the sugar dissolves. You can change the ratio on the teabags to suit your taste, I sometimes do all green tea and sometimes 2 black tea bags and 4 green tea bags. Its all about personal taste.

Allow the tea to steep for a few minutes. I normally leave mine for an hour or two to cool down to room temperature. If you do not have that kind of time you can add ice cubes to cool it down faster. NEVER EVER ADD HOT WATER TO your Kombucha/SCOBY – apparently, it will kill the little living things (organisms). How would you feel sitting in boiling water?

Step 2: Put SCOBY in another container

With clean hands, remove your SCOBY from the brew jar and place it in another glass container. Top up with kombucha to use as your starter tea for the new brew. At least a cup and a little more.

Step 3 – Prepare the fruit and glass jars for the second brew

Okay – phew, we have made it this far! We are almost there!

Now – I always use fresh ginger because I love the stuff, and whatever fruit I have in my house at the moment. Today I had strawberries and oranges.

Put it in the glass bottles. Don’t be ashamed to use empty whiskey, vodka or gin bottles, the work so well for the second brew and – you are recycling! I decided not to use them in this round. These are bought from Wespak and the water bottles from Papachinos. They didn’t sneer when I walked out with them after only drinking half of it (I paid for it obviously!)

From your brewing jar, add the kombucha to your glass jars, do not fill all the way to the top. Leave about 5 mm space. I use a funnel for a no-mess but honestly, it’s always messy!

I have added ginger and strawberry to one glass jar and the other one has orange and ginger.

Seal them off, and put them back in the dark warm cupboard to go for a second brew. It is very important that you open and releases the gas once a day until you put them in the fridge. The build-up of gas could cause an explosion! (probably not but it can happen)

I leave my second brew for 3-5 days before putting them in the fridge and start drinking.

STEP 4 – SCOBY needs his tea.

Put the SCOBY and starter tea back into the jar – I rinsed my jar this time because it was looking a little tacky. I don’t rinse it every time. I’m using a strainer because the ants like to swim in my kettle and you don’t want insects in your kombucha.

Add the room temperature tea to your SCOBY and starter tea.

I top mine up with water if I don’t have enough tea.

Dress your jar with its cloth and VOILA. You are done. Put him back in his cupboard and wait patiently.

When you compare the two images above you can see the fresh brew I made is a lot darker, when they kombucha is getting ready it gets lighter as per the image on the right.