Home Made Kombucha Tea

Militant Hippies

Today I bottled my first batch of Kombucha tea! I want to write down this process so in 15 days when those bottles have finished fermenting I can see if they taste good or not and if they do not I can change what I did and if they taste wonderful I can keep on doing it the same way!

First a friend of mine brought me over a SCOBY (or a Kombucha Colony), she has been making her own Kombucha Tea since 2008. Her SCOBY was very thick so she peeled it apart and poured enough tea in it (starter tea) to cover it and then drove it to my house!!!  

Here are the ingredients and utensils that you will need:

1. Starter: 1 to 2 cups of original, unflavored, Kombucha Tea, or ¼ cup of distilled vinegar (use distilled only if no starter is available)
2. Kombucha colony
3. Pure, chlorine free water
4. 1 1/3 to 1 2/3 cups preferably organic sugar, Do not use raw honey because its antibacterial activity could change your colony. You can use white cane sugar.
5. 5 to 6 Tea bags, preferably organic, for each 1 gallon of Kombucha tea you want to make. You can use a combination of various blacks, oolong, and green teas. 15 grams loose tea equals 5 tea bags.
6. A tea container. A large glass or stainless steel sauce pan for the water/sugar/tea mixture. Do not use aluminum.
7. A fermentation container. A one or two gallon glass container with a wide opening works well.
8. A plastic funnel.
9. A strainer, cheesecloth, plastic or glass.
10. A glass measuring cup.
11. Glass storage bottles for storing the Kombucha Tea you’ve made.
12. A clean closely woven cover for your jar (a napkin, handkerchief, paper napkin, or paper coffee filter). Do not use cheesecloth.
13. Large rubber band to secure the cover to the container.

Here is the process that she taught me.

1. Start with your scoby (Kombucha Colony), kombucha.org is a good place to start or a friend! Put it in a glass jar or bowl, pour enough tea it has been fermenting in to cover it, about a cup or two.
2. Make your tea. For my first batch I used a 1 gallon glass container and a ½ gallon glass container. I took 7 tea bags of organic decaf green tea. I filled my stainless steel pot with 6 cups of water, boiled it, then put the tea bags in, turned off the fire, covered it and let it steep for 20 minutes. Then I added 1 2/3 cups of organic cane sugar, mixed until it was dissolved. Let the tea get to room temperature before adding your starter tea or colony. You can put it in the fridge to help the process.
3. Once the brewed tea is to room temperature measure your tea and 4 cups will go into the gallon container and 2 cups into the ½ gallon container. Fill the container with filtered, pure water, leaving about 2 to 3 inches at the top.
4. Now add some starter tea to this that your scoby (colony) is sitting in,  add your colony, then add more starter tea.  I used unbleached coffee filters for my top secured with a rubber band. (this keeps fruit flies and gnats out).
5. Put your containers in a cool dry place out of sun light. I am using one of my kitchen cabinets.  Let this ferment for 10 days.  Do not move it.  Keep it around 73 to 83 degrees. The fermenting process is from 7 days on, after seven days it will be slightly more sweet than sour and at eight days more sour than sweet. I chose 10 days.  This is what my friend does.
6. Now the 10 days is up.  That was today for me.  In the morning make your new batch of tea to ferment.  I made two pots.  One with 7 tea bags and 6 cups of water, and one with 5 tea bags and 4 cups of water. I did this because I am adding another 1 gallon glass container to make even more tea.
7. I also made my teas for flavoring the Kombucha Tea. I chose pomegranate / raspberry tea, and a loose tea, white ginger pear. I took standard coffee cups, and boiled water in my tea pot. Use 2 bags of the flavor tea per coffee cup, steep for 20 minutes just like your base tea, and then add 1 teaspoon of organic cane sugar after it steeps. Discard the tea bags.
8. I let all of this get to room temperature, by about 11 am.  I brewed it at 6:30am.
9. I then got three glass pie plates out, took out my tea that has been fermenting for 10 days, I removed the scoby (colony) and poured enough tea to cover the scoby, I put them in the pie plates until I was finished bottling. This will become your starter tea for your next batch. I had an extra scoby, the one that we had put in the ½ gallon jar, grew a new one, so that is why I am adding another 1 gallon jar to my process.
10. Now using your plastic funnel pour your fermented tea in the bottles, I reused Kombucha Tea glass bottles that I have been buying for years, I have just saved them. Leave about 2 inches at the top, the 1 gallon container made 6 bottles and the ½ gallon made 3 bottles. Now pour some of your flavored tea that is in your coffee cups in each bottle, this will be where you have to play with it and see how much is too much, etc. Remember the tea is very concentrated, so I poured a small amount.
11. Now put the caps on the bottles, they will sit in the kitchen cabinet for 15 days, then you will refrigerate them to stop them fermenting any further. They will stay good for up to a year once refrigerated, once you open it, drink within 3 days.
12. Now the green tea that you had brewed that morning, pour 4 cups into each gallon container, etc. Repeat steps 3 and 4 above. This process has you making a new batch of tea every 10 days, and every 15 days you will have Kombucha Tea to drink. My goal is to bottle 30 bottles every time, because 2 of us drink a bottle a day, so that is 30 bottles that I need every 15 days. As my colony gets bigger and I can separate it I will be able to achieve this.

The reason that I wanted to make my own Kombucha tea is that it is getting very expensive. The place where we buy it, it is $2.45 a bottle and with two of us drinking a bottle a day that is $147 on average a month. Tea and sugar are still relatively cheap, even organic, we use Berkey filters for our water, and the other utensils that I needed, I already had. I did go to Hobby Lobby and purchase 2 1 gallon jars at 50% off the retail price, they were $7 each. I will be adding that second 1 gallon jar next time. Also I wanted to note, kombucha.org is a great website and you can use herbs, lemon, ginger, fruit juice and other things to flavor your tea, or some people don’t even flavor it.

My costs were:

1. 2lbs of Organic Cane sugar – $3.50 (I did not use it all)
2. Tea (green and two flavored teas) – $15.00  (only because the white ginger pear I could only find at this high end store and it was $10, the other teas were under $3)
3. 2 1 gallon jars – $14.00

Everything else I already had in my kitchen. Total with the 2 jars is $32.50. That being said, I will not have to replace these jars, so this is an initial investment.

The green tea that I bought was $3.50 for 40 bags, for the first 9 bottles that I bottled I used 7 tea bags, that is 62 cents for the organic green tea, the flavored tea was $2.85 for 18 bags, I used 2 tea bags, that is 32 cents for one cup of flavoring, and then the expensive loose tea was $10 for 2.1 ounces, there are 6 teaspoons in an ounce, so the 2 teaspoons cost me $1.42. Now for the sugar, it was $3.50 for 2 pounds, there are about 2 ½ cups per pound, I used 1 2/3 cup, then 2 teaspoons for flavoring, so it cost about $1.00.

So to bottle 9 bottles of Kombucha Tea it cost me $3.36, versus $22.05 that it would have cost at the store for those 9 bottles. There was an initial investment cost that will pay for itself over time.

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