What the heck is Kombucha? What is a SCOBY?! Kombucha a fermented tea drink that has been popping up in your local coffee shop or local grocery store. Typically, it’s made from fermented black tea sweetened with white sugar. To some, the taste can be a bit unusual, but what I really like about it is that you can have a flavorful bubbly beverage that you can make all your own!
So how do you make this probiotic filled soft drink? Well, you need to start with a SCOBY, aka Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria and Yeast. You can get one in a few different ways, but here, I’ll talk about making your own.
First, you need to purchase kombucha that is unflavored, raw, and unfiltered. The reason for the unflavored part is so that the flavor additives in the other beverages may prevent the growth of the good bacteria and yeast you want to cultivate. It also needs to be unfiltered and raw for the same reason.
Now, what we’ll need to do next is make the sweet tea. For a half gallon batch, steep 1 tbsp (4 tea bags) of black tea in 7 cups of hot water and add in ½ cup of white sugar. Give it a good stir. Let the tea steep for about 10-15 minutes and remove the tea. Make sure the temperature is warm enough to sip on comfortably. As you can see, I was being a bit impatient and made and ice bath to speed up the cooling process.
Next, add in 1 cup of the Kombucha. If there’s a weird jellyfish looking thing, that’s a small SCOBY! Definitely add it in. If not, no biggie, it’s not needed for this process to work. As you can see in my photo, there’s a bit of the mother culture at the top.
Now, cover the jar with a coffee filter and use a rubber band to keep it in place. Store in a dark place where it won’t be disturbed for 1-4 weeks. Feel free to take a peek, but do not disturb the jar. After a week or so, you’ll see tiny bubbles forming at the top of the jar, like you can see below. I can see a lot of carbonation happening, which is the yeast/bacteria eating the sugar as well as smell a lightly sweet yet tart fragrance.
As more and more tiny bubbles form, you’ll see a thin film developing at the top of the jar. As that film gets thicker, that’s a SCOBY! Here’s what my Scoby looks like after four months. The speckled black dots are the tea leaves.
Once it hits about ¼ inch thick, you have a viable SCOBY to use for making Kombucha :) In later blogs, I’ll write about using flavored teas, flavoring your kombucha with fruit, and even making Jun Tea (fermented green tea sweetened with honey).
If you have any questions about how your SCOBY is doing, here are some great resources:
