Kombucha - Uncle Terry's

Name: Kombucha - Uncle Terry's
Ingredients: 1 cup organic sugar – you can use white sugar but make sure it says “cane sugar”; 4-6 bags tea – for loose leaf tea, 1 bag of tea = 1 tsp (I’ve been using 10 tea bags because I like stronger flavor). NOTE: The tea must be caffeinated!; 1 Kombucha SCOBY (Culture); 1-2 cups starter liquid – retain from top of previous batch; Purified/bottled/filtered water – the amount depends upon the size of your brewing vessel; A tea kettle – or pot to boil the water; A brewing vessel – ceramic, glass, stainless steel or oak – you can use food grade plastic, but what with BPAs, I prefer the others!; A cloth cover – NO CHEESECLOTH! (The weave is too loose and will allow fruit flies in your brew); A rubber band

Added by

Rachel over 2 years ago

Made Never

Ingredients

1 cup organic sugar – you can use white sugar but make sure it says “cane sugar”
4-6 bags tea – for loose leaf tea, 1 bag of tea = 1 tsp (I’ve been using 10 tea bags because I like stronger flavor). NOTE: The tea must be caffeinated!
1 Kombucha SCOBY (Culture)
1-2 cups starter liquid – retain from top of previous batch
Purified/bottled/filtered water – the amount depends upon the size of your brewing vessel
A tea kettle – or pot to boil the water
A brewing vessel – ceramic, glass, stainless steel or oak – you can use food grade plastic, but what with BPAs, I prefer the others!
A cloth cover – NO CHEESECLOTH! (The weave is too loose and will allow fruit flies in your brew)
A rubber band

Instructions

How To Make Kombucha At Home This is the standard recipe for 1 gallon. Scale up or down depending on the size of your vessel. Supplies

First Task: Make Your Sweet Tea Solution This is the stuff that will feed your mother culture and turn tea into delicious Kombucha Tea: Boil 4 cups of water. Add hot water & tea bags to your chosen heating vessel. Let steep for 10-20 minutes. Remove tea bags. Add sugar and stir to dissolve. (1 c cane sugar) Fill fermenting vessel with 3 quarts of purified cold water – the cold water will bring the temp of the hot water to a level where it won’t kill the yeast (they thrive at lukewarm). If tea is body temperature or below, proceed to the next step. If not, wait until it cools before completing the next step. Second Task: Add SCOBY & Starter Liquid (in that order)

Wait a week to 10 days to fully ferment.

When it’s done it’s ready to drink or bottle! Remember to take out the SCOBY and 1-2 cups of kombucha to inoculate the next batch! I just put it in a bowl on the kitchen counter and cover it. I add ½-cup of sugar to the kombucha just before bottling to aid in carbonation, just like priming a bottle of beer. I like using flip-top Grölsch-type bottles. When bottling you can simply pour the kombucha through a funnel into the bottles, but some prefer pouring it into a sun tea jar with a spigot on it. Then they can just open the spigot to fill each bottle easily. Set the bottles in your warm, dark place (not a closed cabinet though) to allow them to carbonate for one week or longer (if you like your ‘boucha fizzy). Then put them in your fridge or Beer-erator. I make the next batch at the time I’m bottling the last one. That way there’s always a steady supply of ‘boucha on hand. (Kombucha Mama calls that the “Kombucha ChaCha”.) And if you don’t consume a batch a week you’ll have previous generations and flavors to choose from and offer your friends (like I did 😊).