Kombucha in the works

I'm interested in experimenting.  Perhaps it's the scientist in me...I don't know, but I'm always adding new experiments to my collection.  I'll talk about my bees later on, but for now, it's kombucha.

GT's Kombucha, sold in Whole Foods

Kombucha is a fermented tea beverage.  It's made by taking a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast, sometimes called a SCOBY for short, and adding it to a sweetened tea concoction.  That is covered with a breathable filter (cloth, often) and left to aerobically ferment.  Some people ferment their tea for a week, some longer, it depends on how they like it to taste.  Once it's fermented, it is bottled so that the yeast can perform a second, anaerobic ethanol fermentation.  This second step causes the tea to accumulate a build up of CO2, making it fizzy.

The alcohol fermentation reaction, producing CO2 as a biproduct and ending in ethanol production.

At first I thought kombucha was kind of nasty, but I gave it some more tries and ended up liking it quite a bit.  I soon realized that buying several bottles of the stuff was costing me around $20 a week and started researching on how to make it.  I came across a few good websites that told me about the process and where to get a SCOBY.  You can buy them dehydrated on the internet, get one from someone who makes kombucha in the area, or you can grow your own using commercially made tea.  I opted for the last one since it seemed to have the lowest price tag.  Most of the other methods cost around $15 for a SCOBY whereas a bottle of tea is $4.

A very thick, gelatinous SCOBY.

To make my SCOBY, I bought a bottle of GT's Kombucha from Whole Foods, brewed 4 cups of sweet black tea and dumped in the bottle of tea.  I found a nice glass jar at Goodwill, which I washed thoroughly and then sanitized in the oven.  I covered it with a towel rubber-banded around the mouth, put it on a high shelf in my pantry and waited.  It took a long time to grow a SCOBY because I diluted it so much, but it eventually started to make a film on the surface of the tea.  Boyfriend thought it was the most awful, disgusting thing he'd ever seen and begged me not to try to drink anything with the gelatinous goo floating on top.  :)  

This is the SCOBY at about three weeks

I let the SCOBY grow for about a month, by which time it reached a quarter inch thick.  After it got that far, I dumped out all but 1 cup of the liquid, transferred the SCOBY to a bowl to wait and brewed another batch of tea.  This time I used 48 oz of water, 2 cups of cane sugar, 2 green tea bags and 4 black tea bags.

The 'gelatinous goo' SCOBY

SCOBY sitting in its bowl of fermented tea

It's been sitting in the pantry for a week and I just tasted it.  It's coming along nicely, the baby SCOBY is growing and is a little over 1/8 inch thick.  It is still quite sweet, but ever so mildly bubbly.  I'm going to let it sit another three days and then check it again.

New baby SCOBY is growing on top!

As for bottling, I made a strawberry rhubarb syrup to add to the kombucha when I get to the second fermentation stage.  Traditional kombucha is just the tea, but I like a bit of flavor in my kombucha, so I think this will give it a nice fruity flavor.  I'll report back with more later!