AUTHOR LOUISE AVERY / PUBLISHED: APR-2022
Louise's Homebrew
Kombucha Recipe
Once you develop a taste for the sweet-sour-fizzy and healthy tipple that is kombucha, it's hard to resist the temptation to have it available on-tap at home. The great news is that you can make your own with a few simple pieces of equipment and ingredients.
The base recipe for home-brewed kombucha can vary significantly according to the type of tea, strength of steep, and duration of fermentation. Most brewers develop their signature recipe over years of experimentation. All kombucha recipes start with the 'first' aerobic (with air) fermentation of sweetened tea to create unflavoured kombucha. Often the kombucha is then infused with ingredients for a 'secondary' anaerobic (without air) fermentation to create flavoured & naturally fizzy kombucha.
Below is Louise's recommended recipe for the first fermentation, to get you started on your home-brewing journey:
WHAT YOU WILL NEED
EQUIPMENT
- 1-2L glass brewing jar
- 1 teaball strainer or sieve
- Close weave cotton cloth
- Rubber band
INGREDIENTS
-
1-2 teaspoons loose leaf tea
Louise likes a mixture of black and green teas for a balanced brew -
70-80g sugar
Where possible, using organic sugar will improve the quality & taste of your kombucha -
1 SCOBY (symbiotic colony of bacteria & yeast)
Louise recommends The Happy Kombucha Co's SCOBYs
-
200ml of Kombucha
If you don't have a previous kombucha brew, your first SCOBY usually comes with enough starter liquid. You can also use high quality live shop-bought kombucha (unflavoured).
METHOD
1. Bring 200ml of water to the boil in a pan.
2. Steep your tea for 5 minutes using a tea strainer. For black tea use boiling water, and for green tea steep at approx. 75 degrees (if you don't have a thermometer, waiting a couple of minutes before adding the tea will suffice).
3. After removing the tea, dissolve the sugar into boiling water with a wooden spoon.
4. Add 800ml filtered/bottled water to bring down to room temperature. It is really important that there is no residual heat in the liquid as this will kill the live culture.
5. Pour the sweetened tea through a sieve into your jar.
6. Add your SCOBY and 200ml of starter kombucha liquid to the jar.
7. Cover with a cloth & secure tightly with a rubber band (ensuring no gaps available for any airborne critters to enter your brew).
8. Leave for 7 days and start tasting daily until you find the perfect balance between the sour/sweet profile.
FOR MORE KOMBUCHA HOMEBREW TIPS & RECIPES...
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