It will look quite funky in the beginning with patchy white snowflake shapes, so avoid spending time in the first few days agonizing over whether you’re breeding a SCOBY or mold. Pay close attention to how your SCOBY looks-but only after the first week. Wash your hands well and keep your jar in a place where it won’t be disturbed, far away from activity and potentially germy situations.
I recommend immersing your jars and bottles in boiling water for a few minutes to eliminate undesirable pathogens from sneaking their way into your brew. Because this is home fermentation, you’ll want to take extra care to ensure all of your containers and tools are sterilized. My favorite add-ins include pineapple puree and ginger.Ī word about food safety. Fruit, juices, and other flavorings can and should only be added during this second stage so as to not harm the mother’s development by introducing conflicting yeast cultures. Once it reaches your desired level of tartness, you will bottle the liquid in a food-grade sealed bottle to let the natural carbonation build up during the second fermentation. The first stage occurs in your SCOBY jar and the tea mixture will slowly turn from sweet to sour. Third step: ferment! There are two stages of fermentation when it comes to brewing kombucha. To avoid bad things from dropping into it, we’ll cover the jar with a breathable fabric like a coffee filter or cheesecloth. Because it is a living organism, you’ll want to give it air. The warmer it is, the faster the SCOBY will develop, but the ideal temperature is between 75° and 80°. Much like keeping a sourdough starter, you want to start with an ultra-clean jar and give it a nice, clean, temperate environment. For your SCOBY to develop, you will need to wait anywhere from 1 week to 4 weeks. If you've read my sourdough recipe, you know just how much I like to wait for my food. You’re also going to want to avoid any kombucha that’s been flavored, especially if it’s got fruit juices in the mix: flavoring might interfere with the health of the SCOBY you’re trying to grow. They may not look appealing, but trust me, they are exactly what you want. Those little stringy nebulous bodies are essentially bits of the mother that broke off from the main SCOBY during the bottling process and ended up in your bottle. When buying a bottle of pre-made kombucha, the most important thing to pay attention to is the amount of floaty sediment in your bottle: the more the better. Any brand will work, so long as it’s raw and unpasteurized. There are several suppliers from whom you can purchase a full-size SCOBY, but what’s the fun in that? To cultivate your own mother, you’re going to buy a bottle of good quality, unflavored, unpasteurized, raw kombucha.Ī trusted source recommended the brand Health-Ade, and I had excellent SCOBY-growing luck with their bottles of small-batch brews. It also goes by the quietly imposing name of mother. To brew kombucha, you first need a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast. So, join me, why don’t you, in my latest money-saving adventure: a recipe for homemade booch, teeming with probiotics.įirst step: cultivate a SCOBY. It’s also a wee bit overpriced for my budget at $4 a bottle. It’s everywhere, it’s excellent for your gut health, and it is definitely the hip drink of the decade.