The Care and Keeping of Your Kombucha SCOBY
Making your own kombucha is super easy once you get in a flow. Here’s some tips to help push past your SCOBY-phobia.
Just a “mother” and her spawn (that’s a SCOBY joke for you!)
As much as I love the bread-baking craze that marked the early days of the pandemic, I am a huge believer that kombucha is the superior fermentation project. Why? First off, it’s less upkeep and fuss once the novelty is over. I check in on my brewing batch every once in a while, and I don’t have to figure out what to do with any excess starter. Second, I don’t have to consume the entirety of the product right away. As much as I love eating bread, I’m not necessarily ready to chow down the whole loaf in one day on my own every thing I make a batch. In contrast, my kombucha makes about 5 servings that I could drink over the course of my week.
When I first started making kombucha, I struggled to achieve the end result I actually wanted. My batches weren’t bubbly enough, and I went through a couple of rounds where the end result of a strawberry-banana kombucha tasted and looked more like a particularly sour drinkable yogurt than a fruity beverage. As it turns out, I was overcomplicating the process. If you follow the techniques below, you’ll be making your own delicious kombucha with very little effort.
It’s been 345 days or 10,000 years since I received my first SCOBY.
Start Here
Kombucha has four ingredients: the SCOBY, some kombucha from the previous batch (a new kombucha will come with a little liquid), tea, and sugar. There are some variations on this model— rules are, after all, often meant to be broken— but I wouldn’t experiment far beyond this model until you’ve given the regular method a try for 3-4 rounds. The best free resource I’ve found for kombucha is Reddit. I use slightly less sugar than they do (about 210 grams instead of 225), but otherwise use the same formula to get started.
A SCOBY is a “symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast.” It is also referred to as a mother and it is the driving force behind kombucha fermentation. Each batch grows a new SCOBY layer on top of the old one.
Things I’ve Learned Along the Way
Don’t touch the SCOBY: nearly every other point on this list can be ignored, but I try not to put my paws on the mother without gloves. I don’t need my bacteria mingling with the ecosystem in my jar, and I’d rather be able to eliminate factors to troubleshoot later.
The tea matters: investing a little bit in good quality tea does make a huge difference in your end product. I usually end up just adding green tea to my batches, but a blend of black and green teas is traditional and tasty.
Reuse store-bought kombucha bottles for storage: I’ve had a great deal more success using old kombucha bottles from out rather than with purchased swing-top bottles. Most of the swing-tops I had ended up exploding from pressure with even the slightest amount of fermentation forming in the bottles. I didn’t think that reusing old bottles would allow for carbonation to occur, but it has! If a seal ends up getting too loose and is no longer producing fermentation, I just buy a kombucha out and work the new used bottle into rotation instead.
Use a coffee filter instead of a cloth for the top: you need to cover the top of your brew with something not completely air-tight to give the SCOBY access to oxygen without attracting fruit flies. I use a coffee filter instead of a cloth because it produces less fuzz from the fibers. I reuse the filters for many rounds, but if one actually gets covered in the sugary liquid I replace it and recycle the old filter.
Brew two concentrates in one go: I will brew two batches of tea concentrate at one time using the same leaves, then keep one in the refrigerator and add more later. This ensures I’m using my tea leaves to their fullest potential and also means that I only need to brew for my SCOBY twice a month.
Do your second fermentation before bottling: those chunky bits of fruit swirling around in most homemade kombucha bottles don’t appeal to me, but I still want fruit flavors in my beverage. I learned this trick from the River Run Ferments instagram page. I add a fruit puree and maybe some herbs to a second gallon jar, then combine it with the kombucha I am planning to bottle. I leave it fermenting for 24 hours with a coffee filter covering the liquid before straining and bottling the end result. This process minimizes the baby SCOBY-ies from forming in your glass bottles and prevents you from needing to fish fruit out of the bottles once you’re done drinking.
This is an example of a secondary fermentation without the SCOBY— I made Chamomile-Lemonade Kombucha.
Combining Herbalism and Kombucha
My favorite store-bought kombuchas will often have added adaptogens in them. It’s not that hard to do that to your kombuchas at home as well. I add my herbs to the second batch fermentation. Most of the time I am adding herbs that situate themselves between the culinary and the medicinal, but sometimes I’m more forthcoming with my choices. Here are some of the flavors I’ve loved sipping over the past year:
Peach-Tulsi (Holy Basil)
Guava-Gotu Kola
St. John’s Wort-Thyme Lemonade
Watermelon-Peppermint
Hibiscus
Passionfruit and Passionflower
Citrus-Chamomile
Blueberry-Lavender
Ginger and Turmeric with Cayenne
Any readers have any favorite flavors on their own? I’d love to hear from you! What kind of kombucha have you been brewing?
