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Kombucha

Make your own homemade kombucha with this beginner-friendly recipe. This recipe is for a healthy, balanced first ferment: a great foundation for second flavored ferments!
I usually double this recipe and make two half-gallon jars.
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Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 10 minutes
Fermenting Time 7 days
Servings: 6 cups
Ingredients Equipment Method Notes

Ingredients
  

  • 8 cups filtered water (do not use tap)
  • 4 tea bags black tea
  • ½ cup cane sugar
  • 1 healthy SCOBY with 1 cup starter liquid (full-of-life kombucha from a previous batch). If you don't have this, you can purchase one!

Equipment

  • half-gallon canning jar
  • pan
  • cloth napkin
  • pH Strips (optional)

Method
 

  1. If reserving starter from a previous batch, reserve 1 cup tea + a SCOBY per half-gallon jar you want to make.
  2. Dump your starter tea and a SCOBY into your very clean half-gallon jar. You can sterilize your jar by simply running it through the dishwasher.
  3. Bring your 8 cups of filtered water to a boil with the four tea bags. Boil for about ten minutes to make a strong tea.
  4. Remove from heat and discard the tea bags. Stir in the sugar until fully dissolved.
  5. Wait until the sweet, strong tea has cooled to barely warm/room temp. This takes forever but is very important for not killing the beneficial bacteria in your SCOBY and starter tea!
  6. Once (finally) cool enough, pour your sweet, strong tea to fill up your jar that already has your SCOBY and starter tea.
  7. I like to simply use a napkin ring to fix a napkin to the top of the jar. Place your kombucha jar in a warm place for a week.
  8. Once a week has passed, you are ready to make a second ferment! Be sure to save a cup or two of the brewed kombucha for your next batch of first ferment.

Notes

Of course, you can scale this to however big or small your jars are.
For each one cup of water, use 1/2 tea bag and 1 tbsp sugar. (I always use an even number of tea bags, and would just round up instead of splitting a bag!)