Simple Homemade Kombucha 101

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll tell you about the benefits of Kombucha, or fermented sweet tea, and step by step instructions on how I make it at home!

There is good scientific evidence that Americans should have more probiotics in our diet.  Probiotics are the good bacteria that live in our guts and help us to digest our food properly.  Almost every culture has a fermented food or two that serve to replenish that good bacteria: Koreans have kim chee, Germans have sauerkraut, folks in the Mediterranean have yogurt, Japanese have natto, which is smelly fermented soybeans.  In the US, we have some foods we think of as fermented, but since we are bacteria-phobes, most everything is pasteurized which kills all of the good stuff.  

I have been looking for a good fermented food to supplement our diet without having to buy a bunch of expensive probiotic pills.  First I tried making kim chee, but the salt content was a little high for me to eat every day.  Then I stumbled upon kombucha six months ago and I've been making it ever since.  Kombucha is Chinese fermented sweet tea that has been consumed in the east for thousands of years.  The reason it ferments is that it has a big mass of yeast and bacteria, which eats the sugar in the tea, fermenting it and making it slightly effervescent.  This mass is variously known as "the mother" or the SCOBY, which is an acronym that stands for Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast.  It is 100% gross/cool.  I was a little wigged out by the texture and live nature of it at first, but now after working with it for months, I just think it is fabulously great.  

Now it also turns out that kombucha has other health benefits aside from being a probiotic and therefore aiding in digestion.  Kombucha that is made with green tea has all of those additional antioxidant benefits including improving cholesterol, reducing blood sugar, and reducing the risk of cancer.  My personal favorite benefit is that Kombucha is said to improve liver function -- I don't know about you, but my liver can use all the help it can get.  And along those same lines, for those of us who like beer, kombucha is a nice substitute -- it is effervescent and satisfyingly sour and easily replaces a beer in the evenings for me with way fewer calories -- an 8oz serving is only 30 calories.

You can buy kombucha at Whole Foods and other organic, healthy, hippy dippy places -- but it is expensive if you make it a daily habit.  It can be anywhere from $2 to $4 for a 16oz bottle.  SO -- I highly recommend making it yourself.  It takes me about 30 minutes every 12 days or so, and my whole family can have kombucha every night for pennies per drink.  Let me take you through the process:

First of all, I decided to buy a kit on Amazon for $49 (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LW7OR4A/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1).  It comes highly recommended and was perfect for me -- I'll include the link in the notes section below.  It contains the following items: a gallon glass brewing jar, a SCOBY which is the mass of bacteria and yeast, 1 portion of tea and sugar, a rubber band and cotton cotton cover, a temperature strip, ph testing strips, and a pipet straw for testing.  It also had complete instructions, which, as a complete novice, I appreciated.  As you continue to brew, your SCOBY will get larger and larger.  Mine has grown so much that I’ve been able to split it a couple of times, which means I can now brew 2 gallon jars at a time and I've had a a couple of baby SCOBYs to give away.  For my second jar, I just ordered the jar (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074G3Z9PC/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1) and a temperature strip from Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0719BSPT8/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1), which I'll put links to as well.  Making Kombucha can be an elaborate process, but I’ve got it down to about as streamlined as you can get.  Here's what I do:

• Brew the tea - Boil 4c of water in a saucepan and turn off the heat.  Now add 6 bags of caffeinated tea.  For whatever reason, decaf doesn't work as well.  I have used a combination of 2 green, 2 black, 2 oolong or 3 black and 3 green.  Don't use anything with extra stuff added, just go for pure tea.  It will need to steep off the heat for 7 minutes.  
• Add sugar - For every gallon batch, you will add 1 cup of refined sugar. No need to be fancy here — just the regular cheap white sugar from the grocery store. If you buy more expensive stuff, it will be harder for the bacteria and yeast to consume. Stir it until it dissolves. 
• Dilute - now pour that sweetened tea into your gallon brew jar and add 8 more cups of water to dilute it. It’s 1 part tea to 2 parts water.
• Let it cool - before you add the SCOBY and reserved juice (more about the juice in a sec) you need to let it cool so the hot water doesn’t kill the SCOBY.  It needs to cool to between 68 and 86 degrees.  This is why you need the temperature strip. 
• Add the SCOBY and cover - now add the SCOBY and the reserved juice and cover with a piece of cotton and a rubber band to allow oxygen in.  Set somewhere where it won’t be disturbed, but it isn’t too cold or too hot.  The warmer the area, the faster it will brew. 
• Wait for 7-14 days - the larger your SCOBY is, the faster it will brew.  The longer you leave it, the less sweet it will be. I like it pretty sour, so I’m on about a 12 day cycle.  You can use the little pipet from the starter kit to test the taste. 
• Harvest - once it has brewed to your liking, it’s time to harvest!  First wash your hands thoroughly before handling your SCOBY. You don’t want it to get contaminated or at best you’ll have to start all over again and at worst you’ll get sick from moldy Kombucha. Reach in, grab the SCOBY (you can do it — it’s not that gross) and put it into a glass bowl.  Then measure out 1c of reserved Kombucha liquid to put in with the SCOBY.  Set it aside while you brew the tea for the new batch and pour it all in at the appropriate step once the sweet tea is cool enough. 
• Repeat!  As I said, I’m doing 2 gallon jars on a 12 day cycle. It takes me about 30 minutes start to finish with the bulk of the work spent hand washing all of the containers.  You do need to be careful to make sure everything is clean since you have the perfect conditions to grow good bacteria — if you let bad bacteria in, it will grow well too. 

At my house, we are all Kombucha addicts now.  I don’t mind being addicted to something good for you for a change, and since I brew it at home, it is also an inexpensive habit. Let me know what you think!  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!