The best method for beginners is right here.
I started making my own kombucha years ago when I first moved to California and discovered this weird-sounding new drink on store shelves. I’m a fan of anything sour, tart, and tangy, so with kombucha, it was love at first sip.
I loved it so much that I eventually wrote a book about kombucha, along with cider, beer, and other favorite homemade beverages called True Brews. Astute readers will notice that the method I give here is a little different from the one I first shared in the book, and also a little different from the recipe I shared on The Kitchn a few years ago—I’ve streamlined the method over the years and tried to make it a little more approachable for new brewers.
What Is Kombucha?
Kombucha is a fizzy drink made by fermenting sweetened tea. It starts off tasting like your average glass of sugary Southern sweet tea, but after a week or two of fermentation, it transforms into a tart, tangy, effervescent beverage. It’s not for everyone, certainly, but for those of us who love those kinds of flavors, it’s unbeatable.
This fermentation is made possible thanks to something called a SCOBY. This stands of “symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast.” Dig around the internet for long enough and you might also hear this scoby referred to as a “mother” or a “mushroom.”
The scoby looks and feels like a flat, rubbery, beige-colored pancake—not the most appealing thing, to be sure, but it houses all the yeast and beneficial bacteria needed to ferment the sweet tea into kombucha. It’s similar to the mother used to make vinegar or the starter used to make sourdough bread.
What Are the Benefits of Kombucha?
Why would anyone want to make fermented tea using a blobby pancake? Well, aside from just liking the way it tastes, kombucha also contains a lot of beneficial probiotics, which many of us believe help out with gut health.
You hear a lot of pretty far-out health claims about kombucha — everything from “it made my acne go away” to “it cures baldness.” Personally speaking, I just find that regularly drinking kombucha seems to keep my whole digestive system happy. It’s not a cure-all and it’s doesn’t produce miracles, but personally, I think it’s overall beneficial for my health.
If you’ve never tried kombucha before, I recommend picking up a bottle at the store before making it yourself just to see if you like it. GT’s is a very good, widely available brand, though it tends to be fairly vinegary and tart. If you want a gentler introduction, seek out locally made brands of kombucha, which I often find to be sweeter and less assertively vinegary.
Ingredients for Kombucha
Here’s what you need to make a batch of kombucha at home:
- Water: Filtered water or spring water is best for making kombucha, but if your tap water tastes good to drink, then it’s usually totally fine to use it to make kombucha.
- Sugar: You can use any cane or beet sugar to make your kombucha, including regular table sugar, turbinado, demerara, sugar-in-the-raw, or brown sugar. Alternative sugars, like agave and coconut sugar, are trickier to work with and can cause problems with fermentation; wait to experiment with them until you have more experience brewing kombucha. Do not use artificial sweeteners like stevia or Sweet-and-Low; these will not work to make kombucha.
- Caffeinated tea: Any caffeinated tea can be used to make kombucha: black tea, green tea, oolong tea, or white tea. Avoid herbal teas or any teas with essential oils (like Earl Grey); these can cause problems with fermentation and potentially lead to mold growth on the scoby.
- “Prepared kombucha”: For the “prepared kombucha” either use store-bought, unflavored kombucha or a few cups of homemade kombucha saved from your last batch. (Flavored kombuchas can cause mold growth on the scoby, but I have heard from people who’ve successfully used ginger kombucha and citrus-flavored kombuchas for this ingredient.)
- The scoby: You can get a scoby from a kombucha-making friend, grow one yourself, or order one online from a place like Kombucha Kamp. If you order online, I recommend getting a “live” scoby in its liquid rather than a dehydrated scoby if possible; live scobys are generally heartier and easier to get going than dehydrated scobys.
How to Grow Your Own Scoby
Growing your own scoby from scratch is possible, but can be hit or miss. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t and either the scoby never forms or it develops mold. If you want to give this a try, just be prepared for a bit of a science experiment!
To grow your own scoby:
- Prepare a half batch of the recipe below, but leave out the scoby (obviously!). Cover with a double layer of a tightly woven napkin or tea towel secured with a rubber band and leave the jar somewhere out of the way. Try not to move it or jostle it since this can make the scoby take longer to form.
- Let the jar sit for one to four weeks. Check it after one week and then every few days after that. If all is well, you’ll see bubbles forming on the surface, which will eventually join together into a thin, transparent layer that looks and feels kind of like a contact lens. This layer will start to thicken and turn opaque.
- Once it’s about 1/8- to 1/4-inch thick, it’s ready. You can use it to make your first official batch of kombucha. You can also use the remaining liquid as your “prepared kombucha.”
Equipment for Making Kombucha
- Stockpot (at least 8-quart or larger): This is for making the sweet tea base.
- 1-gallon glass jar: You’ll use this for actually brewing the kombucha. You can use two 64-oz jars instead, but note that you’ll need one scoby for each jar.
- Finely-woven flour sack dishcloths: A double layer of dishcloths is used to cover the jar, allowing airflow in but keeping bugs and dirt out. You can also use tightly-woven tea towels, napkins, or other lint-free cloths.
- Swing-top glass bottles, or an assortment of recycled plastic soda bottles: This is for bottling your kombucha! Either brown or clear glass bottles are fine. Be sure to use swing-top bottles that are intended for brewing and holding carbonated beverages; ones that are just meant to hold water don’t have a strong enough stopper to allow the kombucha to carbonate properly.