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Essential Recipe for Kombucha Tea


Just like chocolate-chip cookies, outrageous kombucha can be made from a bare-bones recipe. That's a good thing. Simplicity is a jumping-off point: once you're comfortable with common brewing procedures, experimenting with new ingredients and tweaking your method will come more naturally to you. For this reason, I use very typical ingredients in this recipe, and I give only essential instructions. I've included a number of illustrations, in hopes that they will describe the brewing method in ways that text cannot.

If you fancy brewing more or less tea that the recipe describes, proportionally adjust the ingredient quantities.

 Materials
1 kombucha culture
    learn to grow your own and keep it healthy.
1 quart water
    using tap water? make sure it's not chlorinated.
3 bags of black tea
    avoid "Earl Grey" tea.
2 tbsp of old, soured kombucha
    all out? use Bragg's apple cider vinegar instead.
¼ cup sugar
    wary of sugar consumption?
32oz glass jar
    something wide, no bottle-necks.

What to do

Brew a quart of tea. Dissolve the sugar in it. Once it's cool, pour it in the jar.
How does one to brew tea?
  • Brew it in steaming water for 5 - 10 minutes. Once it's done, wait for it to cool below 100ºF.
  • Impatient? Brew all the tea in 16oz of simmering water. Keep the other 16oz of water cool. Once the tea's ready, combine the hot tea and cool water. Eureka! Instant quart of lukewarm tea.
  • I like to steep the tea in cool water for about 4 hours. This prevents bitter tannins from being released.
     Keep it below 100ºF, kombucha doesn't like to be steamed alive. The same is true of lobsters.

Add the scoby and starter to the cooled sweet tea.
    The scoby might float, bob, sink, or sort of hover. It's all good.

Fasten a cloth over the jar.
    Seal it off from flies other little-bitty pests, but don't cap it off - kombucha needs air.

Put the jar somewhere dim and warm.
    Never leave kombucha in direct sunlight.
    Keep it warm, ideally between 70ºF and 85ºF. Warmer kombucha brews faster:
  • at 75ºF, brewing takes about 8 - 14 days.
  • at 80ºF, about 6 - 8 days.
  • at 86ºF, a mere 4 - 5 days.
  • It won't brew at all below 60ºF, nor above 103ºF.²
    If it's winter-time, you might stuff the jar beside a radiatior, or wrap it in an electric blanket.

Look for signs of growth.
    After a few days, you should notice a film forming on the tea's surface. That's a fresh and unspoiled culture! If you want to nurture it, make sure it keeps floating - a submerged culture won't bind the same way.

Keep tabs on flavor.
    To keep the floating culture undisturbed, peek around it with a drinking straw.
    Be attentive, it may brew faster than you think.

Bottle and refrigerate.
    It won't brew in the cold, and over time, the flavors will mellow out nicely.

Keep the cultures you produce.
    You can use it for your next ferment. You can also trade them with your friends, sort of like baseball cards.

¹ Sandor Katz, Wild Fermentation. 2003 
² Ed Kasper, "Kombucha Mushroom Tea Continuous Brewing Method". 2003.