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How to Make Gingerberry Kombucha

• February 2015
• Simple Living Recipes

This is partly a recipe, partly a procedure. I love kombucha, especially “gingerberry” flavor which is a mix of ginger and blueberry. Mostly I like the taste, with the vinegary, fizzy flavor, and I also believe in the health benefits of probiotics and fermented food, so I really enjoy drinking kombucha tea. But those little bottles get expensive quick, at $4-something a pop, when you are buying them, so I decided to learn how to make my own. There is an upfront investment in bottles, but it becomes inexpensive and very easy once you get your systems dialed. With your first batch of 12 bottles, you’ll almost break even compared to buying them pre-made at Whole Foods, and then you can drink kombucha for pennies!

I make 2 gallons at a time, which comes out to 12 bottles. When I bottle the 2 gallons, I brew up another batch of tea to refill the gallon jars. We usually have finished drinking all 12 by the time the next 2 gallons are ready for bottling.

What you need:
12 rubber-stopper glass bottles
2 gallon glass jars
metal funnel with a strainer
large metal ladle (I already had this)
2 scobies
2 gallon stock pot (I already had this)
10 green or black teabags
1.5 cups sugar
1 cup white vinegar
2 paper towels
2 rubber bands
you won’t need these until a week after fermenting: 1 cup blueberries, 3 inch piece of ginger root

Here’s the schedule, and this is exact:
brew the tea and put it up to ferment, wait exactly 7 days
mix in fruit, bottle, let the bottles sit out on your counter for exactly 3 days (also brew up new tea and let it ferment)
put the bottles in the fridge and enjoy!

Brewing the Kombucha
Fill the large stock pot with 2 gallons of water. Boil it, then turn off the heat and drop in the 10 green or black teabags (I just use the cheapest tea). After 10-20 minutes, pull out the teabags and mix in the 1.5 cups of sugar (I use the fancy raw cane sugar, but you can also use plain white sugar). When it’s cool, pour the sweet tea into the 2 gallon glass jars. Put a scoby on the top of each jar–the first ones you buy will be small, but they will be fine and they’re going to grow and multiply!)

Now pour half a cup of white vinegar carefully on top of each scoby. Don’t worry, though, if the scobies sink or flip sideways. They are going to rise and get back on top. Cover each jar with a paper towel, and put a rubberband around it. Check your calendar, and write the day that is 7 days from now on the edge of one paper towel: this will be your bottling day. Now, set them on a counter where they won’t be in direct sun, and leave them alone until the big day arrives.

Bottling the Kombucha
Get set up with your bottles, ladle and strainer funnel and the fruit. I have a food processor, so what I do is blend half the blueberries (1 cup equals 1 small plastic box from the grocery store) and a 1 or 2 inch piece of peeled ginger root. I really pulverize them up. If you don’t have a food processor, you could chop or smash them together, and that would be fine too. Now take the paper towel off one of the jars, and pull out the scoby. Dip out about 1 cup of liquid, and put the scoby in a glass tupperware with the liquid–or a bowl, if you are about to brew up a new batch anyway. (After you have brewed several batches, the scobies will grow more and more layers. After a while you will have some extras beyond what you’re using: I keep my extra scobies in tupperware in the fridge in kombucha for weeks, when I start getting a lot of them. You can give them away.)

Now that the scoby is safe, mix the fruit mash directly into the jar of kombucha. It may fizz up a little, so stir it gently. Let it sit for a little while–maybe this is a good time to start filling your stock pot with water to make your next batch of tea. Then put 6 glass bottles in the sink and start ladling the kombucha through the filter funnel into the glass bottles. The filter will get clogged with fruit particles now and then, and you’ll need to dump and rinse it. Make sure there’s about an inch of room at the top of the bottle before sealing it. When all 6 are full, put them in a cabinet or store them on a counter. I just keep mine on the counter right beside the fridge so it’s easier to transfer them in. I’ve discovered that if I leave them out of the fridge for exactly 3 days, they develop a really nice amount of carbonation–2 days won’t do it.

Now repeat this process of scoby removal, fruit mashing and filtering/bottling with your next gallon (if you are making 2). When all the bottles are full, make sure to put a piece of masking tape on one of them, and write down the date of exactly 3 days from now: that’s when you need to put them in the fridge.

After they’ve been transferred into the fridge, you can drink them whenever you want: I open them in the sink, since you’re never sure just how carbonated they’ll be. After opening, I pour the kombucha through a metal tea strainer into a glass, to filter out the fruit sediment. The gingerberry flavor is so good, it’s the only one I make!

After the first batch, I’ve changed the vinegar part just a bit: you can use 1/4 cup of the plain kombucha from the last batch and 1/4 cup vinegar, for the part where you pour 1/2 cup vinegar over the scoby.

At first I was a little scared of the scoby, and afraid the tea could go bad somehow. It turns out that it’s difficult to mess up kombucha in any way that would be a health hazard, though if the scoby or tea appeared or smelled moldy, I would pitch it (this hasn’t happened). You can use any type of fruit to flavor it and cause the carbonation to occur–I’ve read that some people simply drop a raisin into each bottle. I can’t encourage you enough to start making your own kombucha! It’s easy once you try it, and incredibly yummy!