Kombucha

Bring water to the boil. Add around 8 g of tea per liter and leave to infuse for a good 15 minutes.

• Take about 8 grams of tea per liter of water and add it to the boiling water. Unlike making green tea, you should always add green tea to boiling water when making kombucha.
• The tea needs to steep for a good 15 minutes, longer than you are used to with regular tea. This allows the various ingredients in the tea that Kombucha needs to feed itself to dissolve. You can even let the tea simmer for 2-3 minutes.
• With a pure green tea preparation, the finished Kombucha drink has a light, fruity-tart taste. With black tea, it has a full, aromatic character. For an ideal blend in terms of fungal growth, flavor and ingredients, we recommend using equal parts of black and green tea as the base recipe. However, Kombucha also tastes great brewed with only black tea or only green tea. Just try what works best for you and your kombucha mushroom growth.

Important

Do not use flavored teas because the aromas and essential oils can harm the Kombucha mushroom.

Completely dissolve 90 to 100 g of sugar per liter in the finished tea.

• Don’t be afraid of all that sugar! The finished fermented kombucha contains much less sugar. Most of it is converted to other substances. With less than 80 grams of sugar per liter, your tea fungus will starve; with more than 110 grams per liter, the drink will be too intense. 90 to 100 grams of sugar per liter is ideal.
• Kombucha thrives on regular white sugar. However, the kombucha fungus grows even better if you use at least some raw cane sugar or whole cane sugar. Both types of cane sugar contain real molasses (i.e. the other components of the plant sap in addition to the sugar). If you prefer to work with white sugar, but do not want to give up the healthy molasses in your Kombucha drink, you can also use white sugar and then add pure liquid molasses (about 1 level teaspoon per liter of drink is sufficient). The kombucha will thank you with better growth and the finished kombucha drink will have an intense, slightly malty flavor.
• Unfortunately, the use of honey in the Kombucha batch is not recommended. Honey is difficult for Kombucha to process and inhibits the development of the desired bacteria. Unfortunately, kombucha cannot be made with stevia. Although stevia tastes sweet, it does not provide the nutrients the kombucha needs to grow.

Allow the tea to cool to room temperature and pour into the fermentation vessel

• You must never add the kombucha tea mushroom to hot tea, as this will kill it. The tea should be no more than 2-3 degrees warmer than room temperature when you add the fungus and brewing liquid. If you are unsure, use a thermometer. With a little experience, you can feel if the tea is cold enough just by touching the pot.
• It is best to use a glass fermentation vessel that is easy to clean. Above all, it is important that the glass has a large surface area so that the culture can breathe well. Therefore, it is better to use wider, flatter jars than very tall, narrow ones.

Add the Kombucha mushroom together with the finished Kombucha drink (at least 100 ml per liter) to the fermentation vessel.

• Pour the preparation liquid (finished fermented kombucha drink) into the fermentation vessel. This should be at least 10% of the new batch to ensure rapid growth. If you want the growth to start very quickly, you can increase the amount of preparation liquid to 20-30%.
• The jar should now be filled to the maximum height at which point it begins to taper in diameter. This gives the Kombucha preparation the largest possible surface area and makes it easier for a new large tea fungus to form on the surface.
• Finally, place the Kombucha fungus in the tea with the lighter (freshly grown) side facing up. The tea fungus will either sink to the bottom of the container or float to the surface. Both are normal. If it floats, it will continue to grow on the top. If it sinks, a new fungus will grow on the surface of the tea within a few days and will soon cover the entire batch.

Cover the fermentation vessel with a cover cloth and seal the cloth with a sealing clamp (e.g. rubber ring).

Cover the container with a cloth so that the kombucha can breathe without being contaminated by dust or insects. It is important that the cloth is permeable to air. Thick materials are less suitable. Be careful not to use cloths with too large a mesh. In summer, vinegar or fruit flies can get through even the smallest holes. Tissue paper works well. Use a tight-fitting seal (such as a rubber ring) to prevent fruit flies from entering the crop.

Place the fermentation vessel in a warm place (at least 21-22 degrees and do not move for the next few days

• Kombucha needs warmth and rest to thrive. Therefore, you should not move the fermentation vessel during the first few days. Movement prevents the formation of a new fungal skin (kombucha disc) on top of the tea. The Kombucha fungus does not like direct sunlight. The sun’s rays inhibit its growth. However, it can stand in the light without any problem, but it will grow just as well if you place it in the dark. Avoid smoking in the room, especially when the mushroom is first growing and still small.
• The new tea mushroom will initially look like a thin, milky membrane, which will quickly become thicker. Use this for the next batch, as well as the older parts underneath, until your new tea mushroom has reached a sufficient thickness (1-3 cm).
• In the beginning, small gas bubbles may be trapped in the membrane and there may be small bumps and craters. Don’t worry, this is not mold! A healthy young tea fungus is whitish, between pink and beige depending on the tea used. Mold is usually bluish or greenish and forms a fur.
• Kombucha should be kept at a room temperature of at least 21-22 degrees Celsius for fermentation. 23-24 degrees Celsius is ideal for its growth. The warmer the tea, the faster the fermentation process. Below 19 degrees it stops working, above 25 degrees the fermentation process becomes very fast. A few weeks above 25 degrees (in summer) will not hurt, but the mushroom should not be kept above 25 degrees permanently.

After 10 - 16 days, bottle the finished drink and refrigerate

• The batch of kombucha is left to stand for 10-16 days until the drink is ready. The higher the temperature, the faster your kombucha fungus will work. In the winter it can take up to 14 days, in the summer it is much faster and the longer it stands, the more acidic the kombucha becomes. If you let it ferment for a shorter time, it will stay sweeter and contain more sugar. However, you should let the kombucha drink ferment for at least 8 days so that it can acidify sufficiently and form natural compounds.
• If you are unsure if the kombucha is ready, you can carefully pour off a small sip and taste it. A balanced sweet and sour taste is considered normal, which is especially refreshing in the summer. Many kombucha drinkers develop a taste for sourness over time. With a little experience, you can tell when your kombucha is ripe by the growth of the tea fungus on the surface. The fermented Kombucha drink is bottled and stored in the refrigerator, where it will keep for 1-2 weeks without souring significantly. The bottles must not be sealed tightly as the drink will continue to ferment.
• The drink does not need to be filtered before consumption. The dark suspended matter that collects at the bottom of the fermentation vessel is mainly yeast cells. Only if you don’t like the floating streaks in the drink, you should filter the kombucha.

Tip

After three to six days of secondary fermentation in the refrigerator, a particularly large amount of carbon dioxide is formed, which cannot escape easily. This makes the drink extra fizzy and sparkling.

At least 10% of the finished beverage, along with the Kombucha fungus, is used as a preparation liquid for the next culture. Growth is optimal at 15-20% preparation liquid.

• With each new batch, remove the tea mushroom and rinse under cold or lukewarm running water. If necessary, remove the bottom dark discolored layers of tea. Rinse the fermentation vessel with hot water. Replace the tea mushroom (with the infusion liquid). Now you can start again from step 1.
• If you take good care of your new friend, it can be with you for the rest of your life, and you can use it again and again to make new kombucha drinks. It will always taper towards the top with a lighter layer. When it gets too thick, remove the bottom dark layer and throw it in the compost.

Vacation tip

When you travel: Just put your kombucha mushroom in a new batch and keep it in a warm place. Make sure your kombucha mushroom has a little more room to the top of the jar than usual. This will reduce the risk of it being pushed up by the carbon dioxide and drying out while you are away. After your vacation, you will have a finished kombucha drink. The tea fungus also survives longer absences without starving. If you are away for more than three weeks, the kombucha fungus will have produced delicious kombucha vinegar. Only after more than 8 weeks does it become critical and the tea mushroom should urgently be restarted.