The Perfect Kombucha Home-Brewed for Under $6 Per Gallon

I have to admit I have fallen for kombucha. I tried my first berry kombucha on tap at a local coffee shop in Boston six months ago, and it was love at first carbonated sip. I was less than thrilled with the $4 price tag for five ounces of kombucha. I soon discovered that my other options were $6 bottles of kombucha or home-brewing it for less than $6 per gallon. So I wondered: would the financial savings be worth the hassle of making it myself? Would it taste as delicious?

Alex Ingalls, founder and owner of Brooklyn-based Pilot Kombucha says most people avoid home-brewing for one reason: Convenience. Brewing kombucha at home can be time consuming and complex — and almost always intimidating to newbies. “People have come up to me at farmers’ markets and said how they tried brewing kombucha, but they were unable to make it taste good or they couldn’t keep up with maintaining the culture,” says Ingalls.

For others, the risk of yeast worms, contamination, and mold prevent them from home-brewing. “I heard there was a local store offering a free ‘How to Make Kombucha’ class. I was freaked out by the risks and the scoby; [after the class] I was still freaked out by the scoby, but the instructor made me feel better about the risks,” says Stephanie Meijers, a kombucha home-brewer in Portland, OR. Meijers had been paying around $15 per week for 64-ounce growlers of kombucha to aid with digestive issues, so there was incentive to overcome her fears of home-brewing.

I, too, was leery to brew my own kombucha, so I was spending $4–7 for a small portion instead of investing the time and effort to make my own. However, at the insistence of Meijers‚ my sister, I decided to give it a shot.

My first step was to gather all of the necessary supplies; after a few quick clicks on Amazon.com and an hour shopping at nearby stores, I purchased everything for $68. The biggest expense was the gallon jar and three bottles ($41), and for only $11, I had secured the critical ingredient: the culture or scoby (symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast). Scoby is a living organism that grows into a thick cylinder resembling a stack of crepes with tentacles, and it’s what gives kombucha its fizz.

With the supplies gathered and my sister by my side, I dove into the surprisingly simple process of home brewing. Create a sweet tea mixture, let it cool, and then add it to a sterilized one-gallon jar with water. Add the scoby, which soon resembles a large, UFO shaped fish floating in a jar. Then it’s a waiting game of 7–10 days of fermentation, followed by 3–5 days of flavor infusion. So straightforward.

After day one of home-brewing, I wondered why I had hesitated to make my own kombucha. But then came day two, where I was sure I killed the culture as it floated sideways with weird black appendages, and day seven where I was convinced the scoby had a rare case of mold. With a quick text, my sister calmed my fear by confirming my scoby was alive.

During the mold scare, I turned to an online resource: Kombucha Kamp. I submitted a picture of my suspect scoby for their inspection, and they quickly responded affirming that it looked perfectly fine. The Kombucha Kamp customer service representative also provided this helpful tip: “Usually what is mistaken for mold is normal but strange-looking scoby or yeast growth. Mold on kombucha looks much like mold on bread or other food: it is always dry and fuzzy and sitting on top of the culture.”

Feeling confident in my kombucha once again, I was excited to taste it after 12 days of waiting. Since I was a little heavy handed with the cinnamon, the kombucha had a rich brown color and smelled like Fall. I poured some kombucha into a glass and, hesitantly, took the first sip. So sweet and refreshing! There was less carbonation than I anticipated, but the apple and cinnamon flavor balanced the tartness of the fermentation.

I felt proud of my first home-brewed batch of Apple Cinnamon Kombucha. However, despite a simple process, I am not sure I could handle the ongoing anxiety about the health of my scoby each week.

Apple Cinnamon Kombucha

Makes 1 gallon of kombucha

Total Active Time: 2 hours (spread over a two part process)

The initial supplies cost about $65–70, but it will be less expensive if you already have the bottles or jar on hand. The other upfront costs are the sugar and black tea (about $8), which will get you through 4–6 batches of kombucha, and the flavor ingredients for this recipe cost less than $1, assuming you have cinnamon. Every batch is the equivalent of about ten 12 ounce bottles of kombucha purchased in store, and at about $6 per bottle, the initial investment is recouped by the second batch.

*The most important thing to keep in mind during this process is to sterilize everything that will touch the scoby or kombucha with vinegar, including your hands

Initial Supplies:

• 1 kombucha starter culture*
• 1 bottle of vinegar
• Standard plastic funnel
• Mesh colander
• 2 half-gallon air-tight bottles,** washed with soap and sterilized with vinegar
• 1 one-gallon air-tight bottle,** washed with soap and sterilized with vinegar
• 1 one-gallon jar with cheesecloth and rubber band;* wash and sterilize the jar as you did the bottles

*The kombucha starter culture and gallon jar with cheesecloth with rubber band can be purchased on amazon.com.

**These bottles can be found at Target or a local home goods store.

Ingredients:

For Part 1:

• 6 tea bags of black tea
• 1 cup sugar (regular or organic)
• 14 cups of filtered/bottled, room-temperature water

For Part 2:

• 1 medium apple, chopped (choose a sweet variety, like Cortland, Honeycrisp, or Gala)
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon

Instructions:

Part 1:

1. Bring 2 cups of water to boil in a saucepan or kettle; remove from heat.
2. Put the sugar into a glass measuring cup, 2-cups or larger.
3. Pour the water on top of the sugar in the glass measuring cup, and steep 6 tea bags in the water-sugar mixture for 5–10 minutes.
4. Take out the tea bags and stir until the sugar fully dissolves. Let sit until room temperature.
5. Add sweetened tea mixture to the gallon jar and fill with room temperature filtered water. Leave enough space to add your culture/scoby (about 3–4 inches).
6. Make sure the mixture in the gallon jar is room temperature. Add the starter culture/scoby and the liquid that comes with it.
7. Secure the cheese cloth over the opening of the jar with a rubber band.
8. Place the jar in a warm, dry area, away from the trash for 7–10 days.
9. On day 7, test your brew to see if it is at the desired tartness level. (After day 10, you will basically have vinegar.) Once it is at the desired tartness, start part two of the process.

Part 2:

1. Complete steps 1–4 from Part 1 (in the instructions above) to prepare for the next batch of kombucha. The scoby will need a new “home” as soon as it is removed from the fermented liquid it has been living in.
2. While the sweet tea mixture is cooling, sterilize a glass baking dish by cleaning it with soap and then rinsing it with vinegar. Dry the dish.
3. Clean your hands as you did the glass dish (soap and vinegar). Now remove the culture/scoby from the jar with your hands and place it in the glass dish.
4. Quickly pour enough of the kombucha into the glass dish to cover the culture/scoby. Think of the scoby as a fish in that it can’t be out of the liquid for very long or it will die.
5. Taking the largest clean and sterile air-tight bottle, set up the funnel on top. Pour the kombucha from the gallon jar into the bottle through the colander. Leave about 4 inches for the flavor ingredients.
6. Add the cinnamon and apple. Stir with a plastic spoon. Be sure to never use a metal spoon in the kombucha during fermentation. Close the lid of the bottle.
7. Clean and sterilize the gallon jar. Complete steps 5–8 from Part 1 (listed above). The second batch of kombucha is now brewing and will be ready in 7–10 days.
8. Leave the bottle of kombucha (with the apples and cinnamon in it) at room temperature for 2–4 days. Be sure to pop the lid open briefly (and then close immediately) once a day to relieve pressure caused by carbon dioxide build up.
9. Once the kombucha is at a desired flavor and fizziness, grab the two half-gallon airtight bottles (cleaned and sterilized), and set up the funnel and mesh colander on top. Pour the kombucha from the gallon jar into the bottle through the mesh colander, filtering out the apples and some of the cinnamon.
10. Store bottles in refrigerator for up to one month. Enjoy your kombucha!