Flavoring kombucha

Now that your kombucha has been made, what do you do now? You can bottle, refrigerate and drink it plain like it is now – or you can flavor it. To flavor it, which also adds some carbonation, here is what you need:

• 1 gallon Kombucha

• Juice, fruit, herbs or herbal tea

You will also need:

• Glass bottles with lids that you can burp and keep tight

• Funnel

• Ladle

At this time, you will want to prepare your fruit, juice, herbs or herbal tea by juicing into a liquid or cutting up into very small pieces for texture.

Make sure the flavorings are at room temperature. You don’t want to add cold, hot or frozen flavorings into the kombucha as this will kill the second fermentation process needed to create carbonation. What creates the carbonation is the bacteria and yeast eating the sugars from the fruit.

I add about one to two inches of flavoring to the bottom of my empty glass bottles first and then I ladle the plain kombucha into the glass bottles through a funnel, until the bottle is almost full (with just a little air space for expansion). Screw the lid on tight so that no air can escape.

You will want to burp the kombucha once a day or once every other day until it builds up the carbonation that you desire. You will unscrew the lid and allow the pressure to escape and then quickly tighten the lid again. Be careful, if it has built up too much pressure, it could explode kombucha all the way up to the ceiling! This usually depends on what flavoring you have used; some flavorings, such as prickly pear juice or chia seeds, I have found, build up pressure and carbonation faster than plain juice. It depends on how much sugar and fiber are in them.

This process takes anywhere from 2 to 4 days. Sometimes longer. Once you get the fizziness you want, tighten the lid and put the bottles in the refrigerator. The coldness of the refrigerator stops the fermentation process and once it is cold, it is ready to drink.

Make sure you leave at least two cups of kombucha (also called starter tea) behind for the SCOBY to continue to be fed. Then you can start all over again by brewing another gallon of sweet tea (see previous post) and count out the number of days (7-14) before it is ready to flavor.

If you are interested in learning how to create a SCOBY hotel, which is where the SCOBYS continue to grow into multiple SCOBYS and continue to be fed and stored, check back next week for that information.

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