With our Kombucha recipe you can easily make Kombucha yourself

We'll show you how you can easily make your own kombucha. Using tea, sugar and a yeast and bacteria culture, you can brew your own kombucha drink in no time. We've also put together a few tips for you so that nothing can go wrong when making kombucha. Are you still missing the right utensils? Then take a look at our shop .

Ingredients for 1.5l Kombucha

1.2l water

6-12g organic tea

100g organic cane sugar

300ml organic starter culture (SCOBY/tea fungus with starter liquid)

Quick guide to making your own kombucha

to brew tea
Add sugar
Allow to cool (<30°C)
Pour into a fermentation vessel
Add starter liquid and tea mushroom
cover with an air-permeable cloth
Allow to ferment for 6-14 days at room temperature. Taste on the fifth day.
Save some of your kombucha and the SCOBY, bottle the rest, chill and enjoy.
Optional: Refine
Start again at step 1 with the SCOBY and some of the finished kombucha.

The detailed Kombucha recipe

1. Make tea

Bring 1.2l of water to the boil.

You decide how intense the taste of your kombucha should be by adding between 6g and 12g of organic tea.

Let the tea brew for about 20 minutes and then remove the tea leaves.

Tips

Make sure you use at least 5g of real tea, i.e. leaves from the Camellia sinensis plant, per liter of water. Whether you choose white, green, oolong or black tea is a matter of taste. Experiment with different types of tea and you will see that there are at least 50 shades of kombucha. You can also mix and even add dried flowers or herbs. Go wild :-).
Ignore the tea brewing times on the packaging. When making kombucha, it is important that as many nutrients as possible are released from the tea and longer brewing times are beneficial for this.

2. Add sugar

Add 75-100g organic sugar to your hot tea.

Stir until the sugar has completely dissolved.

Tips

Sugar is a must to make kombucha. But don't worry: the yeast and bacteria process the sugar and at the end there will be much less left than you put in.
Important: Fermentation only works with sucrose, e.g. beet sugar or cane sugar. Sweeteners such as xylitol (birch sugar), stevia or erythritol do not work.
Whether you use white or brown sugar depends on your taste. Brown sugar gives a slightly caramel note. So you are quite flexible with your kombucha recipe.

3. Add kombucha mushroom and starter culture

Let the sweetened tea cool down to below 30°C and fill everything into a sufficiently large fermentation vessel. Let's get to the most important part of making kombucha: you now inoculate your tea with the kombucha cultures. Add the starter liquid with the SCOBY (tea fungus) . Between 15 and 25% of your entire kombucha batch should consist of starter liquid.

Tips

The temperature is important! If the tea is still too hot when you add the kombucha mushroom, you may kill the yeast and bacteria. Let them live :-).
If there are small brown particles floating next to the SCOBY in your FIRST8 starter culture, then it is yeast. Simply add it to the fermentation jar. You can then filter them out later, when you pour your homemade kombucha into bottles, using a strainer or coffee filter.
Depending on how acidic your kombucha starter is, you will need more or less for your new kombucha batch. If you want to be absolutely sure that your batch is acidic enough from the start, you can test the pH value. The entire kombucha batch should have a pH value of less than 4 and should decrease over time. Simple pH test strips are suitable for testing the pH value. If you have bought a FIRST8 mushroom with starter culture, then this is definitely enough for a total of 3 l of kombucha batch.

4. Cover the fermentation vessel

Cover your fermentation vessel with an air-permeable cloth and secure it with a rubber band. This will ensure that no unwanted particles or small creatures get into your homemade kombucha and that your kombucha gets enough oxygen for fermentation.

Tips

Especially in summer, there is a declared arch enemy of homemade kombucha: fruit flies. These little beasts will find the smallest gap to get to your kombucha. Your cover cloth should therefore not be too coarse-meshed.
Thin tea towels or cloth handkerchiefs are particularly good for protecting your homemade kombucha. In a pinch, kitchen roll will also work, but be careful not to make any holes or tears in it when attaching it.

5. Allow to ferment

Now give your kombucha 6-14 days to ferment.

To do this, place the glass in a place protected from light with a room temperature of 21-30°C.

The longer you wait, the more acidic your kombucha mixture will be.

After 5 days, taste your homemade kombucha every day to see how it tastes.

Once the combination of sweetness and acidity is perfect for you, it is ready.

Tips

In summer, kombucha ferments faster than in winter due to the higher temperatures. Sometimes just one day is enough for your kombucha to become too sour for your taste. That's okay, because you can still use it as a new starter for your next kombucha batch. Or you can add some fruit juice to balance out the acidity.
If you have made your kombucha with enough acidic starter liquid, not much can go wrong. It will not spoil, but will eventually turn into vinegar.
However, if you accidentally use too little acidic starter, your kombucha may spoil. If this happens, you should throw away the entire batch including the SCOBY.

6. Fill the finished kombucha

Before you bottle your homemade kombucha, take the SCOBY and its kids together with some of the kombucha and save it for your new batch. Before you start again at step 1, wash your SCOBY under cold water to remove the brownish yeast strands.

If you want to enjoy your homemade kombucha pure, simply bottle it and put it in the fridge. It will last for at least 2 weeks.

Tips

During fermentation, small yeast strands form. If you don't want to drink them, filter your kombucha through a strainer or coffee filter before bottling it.
We recommend using several smaller bottles for your kombucha instead of one large bottle, which you should drink within two days of opening. Fill the bottles as full as possible so that as little oxygen as possible remains in the bottle. This will prevent your kombucha from continuing to acidify in the fridge and forming new SCOBYs.

7. OPTIONAL: Refine your homemade kombucha

Do you know pure? Then try a second fermentation: First, fill the finished kombucha into bottles and then add herbs, fruit or juice according to taste and preference.

Now you have a choice: if you want some carbonation in your kombucha, then leave the bottles at room temperature for two days before storing them in the fridge. During this so-called secondary fermentation, the yeast produces CO2. If you prefer to drink your kombucha without carbonation, then put the bottles directly in the fridge and the yeast will stop working.

Tips

If you do a second fermentation at room temperature, do not leave the bottles outside the fridge for too long, otherwise they may burst. It is best to use bottles that are suitable for carbonated drinks and have a screw cap.
Has your kombucha not produced any carbon dioxide? Then your kombucha probably contains too little residual sugar. Fruits like raspberries (frozen ones work great too) work wonders.
Attention: a second fermentation can lead to increased alcohol production!

8. Start again at point 1 of the Kombucha recipe

You've done it: your homemade kombucha is ready to drink and your SCOBY has grown and multiplied. With one of your SCOBYs and some of your finished pure kombucha, you can now make new kombucha. To do so, simply follow the individual steps of this kombucha recipe again.

You can now either give the SCOBY Kids away as a gift along with some kombucha or make several new kombucha batches. Just try out different types of tea. You will be surprised at how different the end results will be.

Tips

If you harvested your kombucha quite early and with little acidity, then you should leave the part that you are using as a new starter covered with the SCOBY for a few more days to achieve a lower pH value.
SCOBYs love to multiply. You'll probably have a lot of them at some point. You can then simply dispose of them in the organic waste bin. You may have also heard of a SCOBY hotel. This is nothing more than a glass jar with starter liquid and lots of SCOBYs that are fed with a little sweetened tea every now and then. It's never a bad idea to keep one or two SCOBYs with enough starter in case something goes wrong with your kombucha batch. However, the starter liquid is more important than lots of SCOBYs. So feel free to get rid of one or two tea fungus.