Making
Three Quarts of Kombucha
January
16, 2005
This
brief overview of our method for is
based on considerable research and nearly twelve years' experience.
For a fuller discussion of many of these recommendations, please see
our web page.
We
look at Kombucha preparation as being similar to caring for a pet or
maintaining a compost pile: after all, when “make” Kombucha,
what we are really doing is managing a group of creatures, in this case
a symbiosis of bacteria and yeasts. They will thrive when we create
optimal conditions for them, and what they care about most are the temperature
and the nutrients (sugar and tea). As Kombucha researcher Michael Roussin
puts it, Kombucha seems to have memory: it likes to do what it has done.
So we strive for consistency in all aspects of the preparation.
-
Wash
your hands and fingernails carefully. Rinse well to remove all soap.
-
Bring
three quarts water to a boil in a stainless steel pan.
-
Add
fifteen grams green tea. (With our loose tea this turns out to be
three generous tablespoons. We have read that five tea bags weigh
fifteen grams.) Steep fifteen minutes then remove tea.
-
Stir
in one cup white sugar.
-
Allow
to cool to room temperature.
-
Pour
tea into wide-mouth glass container. (Food grade polyethylene, HDPE
#2, is OK.)
-
Add
1¼
cup Kombucha tea from an earlier batch and the
Kombucha colony.
-
Cover
the container with a thin piece of cotton and secure it with a rubber
band to keep out fruit flies and airborne contaminants.
-
Place
container in a warm location—we prefer 74°—out of
the light where it will remain undisturbed.
-
Ferment
for about 7 days. In cooler temperatures it will take longer.
-
When
it becomes slightly tart but is still a little sweet, remove
the original Kombucha colony and the new baby colony that will have
formed on the surface of the tea. Place them on a clean plate. Everyone
agrees, handle them with care.
-
Pour
the tea into glass bottles that can be tightly capped, leaving ¾
inch airspace.
-
Store
the bottles at room temperature for about two weeks. After that, store
them in a cooler place.
-
Following
the research we did, three of us drink what we consider a maintenance
amount of four ounces at each meal, and one of us (who is using the
Kombucha as part of an overall therapeutic program for Parkinson's
and prostate cancer) drinks a “curative” eight ounces
per meal. Consumption recommendations vary considerably, starting
at about two ounces per day.
