Kombucha Sunday: The second fermentation [ explosive gifs included! ]

Hello, friend!!

It's Sunday and that means one thing and one thing only: Kombucha!!

Our journey continues with what we call, second fermentation. As I said, after 7 days the SCOBY eats the sugar in the sweet tea and poops good stuff in it and now it's basically kombucha. A tart, slightly sweet, a little vinegary awesome drink. Sure, the taste is nice...but SECOND FERMENTATION is where the magic happen. I'll tell you all about it.

First thing first. Do you want to be cool?
Do YOU?!
Well...I'll let you in a super secret. When you talk about your second fermentation just say "2f". That's what the cool 'bucha people say. You'll sound like a pro!

This is how my bottles, ready to go into 2f look like!

So what exactly is 2f?
In essence is a way to carbonate and add flavors to the kombucha. You add to a bottle some fruit juice, some herbs, some ginger, top up with kombucha and SEAL it in. If you want carbonation you want the bottle to be air-locked. That's why we use Grolsch bottles. These babies keep all the CO2 in the bottle.

Because I'm just starting out, I still experiment with combinations. For example what you see here is:

1. Ginger+turmeric+ pinapple juice
2. Ginger + HABANERO+ pinapple juice
3. Pear juice
4. Lemon + honey

We'll see how all this turns out. The ration is like 20% juice.80% kombucha for now.
How fast and how carbonated it turns out depends on a lot of factors like:

• temperature
• how much sugar in the fruit
• how strong the yeast in the 'bucha is
• how many times you said "namaste" before you airlocked it.
• other arcane factors

Ginger+turmeric+pinapple juice

This one I already took out after just one day. I was dying to try one out and this seemed almost ready. It's amazing, spicy and strong and mildly carbonated. I think one more day would have been ideal for this one. I'm taking notes to know for the next time!

Now, a word to the wise. As CO2 keep building into the bottles, pressure also goes through the roof. A good bottle is most important or else...you might just wake up with an exploded bottle in your kitchen. I hate cleaning broken glass :(
So am I really comfortable with working with what can literally be glass bombs?!
NOUP

What I do is "burp" them every day or so. It only means opening the seal for a few second to release some pressure.
The downside is that this way, you lose a bit of carbonation...
The upside is that you might not get glass all over your kitchen, dog, yourself.
Risk: reward wise I think i'll keep burping them!

Here's the fun part I promise. GIFS!!
I love to see how the super pressured bottle is so ready to explode.
PS: always burp in a save environment.

GIF number one!

HOT MOLLY!
This Absolute bottle is awesome. Very sturdy, and airlocks almost perfect. Look nice too because I can see the color as it changes during 2f.
Speaking of which...can you recommend any other interesting bottle to use for 2f? Leave a comment!

And this is gif number 2. A grolsch bottle under pressure.

With this awesome guy I'll leave you to it. I'm off to enjoy my turmeric bucha and please...
HAVE AN AWESOME SUNDAY!