How to make kombucha

Kombucha is a probiotic tea-based beverage, sparkling and acidic. It's delicious and healthy, and helps treat digestive system ailments.

It's quite cheap and easy to make so I thought I might share my method which I have been using since almost 10 years.

Ingredients

• Black or green tea, unflavoured and caffeinated
• White sugar
• Live kombucha culture
• Very small amount of fruit or ginger roots for flavouring

Preparation

• You need to have some kombucha to begin the fermentation process, so you may buy a small bottle from almost any grocery store (you'll only need to do this once ever).

• Brew strong and very sweet black or green unflavoured tea, use about 40 grams (or 1/4 cup) of sugar per liter of tea. Let it cool.

• Pour a small amount (about 250 ml) of the store-bought kombucha (or less than 100 ml of kombucha from your previous batch) in a large glass jar. Rather than closing the jar with a lid, close it with cloth (secured ie. by an elastic band), as it needs oxygen.

• Leave the jar at room temperature, away from direct sunlight, and wait for several weeks (or only a week for future batches), until a scoby (symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast) forms. Most recipes would suggest buying a scoby, but starting from a bottle of store-bought kombucha works just as well.

• Pour the kombucha into a glass bottle, through a funnel and cloth or tea strainer, until it's 95% full. In the bottle, add a small amount of ginger roots or any fruit you want, you need very little ie. 5 blueberries for one liter (a lot too much and the bottle may explode).

• After a few days, you will have sparkling flavoured kombucha! No need to store it in the fridge, for it is very resilient against foreign bacteria and fungi.

Please feel free to ask any question. And don't be stressed about any of the preparation steps, kombucha preparation is forgiving and gives good results in a relatively wide variety of conditions.
-aoi

By the way, it's my 1 year Steem birthday! :D