Homemade Kombucha

Hello everyone!

Today I’m going to talk about my homemade kombucha.

When we Japanese hear the word “kombucha”, we think about “kelp tea” because “kombu” means kelp and “cha” means tea in Japanese. Honestly, kombucha is not so well-known in Japan. I think one of the reasons will be the availability – normally we cannot buy it at supermarkets. It seems that its manufacturing process does not comply with Japanese Food Sanitation Law. We have to make it at home by obtaining a scoby.

I started making kombucha at home six months ago and since then, I have been drinking it every day. I drink it as a substitute of alcohol and I realize the benefits of reducing alcohol intake as I wrote in the previous blog.

This is how I make:

1. Make tea from 10 grams of tea leaves and 1 liter of hot water.
2. Add 100 grams of sugar and mix well. (This amount of sugar seems a lot, but it turns to vinegar during fermentation process. Sugar is needed for fermentation.)
3. When the tea becomes cool, add a scoby.
4. Pour the tea into a clean jar and put a gauze and tighten it with a string, instead of a lid. (The jar should not be tightly closed with a regular lid, otherwise the jar will explode during the fermentation process.)
5. The fermentation process requires 1 or 2 weeks (in summer) or 4 weeks (in winter). The sweet taste turns sour after the fermentation.
6. Keep the scoby to make another round of kombucha by repeating the entire process above.

I usually pour it around 1/4 of a glass then add a teaspoon of homemade lemon paste then add carbonated water.

The taste is so refreshing!

Since I want to drink kombucha every day, I keep two bottles. When one bottle becomes empty, make another round then I drink the other bottle during fermentation.

My scoby became so thick like this!

Sometimes I do secondary fermentation by adding some fruits. The right one from the picture below is chopped strawberry and ginger, and the left one is apple and ginger. Both of them were so good!

Some people say that kombucha has various health benefits, but my purpose of drinking it is to reduce my alcohol consumption. Kombucha definitely fulfilled this purpose and I feel lots of health benefits by reducing alcohol.

I recently read articles saying that we can make kombucha from other liquids, such as apple juice. I will try some versions of kombucha and report to you!

Happy aging!