Bottling Your Kombucha Brew

I leave Booch to brew for ten days, if you prefer a weaker drink seven days might suit you better. On the tenth day when it's time to bottle the brew, you will need to prepare a new tea brew as per the instructions on starting your brew: put your teabags and sugar in a vessel with the boiling water, stir and leave to steep until cool. This will be your new brew once you've bottled the old one.

When the tea is cool, remove the teabags and you are ready to bottle. 

You will need:

• some empty bottles with air-tight fitting lids
• a plate (to put your Booch on while you transfer the brew) 
• a funnel 

Make sure everything is sterile.

1. Get your Booch. You can see mine (above) has created a whole other mother Booch (floating underneath) during just ten days of brewing. You can also see the original Booch has grown to fill the circumference of the vessel, forming an air-tight seal on the brew below. The brew will be already somewhat carbonated (i.e. fizzy) due to the airtight seal. If your Booch has developed bubbles on top, don't worry, that's just the CO2 gasses trying to escape. It's all good.

2. Remove Booch from vessel. Put the Booch (or Booches if yours have grown more than one) onto the clean plate while you work. Make sure no grubby things get on them while they are exposed sitting on the plate. If you have a mother Booch that has formed a baby Booch underneath during the brewing process, you can either leave it attached to the mother if it's still small, or ever so gently separate them (you will need to tear them apart gently). You should only have one mother Booch per brew as if you have more you can get a too-strong brew which can have adverse side affects for your health. However a baby Booch can be ok if it is still small, you may need to shorten your brew time to less than 7 days so the brew is not too strong. You can either give the extra Booches away to friends or use them to start new brews. If you have extra Booches you don't need and no-one wants to take them, you can bury them in the garden. Here is a great link for info on using your Booches for balancing your pH levels in the garden.

3. Save one cup of the liquid for your next batch.
If you have two brews going you need to save two cups, one from each brew. Also, if you are going to be giving away any of your baby Booches, you will need to put them in a separate clean jar with around one cup of brew each too, for their new brewing homes. 

4. Funnel the brew into bottles. Pour slowly. You may notice a lot of sediment. You can drain that off if you prefer. I like to keep mine in the bottles, and I filter it off when pouring after refrigeration.

5. Flavouring. If you want to flavour your brews, this is when you will do it. Don't do it during the brewing process, as some ingredients contain anti-bacterial properties (e.g. ginger) which can kill or damage the Booch mother. I mainly prefer to drink my Kombucha au naturel, but sometimes I experiment. Today just for fun I added some citrus peel which I had in the pantry. This contains sugar, so it will add to the carbonation process. Other flavourings I have tried have been: orange; apple and cinnamon; fennel and pear (delicious); lemon and ginger; lime. Have fun experimenting but be careful, some ingredients can have an explosive effect! There are some great websites with tips and recipes.

6. Carbonation: If you want a very carbonated (bubbly) drink, make sure you limit the amount of air getting to the drink, so fill your bottles right up, and make sure you have an airtight lid. Flavouring ingredients such as fruits can increase carbonation as the Kombucha will continue to feed off of any available sugars during this secondary fermentation process. This page has some really great information on carbonation. Once your brew is bottled, with any optional flavourings added (or not) and the lid is airtight, put your bottles away in a dark place at room temperature for a few days. Give them a couple of days or so, you will need to check on them if you are experimenting with new flavourings just to avoid any accidents (exploding Booch)!

7. Refrigeration. If you don't care about bubbles and want to skip the carbonation process you can refrigerate your Booch right after bottling. There will already be a little carbonation in the brew from the original fermentation.

8. Drink and enjoy!

Don't forget to start your new brews with the Booch, cup of starter brew and tea you prepared. 

Tips: Write on your bottles the dates and ingredients (if any added). Keep a note in your calendar of your brewing and bottling dates so you can remember the next date to harvest your brew and to monitor the progress!

How To Make Your Own Kombucha Mother From Scratch

To make your own Booch mother is very easy but requires some patience. The steps are basically the same as the instructions on how to start your Kombucha brew, except that you will need to acquire a bottle of store-bought Kombucha, available from organic and health-food stores. This will be used instead of the cup of Kombucha starter tea and Booch mother in the ingredients listed there.

Follow all the instructions to prepare the brew, but omit the part where it says 'add the starter tea', and 'add the Booch'. Instead add one cup of the Kombucha from the store-bought bottle. 

Cover (as per the instructions for starting your brew) and store for 1 to 4 weeks, disturbing as little as possible. You can check to monitor the progress of your Booch, but don't lose heart if it's taking some time, and don't prod or shake it around too much. Mine took 6 weeks to develop the first time, as I made it in the middle of winter in Wellington! They like a nice room temperature, so if you have a cold room, keep it in the warmest place, near a heater preferably, even if the heater's only on sporadically. 

Remember to give it lots of LOVE and encouragement. It will be the starter mother of many batches and brews to come, which will contribute to your good health and the good health of your friends and family. So give her lots of love and appreciation!

You will notice it will start out as a few bubbles which then merge into a film on the top of your liquid, which then turns into a slimy looking grey mass. It will eventually fill out and thicken into a solid layer. Be patient. When it's about a 7mm thick it's ready to be used as a mother to start a Kombucha brew! Nice one!

Start Your Own Kombucha Brew!

The original reason I created this page was actually to provide a place to teach my friends how to make their own Kombucha brews from the mothers I gave them (see photo below). If you would like a free kombucha mother and you are in Wellington, contact me to arrange pickup. 

I figured it can also be a great place for me to share other things I'm doing and making. I love DIY and am enjoying discovering ways to save money and be self-sufficient.

Thus the page.

Now to the Kombucha.

To start with, I just want to say that I don't like the word 'scoby', (I also don't like the word 'blog'). Scoby is an acronym for Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast, which is what the Kombucha culture is. But the word doesn't sound good to me. So from here on in I'll use the word 'Booch', which is what I call my Kombucha mothers*, instead of saying scoby.

(*A Kombucha 'mother' is another name for the scoby. They are called mothers because they create offspring 'baby' scobys which can then be harvested and given away to friends or used to start new batches of brew.)

There are many benefits attributed to the drinking of Kombucha, which is full of probiotics and good things for our gut... however I'll let you google search all that info for yourself if you're interested and just suffice it to say, I love it! It's yummy, makes me feel great and I have definitely noticed improvements in my health and in my energy levels.

The main thing to keep in mind with your brew is to make sure everything you use is sterile. The Booch is a living organism, and thus will thrive in a clean environment and get sick in a dirty one. However, feel assured. Households in China, Eastern Europe and Japan have been making kombucha for thousands of years, probably sometimes in conditions not half as spick as our sometimes overly-disinfected modern homes! So take heart. It's easy once you get used to it! 

What you will need:

• a Booch mother (if you don't have one I will make another post with instructions on how to make your own Booch mother from scratch)
• 7 glasses of boiling water
• 1/2 cup of raw sugar
• 4 teabags, regular black tea is great to start with (a.k.a. 'gumboot' or 'builder's' tea)
• 1 cup of Kombucha starter tea (liquid from previous batch)
• a pot or bowl in which to brew the tea
• a large (2L or more) vessel made from glass or earthenware. I use two large vessels for my brews (see below), one earthenware pot, one large preserving jar. I picked up both from second-hand stores for around $3 each. If you use glass, you will need to wrap the sides of it at the end with a cloth, as the Booch needs a dark place to ferment.
• breathable cotton (or other natural fibre) fabric for covering your brew

(An important note: ensure you avoid/limit any contact between the Kombucha brew and metal (e.g. metal spoons, metal fermenting vessels) as metal can weaken the Booch and affect the flavour of your brew. A metal pot or bowl is fine for making the tea in at the beginning of the process, before any Kombucha is added).

Also, remember to give your Booch brew lots of L-O-V-E! That's the key successful ingredient!

Instructions

1. Make the tea. Brew the teabags in the boiling water and add the sugar. You can either steep boiling water in a bowl with the teabags (my method, as below), or bring the water to a boil in a stovepot with the teabags in it. You can stir the sugar through to help it dissolve if you like. Leave to cool for several hours (you can stand the vessel in ice cold water to help it cool if you are impatient). Once it is cool, remove the teabags. 

2. Transfer to jar and add the starter tea. Pour into the vessel in which you will be fermenting and add the Kombucha starter tea, no need to stir. 

3. Add Booch. Making sure your hands are clean and free of metal jewellery, gently slide in the Booch, smoothest side up (i.e. the more ragged side downward.) Once in the jar, don't disturb any more than necessary. The Booch will sink at first but eventually will rise to sit on top of the brew, and will grow to fill the circumference of the jar, creating an airtight seal to protect the fermenting tea from unhelpful bacteria.

3. Cover the jar with breathable fabric. Cover your vessels with a few layers of tightly woven natural cloth (cotton, or even paper towels). Cheesecloth is not too good as its fibres aren't tightly woven enough and can let dust and bugs through. I used cotton scarves that I no longer wear, clean, washed and cut to size. Secure with a rubber band, hair tie, string. This cloth allows airflow so the brew can breathe, but stops dust, dirt and bugs getting onto the Booch.

3. Leave the brew to ferment for 7 - 10 days. Keep the vessel out of direct sunlight in a place where it won't be disturbed. If you are using a glass jar, wrap the sides of it with a nice dark cloth to keep it out of the light. I used an old cotton sari for this. After 7 days of fermentation, start tasting the Kombucha each day to check the flavour. When it reaches a taste that suits you it's ready to bottle.  I like my brew a little stronger so I bottle mine every ten days thus I don't need to taste test it to know when it's ready.

In the next post I will show you how to bottle your brew and start a new batch!