Kefir/kombucha
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homesweeths
Posts: 792 Member
I brew my own. Here's a thumbnail description of how we manage. If you google "water kefir" and "kombucha" you can find lots of other info.
Water kefir:
Our grains have been going for about a year. We brew in half-gallon glass jars. For each batch:
1-2 cups water kefir grains
1/2 cup cane sugar
5 drops mineral concentrate
Organic raisins
lemon (optional)
Filtered water to fill jar nearly full
Make "kefir food": Dissolve cane sugar and minerals with 2-3 cups boiling water. Stir to make sure all sugar dissolves. Cool.
We pour off the brewed kefir into gasket-sealing bottles (Grolsch?), catching the kefir grains in a plastic strainer. I don't rinse the grains but will clean them by hand, gently, if there is a lot of yeast growth (easy to differentiate from the grains). Pick out any old raisins that are starting to shred, remove lemon if used in previous batch. Plop grains back in jar. Add room-temperature kefir food. Add raisins if more are needed and/or lemon. Add filtered water up to where neck begins to narrow. Cover (I use a coffee filter secured with rubber band). Place jar in warm place out of direct light.
Kefir brews quickly in warm temps, more slowly with lower room temps. Ours brews as quickly as 18 hours in summer to 3 days in winter. Freshly added raisins will sink to bottom of jar when you are setting up a fresh brew, and when you see a majority of the raisins floating the batch is usually ready to harvest. (Carbon dioxide bubbles is what makes the fruit float.)
For flavor variety, you can do a "second ferment." Add fruit or juice to your kefir-filled gasket bottles, cap tightly and let stand at room temperature for another 24-48 hours. The probiotics will digest the sugars in the fruit or juice and often naturally carbonates the beverage. The longer you leave it, the more sour. There also may be some small alcoholic content.
Kefir seems to like variety. I add fruit for fermenting on a rotation.
Week 1: handful of organic raisins -- even though I harvest twice a week, the raisins will last a week or even two before you need to replace them
Week 2: slice of lemon, peel removed if not organic (this I only leave in for one brewing)
Sometimes I brew with just raisins, sometimes with lemon and raisins, very rarely with just lemon. You can experiment with other dried fruits but be careful. I'd experiment using extra kefir grains while maintaining a "control" lemon-raisin batch.
If you want to make your kefir grains reproduce quickly, use brown sugar instead of white cane sugar. We don't like the taste as well, so I only use brown sugar if I want to grow more kefir grains for brewing.
Kombucha
We do a continuous brew. I have a 2-1/2 gallon ceramic container with plastic spigot. The scoby lives in there, floating in kombucha. Every three days or so I add 1/2 gallon "food" -- dissolve 1/2 c white cane sugar in boiling water. Add four tea bags. Steep until cooled. Refrigerate or add immediately to kombucha jar.
I got my scoby from a friend . You can grow your own from a bottle of commercial raw kombucha, too. As long as your mushroom (scoby) stays healthy you can just keep brewing over and over.
Keep your brewing setup away from fruit (especially apples), drains, direct sunlight, and other cultures to avoid contamination.
Water kefir:
Our grains have been going for about a year. We brew in half-gallon glass jars. For each batch:
1-2 cups water kefir grains
1/2 cup cane sugar
5 drops mineral concentrate
Organic raisins
lemon (optional)
Filtered water to fill jar nearly full
Make "kefir food": Dissolve cane sugar and minerals with 2-3 cups boiling water. Stir to make sure all sugar dissolves. Cool.
We pour off the brewed kefir into gasket-sealing bottles (Grolsch?), catching the kefir grains in a plastic strainer. I don't rinse the grains but will clean them by hand, gently, if there is a lot of yeast growth (easy to differentiate from the grains). Pick out any old raisins that are starting to shred, remove lemon if used in previous batch. Plop grains back in jar. Add room-temperature kefir food. Add raisins if more are needed and/or lemon. Add filtered water up to where neck begins to narrow. Cover (I use a coffee filter secured with rubber band). Place jar in warm place out of direct light.
Kefir brews quickly in warm temps, more slowly with lower room temps. Ours brews as quickly as 18 hours in summer to 3 days in winter. Freshly added raisins will sink to bottom of jar when you are setting up a fresh brew, and when you see a majority of the raisins floating the batch is usually ready to harvest. (Carbon dioxide bubbles is what makes the fruit float.)
For flavor variety, you can do a "second ferment." Add fruit or juice to your kefir-filled gasket bottles, cap tightly and let stand at room temperature for another 24-48 hours. The probiotics will digest the sugars in the fruit or juice and often naturally carbonates the beverage. The longer you leave it, the more sour. There also may be some small alcoholic content.
Kefir seems to like variety. I add fruit for fermenting on a rotation.
Week 1: handful of organic raisins -- even though I harvest twice a week, the raisins will last a week or even two before you need to replace them
Week 2: slice of lemon, peel removed if not organic (this I only leave in for one brewing)
Sometimes I brew with just raisins, sometimes with lemon and raisins, very rarely with just lemon. You can experiment with other dried fruits but be careful. I'd experiment using extra kefir grains while maintaining a "control" lemon-raisin batch.
If you want to make your kefir grains reproduce quickly, use brown sugar instead of white cane sugar. We don't like the taste as well, so I only use brown sugar if I want to grow more kefir grains for brewing.
Kombucha
We do a continuous brew. I have a 2-1/2 gallon ceramic container with plastic spigot. The scoby lives in there, floating in kombucha. Every three days or so I add 1/2 gallon "food" -- dissolve 1/2 c white cane sugar in boiling water. Add four tea bags. Steep until cooled. Refrigerate or add immediately to kombucha jar.
I got my scoby from a friend . You can grow your own from a bottle of commercial raw kombucha, too. As long as your mushroom (scoby) stays healthy you can just keep brewing over and over.
Keep your brewing setup away from fruit (especially apples), drains, direct sunlight, and other cultures to avoid contamination.
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Replies
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I've been trying to get up the courage to try brewing kombucha myself (it's way too expensive to buy bottles at Whole Foods!!!0
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I've been trying to get up the courage to try brewing kombucha myself (it's way too expensive to buy bottles at Whole Foods!!!
I know someone who was able to brew her own kombucha from a Whole Foods bottle of kombucha!
I know that my kombucha is so active that if I pour off a glass and just let it sit at room temperature for a few days, a mushroom will begin forming, which I could use to start a new culture.
I think what she did was, she bought unpasteurized kombucha in a bottle that didn't have any other flavors added (a lot of them have ginger, or juice, or other flavorings, which can damage the culture), poured it into a glass bowl or jar, covered it and let it sit. I don't remember if she fed it (i.e., added sweet tea) before the mushroom formed in the liquid, or not.
Once you have the mushroom, it's easy enough. Put it in a jar, add some already brewed kombucha (the liquid acts as a starter, I guess, and also maintains a safer level of acidity), add sweet tea (the ratio is a cup of sugar and eight teabags to a gallon of water -- you can make it up ahead of time and refrigerate it, but I just make it fresh each time to avoid mold issues), cover with a permeable cover, either cloth or coffee filter, and let sit out of direct sunlight.
It takes about a week to culture, if you're making it in jars, depending on your room temperature (warmer temps make it culture faster, cooler temps slower -- because we keep our house cool in winter, it could take 10 or 11 days to culture in a jar). Also, the more kombucha starter liquid you have in the container, the faster it will culture. In my 2-1/2 gallon container, I add 1/2 gallon sweet tea at a time, and it takes about 3 days to culture because of the 2 gallons of kombucha liquid already there. You can tell by taste or pH if the culture is done brewing. It should taste sort of like a sparkly apple cider vinegar. I forget what the pH should be, but you can easily find that info online. Pour off most of the liquid, reserving some for your next batch, add fresh sweet tea, and you're ready to culture again. You can do a second ferment of kombucha, as well -- this is where you'd add fruit juice or flavoring. The mushroom should only be in contact with sweet tea.
I didn't believe it when I started, but I was advised to use white cane sugar and Lipton tea. I experimented a bit, and found the advice was true. My kombucha thrives on cheap sugar and non-fancy black tea.
You can use any kind of black tea, and I think you can use green tea or a mix of black/green, not sure as I've only used black tea. Don't use flavored teas, as the flavoring can poison the culture. Don't use herb teas, as they don't provide the nutrients required by the culture.
The kombucha will keep growing layers of mushroom as you culture it. You can peel layers away and start new jars, give away to your friends, or compost the extra growth. I had a jar that got shoved to the back of a cabinet, and when I found it a few months later, the jar was completely filled with layers of "mushroom" and a little liquid! I've heard of doing this on purpose (I think it's called a "kombucha hotel") to have a backup culture in case your main culture gets contaminated.
The mushroom should remain a creamy white-beige color. Throw it out and start over if it develops black or orange mold. (There may be other colors of mold, too, I don't remember.) To avoid mold contamination, keep your kombucha away from other cultures, fruit (especially apples), and direct sunlight.
I am amazed at how simple kombucha brewing turned out to be. So far, so good...0
