HOW TO MAKE KOMBUCHA! (part 2)

everybody aids Kendra welcome to my channel join you and welcome back if you've been here before my video today is going to be part two of my kombucha series so this video is actually how to make kombucha part 1 which I'll link down below I talked all about kind of like an overview of kombucha all that stuff but now I'm actually show you how to make it so today I'm going to show you how to take fermented kombucha I have a big batch one of those guys back there one of those is to balance and it's finished it's finished fermenting so I'm going to show you how to take that finished kombucha and flavor it then I'm going to also show you how to restart that and get it going for a new batch now if this is your first time of course you're not going to have Ramona kombucha flavor so you're just going to do the second part but I think it's important to actually show you sort of my process and see exactly how I do it because this process only takes me 45 minutes and I feel like I've really gotten it down because of doing this process okay let's discuss ingredients so the main ingredients in kombucha we need to we need sugar we need water and we need culture super super super basic let's talk tea now when I say tea I'm not talking like chamomile tea or herbal tea any of that stuff you can play around with that but that's not going to be your main sort of go-to tea source when I'm talking to you I'm talking anything from the camellia sinensis plant which includes white tea green tea oolong black and quirky they all come from the same plant how cool is that I had no idea I learned that last year so anyway the tea that I use is by this brand positively I use a blend of half black and half green the black I use is this positively to some and the green is the organic pinhead gunpowder both of these are organic I buy them from Amazon they're maybe like 15 to 20 dollars for pound of loose tea if you prefer this tea I don't use tea bags but tea bags are totally fine if you want next you're going to need some sugar so I get my sugar from Costco they sell these great 10 pound bags of organic cane sugar if you want cane sugar I would not recommend using like coconut sugar or date sugar any of that stuff you can play around with that but I don't know how it's going to work so yes you do want to use king server also you need water I do filter my water I have a little picture with water filter so I use that also you are going to need a Scooby which is the symbiotic colony of bacteria and yet it looks like this and it looks really really gross and then you're also going to need some starter liquid which is basically just already brewed kombucha so you can see on the bottom there's some starter liquid there I would say for about a gallon you don't need this much go be double walls go be just rip off like a chunk of that and then maybe every gallon you're doing I'd say at least like two cups maybe two cups that starter liquid because I like to give it like a nice good send-off let's call it that because I really want it to be like a nice strong culture to just really get everything going ok let's talk about what you're going to actually brew your kombu to in you need some type of vessel if you're just starting off you could use a one gallon glass jar like this this you know it doesn't have a spigot so that's my one little downfall for this but this is totally a fine way to start now if you like from Volusia like I do I use these big vessels these big glass vessels with spigot so each of these two in the middle these are exactly the same these are three gallon and this is well they can hold three gallons by only group two in each so these come with a spigot but the spigot they come with are really really crappy so I always replace them with these nice stainless steel spigots so I would recommend if you are choosing to brew in a vessel with a spigot change the spigot it'll make your life so much easier and actually just brewing like this is so wonderful and it makes your life so easy with the spigot also I highly recommend picking up some of these little adhesive thermometers are very helpful temperatures actually very important with kombucha so it's really nice to sort of see what temperature you're at to sort of gauge like how long it's going to take super and then of course as you can see on each of them I have a little dish towel these are just like cute clean dish towels I get actually from fabulous place in Paris called Hema it's actually a Dutch sort of dollar store type type deal amazing towels and I just think it's very very cute also you're going to need something to secure your towel these black bands are actually those kind of like headbands that you could wear to keep your bangs back like if you're exercising so this combination for me is wonderful basically the cover you want you need to be able to have oxygen going into the brew but you don't want bugs and dust and all that you have to be soft to get in there okay other things you're going to need I like to steep my tea in a glass bowl I do not steep a gallon of tea at a time I do a quart I make a concentrate and then I add it to cool water just because I don't want to sit around for 4 hours and wait for my tea to cool so I'll explain exactly how I do that in just a sec so I seat my tea in a bowl I use one of these giant tea bowls just seat my team because it's loose Chi and this is a super super convenient it just opens and closes like so very nice you are going to need a tablespoon measure and also a cup measuring cup I like to use a bamboo or wooden spoon to sort of stir things up I try to avoid metal as much as possible because a lot of metal is very reactive with the kombucha but if you get stainless steel you're usually fine other things that are handy I like to have a ladle a soup ladle but I would highly recommend getting one that has a plastic head because once upon a time I use one that was metal and I broke an entire gallon glass jar full of strawberry kombucha and then my entire kitchen including into my drawers and into my cabinets all smells like kombucha that was really a pain delete also you're going to want to have some type of funnel to actually put your kombucha into bottles I really like this one because it has this little strainer in it that's very helpful also I do tend to use one of these strainers as well to just keep all the little extra particles out although of you are flavor and I like to flavor in these big gallon glass jars I'm going to actually show you how to flavor two gallons of kombucha today and finally you're also going to need some bottles you're going to need something to actually put your finished kombucha and once it's finished either with the first fermentation process or if you do decide to flavor it something to put it in after that now I tend to just save my old company bottles and that works great I just clean them up very very well and just reuse them so if you drink up with you now and you're going to start making your own start saving your bottles and have your friends save them for you one note with bottles I tendinous use bottles actually have caps of screw caps I don't I don't actually have any of the bottles with like little flip top guys that look really cool I don't use those anymore because it's so difficult to control the carbonation and I've often had a kombucha volcanoes if I use those bottles so I don't like to use the bottle to have like the little fancy flip tops I just prefer normal bottles and co and one last thing that will make your life so much easier one of these water kettle it's they're so so so helpful okay another thing that is super super super useful for brewing kombucha is this book this is by far the best book I have found on the subject the big book of kombucha absolutely amazing it's super super stick has tons of information so if you're going to brew your own kombucha this is a book I would absolutely recommend getting also another thing that's very helpful to do just get yourself a dedicated notebook where you can jot down notes about what you're doing from batch to batch with your own kombucha maybe you come across a really good recipe maybe you come across like a really good flavor combination and you want to remember it so I highly recommend also jotting down notes about what you're doing all right let's make some kombucha so this vessel is finished fermenting I started this baby on April 23rd as you will see and today is May 3rd so it's like a 10 days so that's pretty pretty solid now if you look at this I'll take this stuff off so you can see it it looks really weird right let's go in a little bit closer that's what it looks like okay it's kind of bubbly it looks kind of gross and that's totally normal like you know it's not it's not really a thing of beauty but it kind of is beautiful in its own way so every time you make kombucha you do get a new layer of scobie's so you can see here there are several layers that have formed from the last few batches I've done so basically today I'm going to show you how I take this and I flavor this and then I get a whole new batch going okay let's make some kombu I've just covered this guy up because I don't want any or anything in there okay so this vessel is two gallons so basically today I'm going to be making two gallons of new fresh sweet tea to put into this and then I'm going to be taking the already fermented kombucha and flavoring it so the first thing I do is start new sweet tea so I'm using my tee ball and I've got my little jars of tea here now for cup for every gallon you make you want three tablespoons of loose tea so because I am doing two gallons I need six tablespoons loose tea so I'm going to do three tablespoons each of black and green so this is my black a song and then I'm going to do free of my green my pinhead gunpowder green put it in my tea Bowl okay then just close up my key ball I already have two quarts of water right here that is hot so I'm just going to put that on it and then I let this steep for 20 minutes okay I'm going to let this steep for 20 minutes and in the meantime I'm going to move on to actually flavoring this kombu job so today I'm going to be doing a gallon of strawberry lemonade and also a gallon of ginger lemon these two combinations are great I feel like ginger lemon is just foolproof and always good other combinations that are great I love using beets so I'll just peel and chop up some beets I like to do beat plain or sometimes I will be like beet ginger be ginger lemon that's great another flavor that's really really good for Cumbre is cucumber I found that if I do cucumber lemon or cucumber lemon and dried elderflower flowers so good if you've ever had the French liqueur called st. Germain soul German thing coming it tastes just like that it's super super super yummy but you can totally player on the flavors apple is really nice all that you think is strawberry on its own you could add ginger on its own you could do lemon on its own there've a jillion different flavors and the big book of kombucha also has loads of different ideas for flavoring so what do I do basically I uncover my brew and I give it a good stir okay because I want to sort of mix up all the stuff that's in there there's yeast there's bacteria I just want to give it a good old little whoosh to stir everything up Oh also by the way how do I know when it's ready basically I would say maybe if you're doing to balance I would say after about seven days you're going to want to start tasting it and once it finally has that kind of slightly sour sweet effervescent sort of flavor then you're good but you just sort of like learn how to do that you just kind of gauge it you guesstimate it and you just sort of like hone in on what flavor you like for your finish cumbrous some people like it a little bit more sweet some people like it a little bit more sour and more fermented so anyway I'm going to start with my strawberry lemonade so I have a cup of chopped clean and chopped up strawberries and then I also have the juice from one Myers lemon so I'm just going to put that in my little jar and then I'm going to throw it up all right so my strawberry lemonade I just capped it up I'm going to let it sit for about 24 hours before bottling my second one today is going to the ginger lemon so I'm juiced about three lemons here two and a half three lemons yeah I was two and a half I think and then I also peeled and chopped up probably about three inches of ginger I just kind of diagonally sliced it infinite little slices I'm just going to put that in there and then do the exact same thing fill it up okay there you go basically that's all you need to do to flavor very very easy I like to do infusions this is what is called an infusion because I'm leaving the stuff fit together to actually infuse sometimes when I do ginger I'll actually run the ginger through my juicer to make ginger juice and then you can bottle it right away but in this situation I'm going to let go of these sit for about 24 hours and then I'll come back tomorrow and I'll bottle it and then I'll show you guys what to do with that too and also I want to point out so with this every time you brew kombucha you do need a bit of your former batch of kombucha in the next batch to start the next batch this is what's considered starter liquid so you see I still have a Scooby in there and I've got a lot of starter liquid so basically if I'm doing you know two gallons probably the first time I start it I might make a little bit more than two and then every time after that I'll only draw off two gallons and then we use about up to my spigot because this will be my good starter for the next batch okay my 20 minutes of steeping time are up so I'm just going to take this out let it kind of drain out a bit and then I'm going to set that on top of this jar so this gallon westar already has three quarts of filtered water in it so I'm going to need another three quarts of filtered water I just don't have a second jar to do this in I just - but then that was the one I broke anyway now we need to add some silver so I've got my big ol bag of sugar and this is two quarts so we use 1 1 cup of sugar per gallon so I'm doing two gallons so I need 2 cups of sugar so I'm just going to put this in and then stir it about until all dissolves okay that's pretty well solved and this has cooled off a little bit so I'm just going to shake out as much tea as I possibly can also just FYI if you are a gardener or if you compost I highly recommend saving the leaves and throw these into your compost even if you just put these around your plants it can be very very good tea leaves have a lot of nitrogen so that's very yummy for our plants okay so now what I'm going to do I've got my hot sweet tea concentrate and I'm going to put it in here I'm going to put half of this in here and then I'll put three more quarts of cool water and do again so my first batch is done so basically I'm just going to take this and dump this into the big guy carefully okay and then I'm just going to fill us with three more course and also just FYI the pitcher that I use to filter my water this is a soma I believe that you like coconut some type of coconut filter very good I like them so anyway got my three quarts my second round two three quart I'm just going to finish putting the rest of my sweet team here now the reason I do this concentrate like I said I don't want to wait for two gallons of tea to cool down I don't want to use anything super super hot with my Scobie if I dump two gallons of hot sweet tea in there it would totally kill my culture so I don't want to do that that's why I mix it with cool filtered water just so I don't hurt myself and so I also don't have to wait a bajillion years Hey look at that perfect okay so now I'm just going to add my second batch there we go also every time I start a new batch I put on a new towel to protect it from boogies and dust and then I secure it with my black band and then also finally the last thing I always do with this batch I'll put the date on it so today's date is May 3rd so I'm going to use masking tape and a marker and just write my third and then stick it on there we go and then I'm just going to put my little guy back in the corner over here and that will take probably about 10 more days to firm it okay so here I am I'm back the next day I've let about 24 hours pass and you can already see just the difference in color both of these yesterday we're sort of like a light kind of brown but now the strawberry lemonade has become a very nice pretty pink and the lemon ginger has kind of become a bit more this yellowy tone alright now I'm going to show you very quickly how I bottle and finish off my kombucha so this flavor comes out we tie we could consider this the second fermentation process because we're infusing it now when we bottle it our goal is to build some carbonation you can see here we definitely have some bubbles building but once we bottle it in the smaller glass bottles we're going to really build some carbonation now one thing I always do I put a raisin this smelled our raisins I always put a raisin in the bottle because this is going to give the kombucha a little bit of extra sugar - just help continue the fermentation process and help get everything just you know just give it a little more sugar for the yeast to eat and that will in turn create carbonation so when I gobble it I use my little plastic a yellow plastic ladle and I'm just going to give this a gentle swoosh again this is why I say use plastic because I once upon a time use metal and had an accident so give this a little stir and then I'm going to use my little other strainer to just filter out some of the strawberries and just like that that's all I do to bottle it although I just want to point out the color of the strawberries no they don't look very appetizing that's because the kombucha has actually gone in and taken out the flavor the color all that yummy stuff so this stuff get is chalk and then you just cap it up and you are good to go and again going to do the same process with the lemon ginger just going to give this guy a nice little stir get everything mixed around would it look so yummy so as you can see I have all of my kombucha bottles I got 14 bottles out of those 2 gallons that's usually what I get usually I can get 7 bottles out of each gallon now I've also taken some masking tape and sharpie and just labeled it with the flavor and also with today's dates so now I'm not going to set these in the fridge right away I'm going to let these sit out for about 24 to 48 hours but about every 12 hours I'm going to open them each up just quickly crack it open just because the carbonation is going to start to build and I want to release that carbonation it will seem very very slight at first but after you know 24 36 hours you'll definitely have some good carbonation building up now I have one quick tip for opening these bottles this will really hurt your hands okay if you're like opening and closing opening and closing you know every like twice a day every 12 hours it has a really really sore because you do want to be closing these pretty tightly I like to use these gloves actually these gloves that have kind of this rubbery silicone plastic stuff on it this gets such a good grip and it totally protects your hand when you're opening up the bottles random thing I totally discovered and I'm so happy I discovered it all right there you go that is how I make kombucha I wanted to show you my whole process just so you can sort of see what I do every time I have a new batch of kombucha that is finished I wanted to show you the flavoring thing because you'll probably be flavoring in the future I also of course want to show you the bottling stage another thing I forgot to mention I just want to talk about like the price per gallon I did mention on actual bottle of kombucha if you buy it it can be like three to five dollars a bottle I would say per gallon it's probably only like just the base kombucha not including like the fruits or vegetables to flavor I would say maybe two or three bucks per gallon maybe even less than that I've never actually figured out the actual pricing but it super super affordable of course if you're starting to use like fruits and veg and stuff to flavor it the price goes up a little bit but not that much it's a very very simple process it just sort of takes a little time to get your groove down get your rhythm going and figure out what works for you which flavors you like and so on also please please please do not have to ask me any questions I absolutely love discussing kombucha and if I don't know the answer to your question I will certainly do some research and then we will don't be learning at the same time so anyway thanks so much for watching like comment subscribe and I'll see you in the next video bye

Channel: Kendra Lee

Views: 52,932

Rating: 4.8957748 out of 5

Keywords: kombucha, diy, how to, health, nutrition, bacteria, probiotics, brew, homebrew, homemade, healthy, fermentation, sugar, drink, beverage, fizzy

Id: Izeets7KLLc

Length: 21min 27sec (1287 seconds)

Published: Sat May 06 2017