Kombucha is a fizzy, tasty health drink with a slightly acidic flavor that runs about $3 a bottle at health food stores. Next time you pick up a bottle, just grab the original (no fruit juice added) and bring it home to mix with 2 simple ingredients and start your own.
Ingredients to Make Your Own Kombucha:
- 1 bottle of original, unflavored kombucha
- 1 cup of tea
- 1 tablespoon sugar
I took a cup of chai tea, added a tablespoon of sugar, and let it cool. Then I poured the tea and kombucha into a glass bowl and covered with a hand towel.
After one week I started to question what was going on with the kombucha. There were a few whitish spots floating on the surface, but don’t worry, it’s not mold! This is the kombucha starter, or scoby. [Did you know that SCOBY stands for symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast?] If your kombucha gets contaminated then it will most likely grow common mold which is generally green, blue, or black in color.
It needs just a few more days to thicken up as it takes about 3-4 weeks before a scoby is ready to make kombucha.
Check back soon to see an update on my batch and to see the next steps in making your own kombucha!
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Can I add milk?
No, I wouldn’t recommend adding milk at this stage. I’m not sure how that would turn out! It just needs those three things – the kombucha to start the scoby, sugar for it to feed off of, and tea for flavor.
I had read somewhere that starting a SCOBY from plain kombucha doesn’t work anymore because they were all reformulated in 2010.
Is this true? I really want to start my own scoby.
I made two scobies from plain kombucha I bought at the store. It took a month to grow because the weather was still cold.