Our Adventures in Kombucha :: Bottling

Since buying Kombucha from the grocery store or on tap at a local shop is not in my budget (although super fast and easy), we choose to homebrew.

It is way easy, and you can brew as little or as much as you want.

I took some photos today of our bottling process.  It literally took me 5 minutes, while snapping a few photos 🙂

Keep in mind, this is how our operation runs, there are different ways to brew!

I’m also in a Facebook community that has a plethora of information and experienced brewers!

1st step: gather your supplies.

For bottling, you need a few items: your Kombucha, somewhere between sweet tea and tart vinegar in taste :), something to hold your scoby in during bottling, and something to hold your starter in for the next brew.  And your bottles of choice.  We use mason jars.

Something else you may want/need is flavoring for your bottling or second ferment.

Step 2:  save the mother!

I pull my SCOBY out and put it in a pie plate.  It just hangs out until I’m done bottling.

As you can see in this image, there are two sized scobys in there.  The smaller one was from the scoby I was gifted from a friend, when it was in a pint sized mason jar.  The larger scoby is what has grown over time in my gallon sized glass jar.

Funky right?!

Step 3: save some starter

When rebottling, if you want to continue to brew Kombucha, you must save some of your final liquid as a starter for your next batch.  I’m not going into details about that on this post, since I’m focusing on the bottling part 🙂  But for my next gallon, I save 2 cups of starter.

Step 4: flavor time!

When you  brew at home, you can add whatever flavors you want to your Kombucha.  Or, don’t and drink it straight!  We like both.

My oldest doesn’t like it plain so much, and I need him drinking it for the health benefits, so we’ve been adding frozen fruit.  SO easy!!

This time we used frozen mango in all of our bottles.

Since we use mason jars, the carbonation is very little.  But you can see the bubbles!  For better carbonation, you need pressure rated bottles.

So after bottling your Kombucha, this is what you’ll have….  several jars of Kombucha, that I’m sticking in the cupboard for 1-3 days, then moving the fridge.  As well as my starter liquid and scoby, ready for the next brew session!  See, easy peasy!

So what did you think?  Easy enough to do at home?  That scoby though, super strange!  I thought it looked like fat when I first saw it, but it’s hard, not squishable really.

Consider adding in a daily serving of Kombucha for all the wonderful health benefits if offers!