The Kombucha Diaries

WRITTEN BY MAUMITA SADHUKHAN

If you live in Austin, chances are you’re familiar with kombucha. In the past five years, kombucha has popped up across grocery stores, restaurants, and social media sites. But what is it?

As it turns out, kombucha is an ancient drink dating back to as early as 220 BC in northeastern China. It is a fermented drink made with black tea, sugar, bacteria, and yeast, resulting in a fizzy, vitamin-filled beverage. Fermentation is a mechanism that yeasts and other bacteria use to gain energy. The Kombucha mixture contains bacteria from acetic and lactic acid, and yeasts, producing a symbiotic relationship that is capable of inhibiting the growth of contaminating microorganisms. The yeast in the kombucha breaks down carbohydrates to produce ethanol and later breaks that ethanol down to produce acetic acid or vinegar. The SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast) also produces another layer of bacterial cellulose (daughter SCOBY) and carbon dioxide as a byproduct, resulting in the carbonated taste. Kombucha offers a multitude of probiotics, which promote a healthy immune system and gut, protecting against stomach and intestinal issues. Kombucha can be store-bought or even made at home.

Despite having live, active bacteria cultures, kombucha is actually safe to drink! Kombucha carries bacteria cultures much like yogurt, which is why it has to be refrigerated and contained properly! If you opt to make your own kombucha like I did, be sure to take extra precautions in making sure it’s sterile and safe to drink.

Before I tried kombucha for the first time, I was really skeptical. The whole idea of drinking straight bacteria weirded me out. But then, a friend convinced me to try some freshman year and I was hooked. I would buy at least one bottle a week, which turned out to be a pretty expensive investment. Each bottle was at least $4 at Target, and they eventually began to add up. So, sophomore year, another avid kombucha drinker and I decided to make our own kombucha. Continue reading to hear about our journey to making kombucha for the first time, what we learned, and any improvement we would make!

Stage 1: Preparation

This stage required us to learn HOW to make kombucha. Neither of us wanted to poison ourselves, so we took the time to learn the right safety precautions we should take, as well as the right materials we needed to buy. You can use many different protocols to make kombucha, but we based our own protocol on this site.

We bought a Bormioli Rocco jar (only the best glass for our kombucha!) and began saving all of our kombucha bottles so we would have the right bottles for storage (don’t worry, we sanitized each bottle with warm soap and water before putting anything in them!).

To make the SCOBY, we bought starter unflavored kombucha:

Figure 1: The unflavored kombucha we used as starter liquid

Stage 2: Making the SCOBY

After carefully reading about kombucha and making sure we wouldn’t poison ourselves and die an early death, we were ready to begin!

First, we needed to grow the SCOBY. To do this, we poured the starter liquid into the Bormioli Rocco glass jar and allowed it to grow for 4-5 weeks. SCOBY is kind of like a thick yeast pancake.

After the SCOBY grew, we created a tea and sugar mixture to feed it and transferred it into the jar so that we could feed it. This allowed the tea to ferment, which was a result of the yeast from the SCOBY multiplying. We then left this mixture to ferment for about 7-12 days to make our unflavored kombucha!

Because we’re both scientists, we used pH strips to measure the acidity of the kombucha. Our goal was for the pH of the kombucha to be somewhere between 2.5-4.7. Any lower, and it would taste like beer (not that any of us know what that tastes like). Any higher, and it may be unsafe to drink, as harmful bacteria can grow at a more basic pH.

Stage 3: Flavoring the Kombucha

This stage involved the second fermentation of the kombucha, which occurred in the kombucha bottles we had saved earlier. In this stage, we used fruits to flavor the kombucha and allow the bacteria to ferment, releasing carbon dioxide and carbonating the drink. These flavors are responsible for the classic fizzy sensation you get from kombucha. We decided to make our first flavor from pineapple peach juice because we thought it would be interesting.

We added about ⅓ cup juice to each bottle and then topped off the bottle with our starter liquid brew. We let these bottles ferment for about 2-3 days at room temperature before moving them to the fridge to cool.

Figure 4: Our first batch! No, we did not have custom labels :(

Stage 4: Taste-Testing!

This was my favorite step. My friend and I tried the kombucha first to make sure we wouldn’t kill anyone accidentally, and then we solicited our friends into trying some. Though skeptical, most of them did try a sip to appease us.

The verdict: The pineapple peach flavor was good, but it did not taste strongly of kombucha. Some people liked that as it made it easier to get down, but we did want there to be more of a “kombucha flavor”. We decided that next time, we would let the kombucha ferment for longer before adding the fruit juice, lowering the pH slightly.

Conclusion

Overall, making kombucha was a really fun experience, and it actually wasn’t that hard. As busy college students, however, we did end up neglecting our SCOBY by the end of the semester. Growing paranoid that we had starved it and caused it to grow mold, we ended up throwing it away. Maybe we’ll make another SCOBY again one day. But, for now, if you ever decide to make your own kombucha, follow these tips:

Watch your SCOBY and feed it! It’s like a pet, so make sure to add tea and sugar to the mixture periodically
pH test your kombucha to make sure it’s safe to drink! Don’t poison yourself.
Try new flavors! It’s more fun to add unique flavors to your kombucha, which is part of the reason we did pineapple peach for our first batch, and lychee for our second (we couldn’t find either flavor in our local Target).
Have fun!