Homemade kombucha is easy!...

... You just have to find someone who will give you a scoby (the paddy of living organisms).

You can actually be pretty lax with ingredient amounts and play around with it until you find a ratio that tastes good. Mine often ends up pretty acidic since I don’t add much sugar.

Mini chemistry lesson: the scoby is alive, similar to how yeast is a living organism and it feeds off of the sugar. The raw apple cider vinegar contains the enzymes that start the fermentation.


Let’s assume you are starting with one scoby.

Ingredients and material:

• 1 large wide mouth jar (I use a large mason jar) but something bigger would be even better
• 1 kombucha scoby
• organic raw apple cider vinegar
• water
• tea (any flavor you prefer, mango has been the yummiest so far)
• sugar

Make sure all of your materials are super clean

Boil the amount of water that fits into the mason jar in a large pot on the stove. Remove from the stove and stir in anywhere from 1-2 cups of sugar. Add anywhere from 3-6 bags of tea. Remove tea bags when cool, stir up the sugar if any is remaining on the bottom. Pour team into the large, clean jar, leaving 3-4 inches at the top. Add ~1/4 cup vinegar. Add the juice that the scoby was sitting in (kombucha enzymes, yum). Put a clean dish towel or washcloth over the top of the jar with a rubber band (it needs to breath!)

Let sit for 2 weeks.

Important notes:

• Keep things super clean otherwise it will grow mold, if anything looks off on the scoby like discoloring (other than turning darker as you re-use the scoby ) or moldy-looking spots, dump it and start over!
• Only use glass containers and don’t let the kombucha touch anything else, like metal, etc.

To bottle it:

Remove scoby and put in a clean glass bowl in a bath with some of the kombucha. I always just use my hands (after washing thoroughly). Cover with a loose glass lid or cloth. Pour kombucha into smaller glass bottles with tight fitting lids. Store in fridge. You can pour out the very bottom if it’s got a layer of sludge or you can drink it….

Yeah, those are cupcakes in the background

Scoby in it's juice (actually ,plus one tiny scoby on the side)

scoby, top-view

Check out how thick they can get: some scoby image from some hippie