Hi Guys, I'm Elissa at Moat Cottage and today we're making Kombucha. Kombucha is a fizzy drink,
that is drunk cold and it has fruits in it to give it different flavors, if you choose. It's made
with a Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria and Yeast, which is called the SCOBY for short and the SCOBY
is this and this is alive and eats the sugars out of the tea and sugar that you add to it. So
what we've got here, is a vessel and it's got two cups of the starter liquid which is Kombucha that
we've just made. In a separate jug, we're going to add three tablespoons of organic black tea and
three quarters of a cup of white cane sugar with four cups of boiling water, and give that a mix
in. That will dissolve the sugar and we'll steep the tea for about 10 minutes. The organic black
tea that I use is English breakfast and I quite like that, it comes up really well in my brews of
Kombucha, but you can try whatever organic black tea you like and the reason we use organic black
tea is because we don't want any chemicals in it because it's a live drink. Kombucha
is quite good for your tummy as well. Look I find it's really good for settling my tummy,
I have a lot of issues with CFS and fibromyalgia and I find this drink really helps me, a lot.
Back over at our Kombucha vessel we're going to add 8 cups of water, it's room temperature
it's filtered water, you don't want to be using water straight from the tap, same as with the tea
and washing your hands, we don't want chemicals in this mix because it's a live drink. All right
thats six cups in there and what I'm going to do is add the other two cups into the boiling
water because that's been brewing for 10 minutes now and I want to cool it down because you can't
add the tea mixture into your kombucha starter mix until it's a certain temperature and that is
between 18 degrees Celsius and 32 degrees Celsius or 65 degrees to 90 degrees Fahrenheit so we'll
put the two cups in here and then we'll check the temperature to make sure it's within range
and it's not, so we're going to let it cool down until it's ready to go in to the starter
mix. I'm straining the tea mix into our Kombucha starter mix, making sure I don't get any of those
tea leaves in. I'll give that a stir, we just get one Scobie out and place it in the vessel,
then I'll add some cheesecloth to keep any bugs out and secure it with an elastic band.
I'll now place this out of direct sunlight, in a place that's not going to get disturbed,
which for me is the mantelpiece, which in winter is really good because it's a stable temperature
in that room. My SCOBY hotel, I also keep out of direct sunlight and unfortunately it doesn't fit
in the pantry where it's nice and dark however I do store it behind me, which you're probably
seen in some of my other videos. I'll start checking this in twelve days, usually I can
tell when I walk past and I smell it, I can just tell that it's ready and I'll get back to you when
it's ready to bottle up. We're back and this has been brewing for 16 days and I can really smell it
now and I believe it's ready. I start checking it after 12 days and I just a little taste test each
day so that when it's not so sugary and not too vinegary then I know it's ready to bottle up. In
Winter when the heat is on or in Summer when the temperature of the house is quite warm because we
don't have air-conditioning here it takes about 12 days in the Spring and the Autumn or the Fall,
if you call it Fall, it takes longer because the house is quite variable in temperature and so
it just seems to take longer because the house is probably cooler at night. So if you just continue
to check it after 12 days and then you'll get it to where you think it's right and I know that can
be a bit tricky when you're starting out because you don't know exactly what it's meant to taste
like, but you'll do trial and error and you'll find that sweet spot of where you like it. So I
just take off the cheesecloth and I've got clean hands but they're not soapy or antibiotic poisoned
or anything like that so because the SCOBY is alive we don't want to handle it with antibiotic,
I don't know there's there's antibiotic things you put on your hands to stop germs and stuff,
you don't want to be killing this so you don't want any of those creams and sprays
on your hand. I don't even know what they are, so anyway I've got clean hands but they're not
they're not soapy or anything like that. So this is my SCOBY hotel, so this is where I put
my SCOBYS when I have extra SCOBYS because when you pull out your SCOBYS you'll have a new one
and you'll have the original one, so they do multiply so you need some of your extra SCOBYS,
so if a batch goes wrong which I've never had, but if a batch went wrong then you would have
your backup SCOBYS and if somebody else wants a SCOBY, you know when they send their shoutout
'who's got a Scoby?' you'll have a spare Scoby for them and it's always a good idea to share
your SCOBIES around, because if for some horrid reason you lost all your Scobys, you will have
someone that you can get one off. I find it easier to pour my kombucha liquid into a jug,
it's still messy, that's why I've got the tea towels down. I like to add a little bit of liquid
to my Scoby Hotel each time I make a new batch, so that it's got a fresh bit of goodness in there,
you don't want it to dry out and it sort of needs the sugars and everything to stay
alive. These are my Kombucha bottles and they have a secure lid on them because when you're
doing a second ferment they can build up pressure because they get carbonated,
it gets bubbles in it so if you leave it too long in the second ferment and you open it,
it can fizz out like champagne, so you try not to let it go too long on your second ferment. So what
we'll do is we add some fruit juice to this, I've used Raspberry juice with the seeds strained out,
which is delicious and I've used Pear juice, Apple juice. Today we're using
freshly squeezed Apple juice and so I just pour some Apple juice into the bottom of my bottles
the Kombucha will feed off the sugar in the apple juice and that's how it gets carbonated,
while it's doing its second ferment. I usually fill the bottles up with three quarters of a
cup to a cup of the fruit juice, which is about a third of the bottle, the rest is the Kombucha
before we use all the Kombucha we need for the next batch two cups of
liquid which we call kombucha starter and that will make the next batch,
the bottles were rinsed out thoroughly with water, so that there was no residual soap
next all we do is seal the lids and we leave them in a dark place for between three days
and a week depending on the temperature and then when you think they're ready, you put them in the
fridge and you leave them in the fridge to get cold before you open them because that helps to
contain the bubbles in the bottle instead of it all shooting out, if you open them warm there's
more chance of them shooting out and making a big mess. Another trick is, when I open them,
if I think they're going to be fizzy, I can sort of tell now when I think they're going to be too
fizzy from experience but I just put a bag over the top, I just placed the kombucha bottle in
a bowl and I open the bottle in the bag and all the liquid will go down, run down the bottle and
go into the bowl and then you're not wasting it, you can still use that. We're back and the second
ferment is done, I'm pretty sure it's ready. I've had it in the fridge for a few hours to chill and
I'm ready to open it and see if it's ready. I'm going to put it in the bowl just in case it does
explode like I talked about earlier, I have a zip lock bag to cover it, there we go not too bad,
there's a bit of pressure which is good, that's exactly what you want, now let's see
perfect that's got some fizz in it nicely carbonated now let's have the taste test
it's delicious some people say it's like iced tea and other people say it's more like a carbonated
cordial, I don't really like either and I think it's more like a cider, but I guess it depends how
you make it because you can make it more vinegary or more sugary depending when you bot order some
people drink it after the first ferment when it's flat and haven't got any fruit juices added to it
I'm not a big fan of that I'm you know it's drinkable but it's not a great drink however
once you've done a second ferment it's it gives it life it gives it bubbles it gives it flavor
and I really enjoy it and it's and you're making it yourself it's free basically free
starting out making kombucha can be a little bit of overwhelming it seems to be a big process and
you do need things like the bottles and vessels to put your kombucha in and obviously you need
your Scobie but once you get going it hardly costs any money at all it's basically just the tea and
sugar that you're paying for especially if you grow your own fruit for the juices then you're
not paying for juice you can use store-bought juices but try and get us natural as possible
if I open a kombucha bottle and it's not quite fizzy enough I just seal it back up and put it
back on the shelf for another day or two and then put it back in the fridge chill it and then open
it up and see how it is then so you can always do a test bottle if you're not sure and you want
to try one earlier by putting it in the fridge opening it up seeing where it's at you try not
to do it you know we don't open every bottle or anything like that because you don't want to
let the bubbles out that it was already there I'm pretty sure that some of you already make
kombucha there's so many clever people who watch this channel and do some really cool stuff. Let me
know in the comments below what your flavors are that you like to make and if you've never made it
before and you have an interest in it give it a go it's a lot easier than you think it will
be once you get going some other flavors are like to do a pineapple as well as orange juice and you
could also add in a little bit of ginger if you wanted to your juice to give it a little bit of
a gingery flavor if you like that sort of thing there are so many options and it really depends
what's in season and what you grow and what you have that you can try to juice for the kombucha
and of course you can mix and match flavors as well and if you have any questions leave them
below as well and I'll try and answer them I've tried to put everything in this video but when
you do something you sometimes don't think to add it in you just do it and you're not even thinking
that you do it so if I've missed something let me know and either myself or somebody else in
the community will answer the comments. There are so many clever people in this community and you Guys
are all so supportive of each other, helping each other with different questions so thank
you very much for that, I really appreciate it and I thank you for watching, see you next time
you