Kombucha Time!
hey everyone today I'm going to do a video on how to
make kombucha we're really curious to try this ourselves we've tried a couple
store-bought versions and have really enjoyed it but obviously it's pretty
expensive so we wanted to try it ourselves we saw that you could buy
Scoby on Amazon and we decided to do a video where we're going to compare
making kombucha with an Amazon bought Scoby and a local bought Scoby so we want
to see if there's any difference and see how it turns out if you don't already
know kombucha is a fermented sweet tea with a ton of health benefits it uses
bacteria in yeast which is what that scoby is to make the journey so we will
do a quick video here and show you the difference between kombucha made with an
Amazon bot Scoby and one that we bought locally from somebody here all right
guys let's get started with this experiment so first let's go over a few
things that you're gonna need so you will need some black tea I bought an
organic black tea and tea bag form you can use loose tea if you have it and
I'll give you the ratios in just a minute
you'll need sugar white sugar and I just bought this cane sugar and Scoby for
this experiment we're going to compare this Amazon purchase Scoby and this
local Scoby that we got from someone here and that is actually a baby Scoby
we bought it last weekend and haven't had time to do this yet and it formed
another Scoby in there which is kind of cool the other thing that you'll need is
a vessel this is a one gallon jar that we got on amazon and i will put all the
links to the supplies that we bought so you guys can purchase these if you want
but this is just a nice big last jar and those are the supplies that you'll need
so your ratios I'll pop them up on the screen but there you'll need eight cups
of water for doing this gallon size you'll also need sixty bags or 12 grams
of loose tea and 3/4 cup of sugar and you want to make sure you use regular
white or cane sugar like this you don't want to use any other types of sweetener
like stevia and whatnot your your end product won't have that much sugar
because the scoby it actually feeds off this right now it's sitting in this
sugary black tea and that's what it feeds off of so in the end it really
doesn't have that much sugar because it eats it so anyway let me go ahead and
open up this Amazon Scoby so we can check out that well I've been curious to
see what's inside and what that looks like and we pull this is actually in a
bag in here so that's kind of nice I'm gonna put the packaging over there and
as you can see that's a little better view there you see that little Scobie
right in there and it's got a decent amount of starter tea and you will need
this starter tea to make sure that you keep the pH of your kombucha correct so
I'll show you this step in just a little bit here we'll move over to the stove
and start boiling some water so let's get started I've got two cups in there
this is my last two cups and we'll get this boiling
all right so the water is at a rolling boil so I'm going to go ahead and turn
it off and now we can go ahead and steep the tea bag so I'm going to go ahead and
put these 60 bags in and we're gonna let this sit in there for ten minutes
the tea has steep and now I'm ready to pour it in so I have four cups of brewed
tea that I have heated up and I'm going to pour it into eight cups of filtered
water the purpose of this is to cool my mixture down faster so I don't have to
wait so long to add the scoby and then after this I can add the sugar the tea
will still be warm enough that the sugar will dissolve so here we go four cups
into a cups
all right you can see how nice and dark that is
once I add the sugar and then the scoby once it actually ferments it will
lighten up quite a bit but it's supposed to be that dark to begin with all right
so our tea has already steeped and I have already poured it into these two
vessels here because we're doing a comparison so this one is gonna be the
one for the Amazon Scoby and this one we'll put the local scope in so I'm
gonna go ahead and pour the sugar in here while it's still warm and then
we'll have to let it cool down before we add the scoby so I'm going to go ahead
this one's already got sugar I'm pouring 3/4 cup of sugar into here
into my 12 cups of liquid and you want to leave a little bit of room and mix
that in you're gonna want to leave a little bit of room in your jar so you
don't want to fill it all the way up to the 16 cups all right so we've got our
tea mixture cooled down and we're about ready to add the scoby which is the most
important part of making kombucha I did want to mention you always want to start
with sterilized jars it's really easy to sterilize these jars all you need to do
is mix in some warm water and white vinegar and you can just swish it around
and that'll sterilize your jar before you add anything into there also you can
see I've got enough space here to add the scoby and the starter tea so that's
why we went with 4 cups of brewed tea and then poured it into 8 cups of water
so we left you know enough room in our 16 cup jar here for adding Scobie and
starter tea the starter tea will help with the acidity of this
sure all right so let's get to it so we're gonna add Scooby now for
sterilizing I've got some white vinegar here and I'm actually gonna wash my
hands in that so that way when I touch the scoby you know it's my hands are
clean so I'm gonna carefully cut this open here this is our Amazon Scoby and
I'm opening this up right now let me set that aside throw that in there okay so
I'm actually gonna grab this Scoby out because my hands are clean and I'm gonna
carefully place it into this container and pour in the starter tea here so you
want to make sure that you've allowed time for your mixture to cool down you
can either just wait a few hours or you can use a thermometer and make sure it
is ninety degrees or below before you add in the scoby or it could kill it
here is the local Scoby that we bought I'm going to go ahead and place this one
in
that's a huge Scoby compared to the Amazon one so we'll see how all this
turns out what and I'm gonna go ahead and pour in the starter tea and you want
to make sure you have cheesecloth on hand so you can cover your jars you want
to make sure that the jar has breathing room and you'll just secure it pull that
down so there's the Amazon one and here is the local one and then after this
we'll find a nice dark place all right so I found a place in our kitchen that
doesn't get a whole lot of usage so it'll stay dark in there so the first
one there is the Amazon Scoby and then the one behind it is the local Scoby so
we're gonna let these sit in there for about seven to ten days and then we'll
be back to see our results
so we're going to go ahead and uncover I'm gonna uncover the Amazon one first
and we'll see a results as you can see that one's not looking so healthy I'm
covering the local one next so as you can see it looks like this Amazon one
it's pretty broken up it doesn't look very healthy the local version looks
very healthy that's got a nice big Scoby on top and then I can also see
the layers here of the baby Scoby and the mother Scoby so anyway I had higher
hopes for this Amazon one I was hoping you could just order but some of you may
have had luck with ordering one but from my results doesn't look like we had a
good batch here this was the exact same process for each one but this local one
looks nice and healthy well this was a lot of fun doing this comparison we
appreciate you guys joining us and I'll be doing part two of this where I do a
second ferment only of what I brewed in this local Scoby here but I'll do a
second ferment to show you that process and we'll be flavoring it with some
really good fruits so anyway if you like this video and give us a thumbs up and
don't forget to subscribe thank you thanks for watching our video guys if
you liked that you give us a thumbs up you'll find more videos over here and
subscribe down here by mine see you next time