today I'm making kombucha and the first step is I like to make an iced tea concentrate because that's easier than heating up just a whole gallon of water when you're making a lot of kombucha so I've heated up 6 cups of water here and you want 8 teabags per gallon that you're making and I'm actually making a gallon in half today so I have 12 teabags before I do that I should put the sugar in we're going to start with the sugar I'm using evaporated cane juice which is a little funny in the health food world because it actually prefers white sugar just straight sugar to feed on which is okay because it pretty much all gets used up by the kombucha depending on how sweet you leave it and how long you let it ferment and I'm putting in a cup and a half of sugar for a gallon and a half so that's about a cup per gallon that you want to make I am using evaporated cane juice instead of straight white sugar that way you don't have to worry about GMO and the sugar beets or anything like that and it does have a little bit of molasses in it but it seems to work just fine for the scoby and then I will add the tea and similar to the sugar the scoby actually needs some caffeine to survive and they say that a lot of the caffeine gets eaten by the scoby again that depends on how long you let it ferment so how long it gets to eat on the sugar and the caffeine it's in the tea mixture I like to have a little caffeine in the mixture as possible because I'm very sensitive to caffeine and I find that at the sweetness that we like it which is not very long fermented there's still enough caffeine left in it to affect me so today what I'm using is half green tea and half decaffeinated black tea sometimes if I'm using regular black tea I'll dunk it in boiling water for about 30 seconds first and that removes a lot of the caffeine without having to worry about what chemicals or whatever they used in their decaffeination process when you bought it and you can also use herbal teas but the scoby really thrives on black tea for some reason that's just seems to be what it was designed to work well with so you really have to feed it some black tea and some caffeine you can either do a batch of all herbal tea and then do a batch of all black tea the next time or you can do batches that are half black tea and half herbal tea you want to be very careful about any herbal teas that contain oils chai often contains oils peppermint contains oils and those will tend to kind of suffocate the scoby and I have done peppermint kombucha half peppermint half black tea and it's worked okay and it did not kill my Scoobies but I could definitely tell if the scoby was not thriving as much as when I use black tea or green tea so it's really much safer if you want a peppermint flavored tea to add some peppermint blazing flavoring in the second permit and I'll get to that later in the video and show you about the sacrament look at me and now that that's steeping with eight tea bags for every gallon and one cup of sugar for every gallon I'm gonna go ahead and bottle the previous batch of kombucha that I had going here's where I ferment my kombucha you can see there's a Scobie in each of these containers this is a gallon jar and it has a metal lid metal does not instantly kill scobie's but it's it kind of weakens them over time so I like to keep the liquid level down a little bit in this jar so the scoby doesn't bump up against the metal lid I tried using a cheesecloth between there and then Scobie actually grew into the cheesecloth and it was had to throw away that layer Scobie and then this is a half-gallon has a nice plastic ceiling lid I really like this picture I need to get more because now I'm using this one just for fermented kombucha and actually the first thing I'm going to do is pour off the three cups of this batch of kombucha that I need to save for the next batch that's two cups for every gallon of kombucha that your major Wow try not to splash it all over the countertop and the reason for that is because the kombucha that you've already made is acidic and so it keeps bad bacteria from growing well your new batch is working on fermenting and then I'm gonna go ahead and take the scobie's out and these are both very nicely growing scobie's they kind of look like dead jellyfish this one is actually it's getting older and getting whiter when I first got it it was more translucent like this and this is getting nice and thick and Scooby's usually have layers you can peel part here that top layer is kind of thick in that case oh there you go you can see how you can just peel it apart nicely there and in this case I'm going to peel off the very bottom layer and save it possibly give it away to someone else if anyone wants that Ahram a end up throwing it away because the bottom layer is the oldest layer and the scoby does kind of get worn out over time and if you have too much Scooby in your jar then it'll ferment too quickly and your kombucha will go sour very fast so I'm going to just drop the scobie's in there for safekeeping you really want to keep your scobie's away from prolonged contact with anything metal as I said and chlorine and grease and things like that so I like to just drop it in here for safekeeping while I'm working here's the other Scobie it's not quite as thick as the other one but it's still coming along nicely has some discoloration from the teeth has some little white bumps it's almost like a cow's tongue or something but there's no signs of mold so it's still perfectly healthy despite the fact that it looks weird as a Scooby should so I'm going to go ahead and peel the very bottom layer off that one too and if you're Scooby has rips or holes in it that's perfectly fine it doesn't really affect how it works if you happen to have recently been given a Scobie by a friend and they haven't given you a young Scobie it may look something more like this more translucent more like jelly almost and this is a particularly small one these will form in your kombucha as it sits in your fridge or sometimes just as it sits out for a couple of days carbonating and they work just as well as the the older Scoobies but they do take a little longer to work so if you have a young Scobie you probably want to give it a little extra time to do its job there's some yeast sediment there I'm just going to fish that out I don't think I need that in my collusion all right so I'm going to pour this kombucha into other containers for the secondary ferment which is where it carbonates and the Civic ferment is not really necessary but it doesn't make for a nice creamy kombucha which most people prefer I'm using a gallon plastic jug for the secondary permit for this one plastic is much easier when you're just starting come on chef as you're kind of getting a feel for how quickly it carbonates because you can just feel the bottle and if it's hard then it's carbonated and if it's still kind of squishy then it's not fully coordinated yet some people move on to quart jars once they've kind of got in the feel for their kombucha and how quickly it carbonates I tend to prefer mine carbonated for about a day it's not super fizzy at that point that it is mostly busy so I'm just going to go ahead and leave this I left the live somewhere I found lid and then live this tightly so that can carbonate this kombucha is fermented long enough but it's actually just starting to be fizzy already and at this point and the secondary four am it can add flavoring if you like you can have a little cloth bag with some herbs like some peppermint or something like that tied up in it you can add some ginger just roughly chopped you can add fruits or fruit juice just about anything you want at this point to flavor your kombucha and then I just lid it tightly and I usually set mine on top of the fridge that's my easy place for fermenting things but any place you want where it can just kind of sit undisturbed for a day and finish carbonating and then at this point I'm going to go ahead and put the Smokies back in the jar and add the finished kombu shop and then they will be ready to add the ICT concentrate and water to fill the jars I'm putting two cups of the finished kombucha in the gallon jar and one cup in the half gallon jar now that the ice-t concentrate is finished pouring and it's made a nice strong brew strong tea is important when making from bucho because the scoby actually feeds off nutrients from the teas you want to be nice and strong lots of glue transfer the scoby to feed on discard the teabags and I'm gonna put this into my measuring cup so it's a little easier to tie it up and I'm splashing tea everywhere again alright so I'm gonna put four cups in the gallon jar and two cups in the half gallon and this is just only important as a ratio of how much ice tea concentrate I made you can really make it with as little as much water as you want at this point the important thing is how much sugar how many tea bags and how much water is in the finished product I'll add water I'm having trouble with my Berkey filtering fast enough right now I need to clean the filters so I'm just gonna fill the half gallon jar now and I'll fill the gallon jar later off video the scoobies as you can see is kind of floating sideways right now from the pressure putting the water in and that's fine it doesn't really matter where it the scoby floats it'll usually end up floating near the top eventually but it's not really important and then I'm just going to very loosely fasten this you don't want it to be tight at this point because you want room for the carbonation gases to escape if they do form at this stage and then you just set this someplace where it confirm it sometimes out of the way we don't have to disturb it too much and usually you'll hear to ferment it for 10 to 14 days but we prefer it sweeter so I normally ferment it for more like three to four days for us if you do use peppermint tea or something like that you can go longer and it'll still be sweet because it just does not permit nearly as fast for the peppermint oils in there so if this is your first time making kombucha you may actually want to taste it every day to find out when it's just at the point where you like it though I do find that the secondary ferment too carbonated also mellows the flavor a little bit so if you're afraid that you let it go too long and it's too tart it may be just fine after you ferment again so that is kombucha