You’ll be Surprised How Many you Already Have at Home

Below are my 8 must-haves for easily and successfully brewing your own Kombucha at home.

Vessels:

Glass Jar

A 1 Litre wide-mouthed glass jar is a great size to start with. It brews the perfect amount of Kombucha for a single SCOBY and gives you enough to drink while you brew your next batch.

Use For: Your First Ferment

Swing-top Glass Bottles

I recommend having 2-3 of these bottles when you first start, to ensure you always have one on hand to fill while brewing. You can use any size bottle that will fit in your fridge for storage, however make sure they have a quality stopper on the top. This ensures carbonation builds during your second ferment so that your Kombucha is as bubbly as possible.

Use For: Your second ferment

Raw Materials

SCOBY

This is your culture (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast) and is essential for brewing Kombucha.

You can buy one from WellCrate here, which includes a starter liquid to ensure your first brew is a success.

Tea

Good Quality Black tea is the best to start with. After you’ve been fermenting for a while, feel free to experiment with other types of tea including Earl Grey, fruity herbals such as Rosehip or Hibiscus or even a mix of black and herbal teas.

Note: If you want to ferment Green Tea, consider buying a Jun SCOBY. This is more suited to Green Tea. WellCrate SCOBY’S work best for brewing black and herbal teas.

Sugar

You can use any type of sugar you like. Those which work best are granulated sugars such as White or Raw Sugar.

Do not use honey as the microbes present can affect the taste and success of your Kombucha.

Brewing

pH strips

These are inexpensive to buy but incredibly useful especially when you are first fermenting. Each day, test your brew and note how the pH drops (lower number= more acidic). Your Kombucha will start around a 5/6 and is usually ready between 3.5-4.

Note: When brewing at home, it is completely up to you as to how acidic you want your brew to taste. I prefer it to have quite a bit of tang which gets sweetened slightly later in the second ferment.

Use it for: Testing if your first ferment is ready to be bottled. Don’t be afraid to taste your brew daily as well, so you become familiar with how the taste changes as the ferment goes on.

Bottle brush

This small cleaning brush is super handy for cleaning your empty bottles and jars.

Sieve & Funnel

Use for straining loose leaf tea, pouring out your first ferment cleanly into your bottles and even for straining out your flavoured Kombucha (optional).

Where to Buy:

I’ve picked most of my vessels up at local Op Shops over the years. You can also find good options at Kmart, Target or even $2 Shops.

Your local supermarket or health food store are great for purchasing interesting teas as well as your basic supplies like sugar, sieves and funnels.

Kitchen stores, health food shops and many online retailers sell pH strips. They are usually less than $10 for a large pack. Often they are called Litmus papers- look for the tear-off strip types which are easiest to use.

SCOBY- You are likely to already have many of the above supplies at home. A SCOBY however is a special Kombucha culture so must be gotten from somewhere or someone. If you can get one from a friend, we of course recommend you buy one of Ours. We grow our SCOBY’s fresh for you once you’ve ordered and then ship them straight to you so they arrive as healthy and ready to be brewed with as possible.

#homebrew #supplies #utensils