Fermentation

My girlfriend makes up a couple of kilner jars of kombucha a week. I recently posted some of her tips on twitter, which I can repost here, if you want.

I’m not quite sure that I understand your question, but you’re going to have to wash out your kilner jars from time to time, so you’ll have to fish them out and move them around then anyway.

wouldn’t hurt, cheers
don’t worry about my other question

Here’s her set up, so you can see the size of scoby she uses per jar.

My girlfriend normally makes around 3 litres per week across 2 kilner jars.

She uses a ratio of 8 green tea bags, 300g white sugar, 3-3.2 litres boiled water (can scale up/down). Steep for 10 mins and teabags out. Let it cool. Once cool, bottle last week’s batch (see later). Leave about 200ml old kombucha with the scoby in each large jar and top up with 1.5-1.6 litres cooled sweet tea. Cover with kitchen towel/rubber band.

This might be overkill, but on alternate days she dampens the kitchen paper with white vinegar during the week to prevent mould.

Bottling: After bottling you can either leave them at room temp overnight and refrigerate next morning, or you can drink them straight. You need to ‘burp’ the bottles daily at room temp to avoid explosion.

Flavouring: add your flavours to the bottles when you’re bottling. For 750ml bottle, she’s used juice of half lemon or lime plus 1inch of ginger in matchsticks. Or 4:1 ratio kombucha to fruit juice. She’s also used peeled plums as well.

She’s used these websites for advice: https://www.culturesforhealth.com/learn/kombucha/kombucha-tea-frequently-asked-questions-faq/

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@marckee can you please ask your partner if a 5L jar is too big, would that large headspace from a 2-3L batch be detrimental due to all that oxygen?

It shouldn’t make a difference - it’s not as if the kitchen towel is airtight.

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I have been eyeing up a 5L kilner jar - apparently it’s best to avoid vessels with taps though? I can’t find any info on what material the taps are made out of

It depends what the tap is made of. It has to be stainless steel or food-grade plastic.

It might just be easier to get a funnel and use that to pour it into the bottles.

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I’ve got to relearn habits for this, you would never use funnels for beer as it’s too turbulent and can oxidise the brew.

thanks for your help

Yeah, it’s slightly different as you ‘burp’ the bottles the next day (and every day, if you’re keeping them at room temperature)

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so my starter I brewed on 3rd August hasn’t produced a jellyfish scoby, I used green tea for the brew which I read at the time would be ok but now I’m reading it was a mistake. I don’t drink black tea so I gotta pinch a couple of bags from work and try again

Finally bought some crocks. And been reading about making miso

ooooh, is interested in how that goes

I said “Only if it was Marmetal!”

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Ahahaha! Now I get it!

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I keep drinking kombucha. Is that fermented? Tastes like it

Sure is

It is. There’s a few posts talking about it just up the thread a little.

realise this was a million years ago, but how did it turn out? going to give it a bash

have made regular chinese cabbage kimchi before and it was good, could have been spicier though. probably chuck some extra chillies into this one.

You havent got a scoby

(Little kombucha joke for you there)

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Mine was spicy as hell.

Followed this recipe

(Except the vegan version obvs)

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