Episode: 2018
Title: HPR2018: How to make Komboucha Tea
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2018/hpr2018.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 13:22:30

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This is HPR episode 2018 entitled How to Make Combat Chatty and is part of the series
Home Brewing.
It is hosted by me and is about 16 minutes long.
The summer is here.
I describe how to brew your own combat chatty.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by An Honesthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15.
That's HPR15.
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Hello Hacker Public Radio fans.
This is Bee Yeezy.
Once again, signing in.
Excuse any background noise you might hear.
I'm going to try to see if I can get it out with audacity later.
But I am doing a little bit of multitasking right now.
I'm ripping some blue rays using MKV that I have and turning them into...
I'm ripping some blue rays turning them into MKVs and putting them on my nose.
Maybe I'll do another episode about that.
But today I'm going to talk about something a little different.
Today I'm going to talk about Cambucha T.
Now you might have seen Cambucha T in some of your grocery stores.
You see it in there.
Sometimes three to five dollars for 16 to 20 ounce glass.
And usually with some floating stuff sitting in it or sitting around the bottom of it.
But I want to tell you how to make it yourself for pennies basically.
And you're going to make lots and lots of it.
So I've done this a couple times and I haven't done it for a little while now.
But I'm planning on doing it again in the very near future.
So I've figured, hey, I see that.
We are low on shows and I usually don't do two in the same month.
But here I go.
So if you want a little background about why you might want Cambucha T.
There's plenty of resources online to read about.
One of the biggest benefits is the probiotics that are inside of it.
You know, it's basically a living organism that you are drinking, which is kind of weird.
But it's really good for you to make you feel really good after you've had it.
It's slightly alcoholic, but it's sold in stores as a non alcoholic drink.
Because that's how low of an alcohol content it has.
And you'll hear some terms common in the Cambucha vernacular, such as scoby.
And scoby is actually the organism that lives and breathes inside of your tea.
It basically eats sugar that you put in it and turns it into, and ferments it.
But also spits out some vitamins as well.
So another benefit.
So the recipe that I'm going to talk about.
I'm not exactly sure where I've originally got it from.
I thought I got it from epicurious.com, but I looked at the epicurious site, and it's not that one.
So I had to have to research a little bit more about where I got it from.
But I will explain it to you, and I'll send out some show notes about how I do it.
So ingredients. It's only a couple.
You need three and a half quarts of water, a cup of sugar, eight to ten tea bags of black tea,
or two to two and a half tablespoons of loose tea.
If you have loose tea a set of black tea, you need two cups of a starter kit.
So either that is two cups of some of your last set of Cambucha, or some Cambucha that you buy in the store.
That's sitting on the shelf somewhere.
If you do it that way, I suggest that you go look through, and they're not all the same in terms of consistency,
because there's sediment in there, and they don't all have the same amount.
Try to find one that has an abnormally large amount of sediment in it, because then you'll have more organisms to work with.
And make sure you're also getting one that doesn't, that's not pasteurized.
Because if it's pasteurized, then you won't get anything coming out of it, because everything will be dead.
Okay, and so you are going to need that starter tea, and you're going to need one scoby per jar.
So for your starter kit, you're not going to have a scoby, and usually the first batch that you do, does not taste as good as every subsequent batch.
And that's because you have to make your scoby that first time, and since the scoby is made already, it's going to affect the taste and the color and the consistency.
It's not going to be the same as it will be afterwards.
But once you do have it, you'll be able to, after your first one, you'll be able to take that first one and cut their scoby in half and put half in each jar.
And then from now on, you'll be able to put it in jars from now on.
The equipment that you'll need, you'll need a stock pot that can hold three and a half quarts, and you're going to need either one gallon glass jar or two, two quart glass jars.
And for all my friends in Europe, I'm sorry, I'm using the English system.
I don't know metric, at least for cooking. I know I'm a scientist, so I use metric all the time, but I don't know. I'm not going to try to convert these units right now, but I'm sure you can at your leisure.
Anyway, so there are, I use two, two quart Mason jars, and you also need some cheese cloth, preferably, or just any other type of clean paper towels or something that you can put over it,
I've ever banned to hold those, the cheese cloth over paper towels over the bottles. I'm in the glass jars. And then after you're done, you're going to need 16 ounce glass bottles with lids.
Or if you are a beer maker, or you know how beer is made, you can get those 16 or 32 ounce resellable glass bottles. Those work really well as well. Those are the type that I use. I use the amber bottles that are, I think, 32 ounce.
So some instructions that you should be aware of is that you should avoid prolonged contact between can butcher and metal.
And so right after you're done cooking it, you should take it off as, after it is cooled, you should take it off as soon as possible. It's going to weaken the flavor of your can butcher.
And it's going to affect your scoby over time, if you have leeching coming off the metal.
So one of the first things you want to do is you want to boil water, then you want to dissolve your cup of sugar in the water once it's nice and hot.
And then after that, usually you, you know, just put your tea right in there. And depending on the size of your pot, it's going to take a few hours.
But you can, you want to put the tea in like so you get it up and get it boiling. And then you put your tea in and you take it immediately off of the heat and then let it sit over time until it gets down to, you don't have to be room temperature.
But it should be down close to room temperature because you don't want to throw your scoby in and kill it because it's too hot.
So once it's cooled down to a reasonable level, I'd say below, I'd say below, I'll go 30 degrees Celsius. So below 80 degrees or so.
Then you can put your starter tea and mix that in with your, with your tea, like the sweet tea that you've just made.
And mix it in nice and well. And after that, you can do the transfer. And I have a, I have a couple different funnels that I use, but you want to transfer it into from there into your glass jars or single glass jar.
And you want to add the scoby on top. So the first time you're not going to have a scoby so it's going to look funny. You're just going to be putting a glass jar with tea in it.
But eventually after your first round, you'll be able to put a scoby on the top. So after it's cold, after you put the starter tea in, then you put the scoby on top.
Once again, I'm going to go back over the word starter tea, starter tea is a little bit of the team from like two cups of tea from your last match or two cups of the store bought.
Cambridge that has an abnormally amount of sediment in it. All right, so I'm going to write along my notes.
After you've transferred it, you're going to want to put and handling the scoby. You don't want to do with bare hands and one more thing about prep.
You want to make sure that you sterilize as best you can. These last jars before you use them.
So I use soap and scolding hot water. Like water that I can't put my hands in because it's so hot.
And rinse them out and I don't dry them. I let them air dry and I try to do that to the evening before or at least a couple hours before.
Because it's okay if they're wet, but it's just not okay if there's any soap in there or if they're dirty.
So that's one thing you want to make sure before you add it. But now that you're adding it, put it in there.
You're covered with either the cheese cloth or the paper towels, secure a rubber band over the top.
And you're going to let it sit at room temperature for seven to ten days and make sure you keep it out of direct sunlight and keep it away from somewhere where it can be jostled.
Because you want it to be able to sit still and not have direct sunlight on it.
So somewhere usually in your kitchen out of the reach of your cats and your kids or your dogs, whatever you might have so that they can't disturb it.
And you can check on it periodically to see how after seven days you can start to look at it and see how it is.
I recommend letting that first one go to nine or ten days because you really want to get something growing in there.
So one thing that you'll notice is you will start to see a scoby growing on the top and usually they float in the top sometimes in the middle.
But by the second time you're doing it, the scoby will always be on top.
And you'll see a lot of sediment clicking at the bottom and you might even see bubbles and that's the fermentation.
So at this point you can start to do other things with it.
A lot of times may personally I like my Cambodia straight up like that or I will play with different tea types.
So usually something on the on the black side, but I've done other types of tea. I've done Jasmine stuff with different flavors in it.
But I try to keep it pretty plain because I like it relatively simple.
But I know people who put fruit in the Cambodia right before it's time for bottling let it go one more day with fruit or other types of spices in there.
I rather choose spiced tea instead.
So now that you're done, you're almost done with the project.
You're going to remove the scoby and like I was trying to say before when you're handling the scoby, you always want to use something relatively sterile.
I try not to use my hands and I always wash my hands before.
But I use a spatula to deal with the scoby like a clean spatula so I don't have to touch it too much.
If you do touch it, you'll find out that once you have a nice thick one, they can get thick, they're really smooth kind of texture of cheese.
And they're pretty pretty cool. I really would like to see when it looks like under a microscope haven't had a chance to do that yet.
But yeah, remove it, put it on a clean plate out of the way.
And then now you can start to bottle.
I have a small silicone bottle filter. I have a bottle funnel that I got from.
I don't know, bed bath or me on or somewhere.
And I use that and make sure that it's nice and clean and sterile before I use it.
But then with my clean bottles, I put the funnel on top and then go and start pouring into the bottles.
And then after you pour into the bottles, make sure you close it with the, you put a secure lid on there.
And you can drink it right away, but I'd like to let it get cold first.
So close that bottle, put it in the refrigerator.
But you can start to drink it right away.
Once again, a lot of people like to put flavors in the bottle at this point.
Sometimes you do it, depending on what you're putting in and if it can fit in the bottle or not, you'll put it in the big glass jars and let it sit for an extra day or two.
Or if it's small enough and it can go into the bottle, you'll put it in the bottle.
You'll put the can boot you in the bottle first and then add any flavors that you might want to.
Once again, it's something that I don't do on a regular basis.
But you can.
But once you have a bottle, you want to leave it sealed out of direct sunlight for another one or two days at room temperature.
And then it's going to carbonate more.
Now you don't have to.
This is an optional thing, but I think it's a better way to do it because otherwise it's not very carbonated.
If you put the lid on there and leave it out for another day or two, it'll get carbonated.
My direction say you can do one to three days.
But I've never done it.
Some two inpatient away that long.
So one or two days.
And then after that, you can refrigerate it and that'll stop the fermentation and the carbonation.
And then from there, you can drink within a month.
So the one thing that you want to do is you want to make a big enough batch.
And that's why the batch is so big because you want to have two sets of bottles maybe because as one is getting ready, you can start to be making the other one.
The thing that's really exciting and cool is that once you start to make it, you never really want to stop because you're always taking the leftovers of the last one to start the new one.
And it was really heartbreaking for me when I moved a year or so ago.
And I had to stop making it because I didn't want to make it, I didn't want to have to make it make the trip.
So I drank my last batch and threw away my skull bean and shed a little tear.
But I'm ready to start doing it again.
And I'm excited to share this experience with you.
When I go back and talk about my adventures with my new Blu-ray external Blu-ray player and how to use.
Make MKV.
I will probably also tell you how my first batch of Ken budget come out.
So that's about it.
There's online, there's also some things about troubleshooting your Cambucha.
So if your Scooby doesn't grow, if you have any other problems with the flavor or the color, I haven't really had these problems.
The biggest problem that people have and I haven't had it because I always do a good job of cleaning it is sometimes people get mold and you can tell mold from a Scooby.
The same, you know, fuzzy is mold, slick is Scooby.
And if you have that, that means you didn't do a good job of cleaning.
And so it's just like making home brewed beer.
It's really important to maintain a relatively sterile environment.
And we're not talking aseptic as in the clinical sense of the term when we're talking about pretty darn clean.
So that's it for this episode.
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Thanks once again and this is Be Easy, signing out Hacker Public Radio.
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