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Have you ever wondered how to brew kombucha at home? This easy guide will teach you how to transform tea into kombucha in just a few easy steps! This is the most popular guide to brewing kombucha on the internet and has helped over 10,000 home brewers make kombucha in kitchens around the world. Yours next?
save this recipe!It’s a big day everyone! The day your intestinal microbiota have been begging you for. The day you say goodbye to expensive store-bought kombucha. The day you become a brewmaster!
The goal of this guide is to be your one stop shop for homemade kombucha brewage, from SCOBY-less to fermented perfection. No hopping around the internet or buying unnecessary gear. No fuss. No confusion. Because making homemade kombucha is so simple, and I hope after reading this you’ll give it a whirl! Let’s hop right to it.
Meet The Brewer
Hey friends, I’m Sarah! I’m in love with home-brewing kombucha and have helped thousands of people all over the world make kombucha in their homes! I created an entire website dedicated to brewing kombucha called Brew Buch, and run an online community of over 50,000 brewers called Kickass Kombucha Brewers (I’d love for you to join)! If you have any questions about brewing, please drop a comment at the end of this post – I personally read and respond to them daily!
The process looks like this:
This post will go into detail about each step in the process of making kombucha. For succinct instructions and metric measurements, jump to the printable recipe card at the end of this post. The general order of things goes something like this (you can jump around this tutorial by clicking the links below):
- Make SCOBY (1 to 4 weeks) – to make the “mother”
- First Fermentation (6 to 10 days) – to make the actual kombucha
- Second Fermentation (3 to 10 days) – to carbonate the kombucha
“Excellent recipe. I’ve tried ten or more online for comparison and this one has the best flavor balance. Not at all vinegary and not too sweet. Will be using for my base from now on.” -Katherine
Before we start, here are some general notes that are consistent throughout the whole homemade kombucha process.
- No metal or plastic containers. Metal can react with the acidic kombucha, while plastic can house nasty bacteria.
- Clean is key. A recurring theme in kombucha brewing is that everything must be clean! We’re creating the perfect environment for good bacterial growth, but if a bad bacteria sneaks in it could ruin your batch (and make you pretty sick).
- Temperature plays a big role. Fermentation goes a bit quicker in warmer temperatures and a bit slower in colder.
- No mold zone. If you see any mold growing on your SCOBY or in the tea (which I understand can be difficult to discern from the hideous SCOBY but will generally be green, white, or black), then toss your whole batch.
Step 1: How to make a kombucha SCOBY
The SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast) is the mother of the kombucha, providing bacteria and yeast to ferment the sweet tea, protecting the tea from outside contaminants, and providing a loose seal to keep a bit of the carbonation in. Yes, it’s hideous…but it’s the very essence of kombucha! And the best part? You can make one at home! You’ll need:
- Water: Tap water is just fine here!
- White Sugar: Feeds the yeast and bacteria—don’t sub with other sweeteners.
- Black Tea: Provides nutrients for fermentation. Black tea works best for a strong, healthy SCOBY.
- Raw, unflavored kombucha: Contains live cultures that kickstart the SCOBY growth. Look for one with sediment at the bottom!
To make a SCOBY, you’ll brew sweet black tea, let it cool, then mix in raw kombucha. Cover and ferment at room temperature for 1 to 4 weeks until a ¼-inch SCOBY forms. Keep the SCOBY in its tea until you’re ready to brew your first batch! Jump to recipe for printable instructions.
Which brand Is best?
Our tried and tested store-bought brand is the GT’s “Pure”. You can find it in most natural food stores.
Important Notes For Making A SCOBY
- Only black tea. Similarly, the SCOBY doesn’t grow as well with green or fruity teas. By all means, once your SCOBY is big and strong, you can use green tea, but for now, stick with black. The SCOBY doesn’t like decaf tea and will not grow as well if fed it (SCOBY = my spirit animal).
- No honey. Honey can contain botulism bacteria that, when grown exponentially as bacteria and yeast tend to do in kombucha, can be dangerous.
- Don’t mess with it! You won’t see anything but a few bubbles in the first few days. But then one day a thin, translucent layer will form, eventually thickening into a full on SCOBY.
Step 2: The first fermentation
So you’ve got a newbie SCOBY and you’re ready to get this komboo-choo train rollin’. This first fermentation is where you actually make the kombucha. You’ll need:
- Water: Tap is fine!
- White Sugar: Feeds the SCOBY and bacteria during fermentation.
- Black or green tea: Black tea is most common, but green tea adds a lighter flavor.
- Unflavored kombucha: This has the live cultures and acidity needed to start your fermentation.
- SCOBY: Your live culture pellicle.
To do the first fermentation, you’ll brew sweet tea, cool it, and add it to a jar with your SCOBY and starter kombucha. Cover and ferment at room temp for 6–10 days, tasting around day 6. Once it’s slightly tangy and not too sweet, reserve 2 cups as your starter and move the rest to second fermentation. Jump to recipe for printable instructions.
First Fermentation Tips
- In this step, unlike in the making of the SCOBY, you can use other teas besides black. Feel free to experiment with green, white, oolong, or combinations of them. Fruit teas should be mixed with a few black tea bags to ensure the SCOBY mama gets what she needs to thrive.
- Once the SCOBY gets to be about an inch thick, peel off a few layers to create a second SCOBY (you can share the love and gift this to a friend!)
Step 3: The Second Fermentation
The final step and negotiably the best part of the process! The second fermentation is where the real magic happens. It’s where you can play around with sweet, fruity kombucha flavors that will not only make your homemade kombucha taste better than store-bought, but will carbonate the kombucha! You’ll need:
- Homemade kombucha from the first fermentation
- Sweetener (fruit, honey, or sugar). Here are a few ideas per 1 cup kombucha:
- 1 to 2 Tbsp mashed fruit or fruit juice
- 1 to 2 tsp honey
- a piece of candied ginger
Strain the kombucha and bottle it with your chosen sweetener, leaving some headspace. Let it ferment at room temperature for 3 to 10 days to build fizz, then strain out fruit if needed and refrigerate to chill and stop fermentation. Jump to recipe for printable instructions.
Second fermentation tips
- The more sugar/fruit you add, the faster the kombucha will ferment and become carbonated.
- Your jars can explode if the pressure becomes too high! For your first few batches while you’re still getting the hang of how kombucha reacts to your environment, bottle a portion of it in a plastic bottle. This will act as a gauge for how the others are doing. When the plastic bottle is rock solid, the rest are probably done. “Burp” them by opening each to release some pressure, then place them in the refrigerator to slow fermentation.
The Simple Guide to Kickass Kombucha
Equipment
- Glass Jar (1 gallon or larger)
- Clean Cloth (like a dish cloth or paper towels)
Ingredients
Making a SCOBY
- 7 cups water, 1.6 L
- 4 bags black tea, or 1 Tbsp loose tea
- ½ cup white sugar, 100 g
- 1 cup unflavored kombucha, this should be unpasteurized, unflavored store-bought kombucha, 235 mL
First Fermentation
- 14 cups water, 3.5 quarts, 3.3 L
- 8 bags black or green tea, or 2 Tbsp loose leaf
- 1 cup white sugar, 200 g
- 2 cups unflavored kombucha, from a previous batch or store-bought kombucha, 470 mL
- 1 SCOBY
Second Fermentation
- Kombucha, from the first fermentation
- Sweetener or flavor
Instructions
Making Kombucha SCOBY
- Make Tea: Bring 7 cups water to a boil in a clean pot. Remove from heat and add 4 bags black tea. Allow tea to steep for about 15 minutes. Remove tea and stir in ½ cup white sugar. Let tea cool to room temperature.Alternatively, boil only 2 cups of water and add the remaining 5 cups of cold water once the tea has steeped and sugar has been added. This will quicken the process.
- Add Starter: Add 1 cup unflavored kombucha then pour everything into a large glass jar.
- Ferment: Cover with a clean cloth and secure with a rubber band. Set somewhere dark and room temperature (70-75°F, 21-24°C) for 1 to 4 weeks, until a ¼ inch (½ cm) SCOBY has formed.
First Fermentation
- Make Tea: Bring 14 cups water to a boil in a clean pot. Remove from heat and add 8 bags black or green tea. Allow tea to steep for about 15 minutes. Remove tea and stir in 1 cup white sugar. Let tea cool to room temperature.Alternatively to quicken this up, boil only 4 cups of water and add the remaining 10 cups of cold water once tea has steeped and sugar has been added.
- Combine With Starter + SCOBY: If your SCOBY is still in the jar you made it in, use a clean spoon to push it down into the tea, then pour out all but 2 cups of the tea that’s in that jar (you can bottle the remaining tea to keep as a strong starter kombucha). Pour in your freshly made cooled tea.
- Ferment: Cover with a clean cloth and secure with a rubber band. Set somewhere dark and room temperature (70-75°F, 21-24°C) for anywhere from 6 to 10 days. Begin tasting the tea at about 6 days. It should be mildly sweet and slightly vinegary when finished.The longer the tea ferments, the more sugar molecules will be eaten up, the less sweet it will be. This process will go faster if it is warm in your house.
- And Repeat: Reserve 2 cups from this batch to use as starter kombucha for your next batch (just leave it in the jar with the SCOBY). The rest can move into the second fermentation!
Second Fermentation
- Flavor: Add your desired flavors to each bottle, then funnel kombucha into bottles, leaving about 1 inch at the top. Seal each shut.
- Ferment: Let ferment somewhere dark and room temperature for 3 to 10 days.This process will go faster if it is warm in your house. Carefully open bottles to prevent volcanoes. You can do this over a bowl with a baggie over the top just in case!
- Serve: If desired, strain out flavorings before serving. Place bottles in the fridge to slow the carbonation process and to chill before serving.
Nutrition
Nutrition information calculated by Sarah Bond, degreed nutritionist.
did you make this?Leave a comment below and tag @liveeatlearn on social media! I love seeing what you’ve made!Supplies Needed for Making Kombucha
- Large Glass Jug: It should hold at least 1 gallon (buy on Amazon or in most homeware stores)
- Fermentation Bottles: These bottles have a tight seal specifically designed to keep the carbonation in (hellooo fizz!) (buy flip-top bottles here or collect and reuse GT’s bottles)
About the gear
Above is a list of the supplies needed to make kombucha. These are affiliate links, meaning I may earn a commission if you make a purchase. I’ve only included products I know and trust, and have included multiple buying options for each. I personally use and love the products from Kombucha.com. For 10% off their online store, comment below and I’ll get our secret code to you!
I recently brewed a batch of kombucha and bottled it. I added a small amount of fruit juice for the second fermentation and left the airtight bottles sealed at room temp for about seven days. I refrigerated them after that, but they are not carbonated. If I take them out of the refrigerator, will they continue to ferment and carbonate?
I’m excited to make my first batch of kombucha!! Please send me the PDF so I can print out the particulars. Thanks for demystifying the process for me!
Hi Carol! I’ve changed things up a bit, so now you can just enter your email in the box at the bottom of the post and the printable PDF will be sent right out to you 🙂 Happy brewing!
Hi – love your instructions! Started brewing a couple of months ago and love it. So tasty and way more economical than buying in a store. Would you believe someone was selling kombucha in Hawaii for $8 a cup!
Anyways, just started a new batch and used starter tea that was vinegary…from my last batch that had to sit for 4 weeks while I was away. Will it be okay or should I scrap it? I used 8 tea bags and 1/2 cup of sugar. My scoby is nice and large, probably a 1/2″ thick and 7″ wide circle.
Thanks
Isn’t the store bought just SO expensive? I got hooked on kombucha in Hawaii, not sure how I ever saw past that price!
As long as there is no mold/weird bits in the starter tea, I think it should be okay to use. Some people even use straight vinegar as starter tea, because it’s really the acidity in the starter tea that you need to prevent bad bacterial growth in the beginning.
Happy brewing! 🙂
Hi there! Thank you for this very descriptive post! I’m about to start my second fermentation and I’m just a little unclear about adding flavor. My original thought process was to take fruit, I’m using cranberries and raspberries, and blend them in a food processor. Then I planned to strain them through cheese cloth into the kombucha and then ferment. Is this correct? Or should I put it all in and strain after it ferments? Or should I not bother blending it and cook them instead? Or none of that lol sorry! This is my first time so I’m not really sure what the best approach would be. Thanks!
Hi Courtney! Blending and cooking aren’t really necessary. You can just mash them a little with a fork to expose more of their juiciness, then add them to the kombucha and let it all ferment. After it has fermented, strain out the fruit pieces and you’re good to go! The first go around can be a bit confusing and overwhelming, but you’re almost there! 🙂
Thanks for the info! I had some already cooked fruit that I used and I also did a batch with cranberries. I just slightly boiled them enough to pop them and mash them up.
So, now I have another question. I did them in 3 flavors and 4 containers. Three are the flip top glass jars and one is a mason jar. I read elsewhere to ‘burp’them so they don’t build up too much pressure. I did this on the second day at the end. There wasn’t really a ton of pressure in any of them. Then, this afternoon (the third day), I did it again and one exploded out the top all of the fruit! The others barely had anything. I put the exploded one in the fridge and the rest I tasted and aren’t super fizzy so I left them out. I’m curious if I’ve done something wrong or if this is just part of the process. I’m planning on straining the exploded one tonight but I’m not sure what to do with the rest. I’m also really nervous about how long to leave them.
Should I get some different containers?
Also, the Mason jar one seems to be growing another scoby and doesn’t look very good. Is that normal?
Thanks!
Courtney
Okay, I just strained and tasted the one that exploded and it’s not very fizzy and a little thick! It must be my bottles…I don’t think I did anything else wrong. I’m not sure…
Hi Courtney, it doesn’t sounds like you did anything wrong! The process has a lot of factors affecting it.
-The mason jar doesn’t provide a completely tight seal, so you might expect that one to take longer to become fizzy. It may grow some little doodads, but as long as there is no mold or colored bit, it should be ok.
-Different fruits have different sugar contents. I’m guessing your bottle that exploded had a more sugar-y fruit than the rest. Burping can certainly help relieve some of this extra pressure, but burping before the bottles need burping will cause for less fizziness. A trick I like to use is use a plastic water bottle, in addition to a few glass jars, for this step. When the water bottle is pretty hard, you’ll know that the glass jars are also pressurized and probably ready to be burped or refrigerated.
-I haven’t encountered thick kombucha before, so I did a little research. If you kombucha is also a bit “slimy”, this article may be able to help some (though I think it may just need a little more fermentation time + regular burping for the sugary ones!)
I hope this helps! Definitely keep trying. Once you get the hang of it and get a few successful batches under your belt, it’s cake 🙂
Awesome, thank you so much. After straining and tasting them all the Mason jar one was the fizziest…probably because I was less worried about it exploding without a tight seal so I let it sit longer.
The thicker one had raspberries and cranberries and is not slimy.
I’ve got another batch going right now and definitely have plans to do things differently a little bit. I’ll do the plastic bottle this time, too! Thank you for your help!
I’m so excited to get started. I’m looking for the printable version of the instructions Thank you so much.
Hi Sue, just enter your email in the box at the end of the post where it says “printable version” and a PDF will be sent to you! 🙂
My Scoby never gets thick. I bought a thick Scoby and used that in my first batch. The new baby scoby was created at the top. I fermented it for about10 days and then removed the mother and the baby. Then the second batch I put the mother and baby into the tea with starter tea. It made another baby. The babies are really thin. How do I make a thick scoby like my original mother scoby? Also am I suppose to use the mother and all the babies in the next batch? Thanks for any help you can give.
Hey Elizabeth! You can split up the mother and baby SCOBYs and they will all ferment separate batches. This should help the babies grow, because they won’t be competing with each other. Besides that, it will just take time (a few weeks/batches) for the babies to get thick, but they’ll get there! 🙂
I am actually following your recipe/method and already am on the second part of fermentation( started today ;)! I feel my scooby is little for the amount of tea but looks like it is working so far! Thank you for taking the time to share! You make it looks so simple and actually made me feel confident enough to try!
Hi Sol! I’m so happy to hear you’re giving it a go! The process definitely seems complicated at first glance but is easy once you get going, so I’m happy I could convince you to try 🙂 Your SCOBY will thicken up with each new batch you make, so I wouldn’t worry about the thickness now. If it doesn’t start to reach about 1/2 inch thick within a few batches, you may need to adjust a few things to make sure you’re brewing in the right atmosphere (i.e. make sure temperature is not too hot/cold, make sure you’re not using antibacterial soap in the container, or try a different brand of tea) (but I have faith that it will all work out just fine!)
HI Sarah into my fourth batch and my Scoby is over an inch thick what should I do now and how lol. Thank you
Hi Kate! If you have more SCOBY than you can handle, as long as there are no moldy spots on your SCOBY, just gently separate the layers in half (or thirds if it’s really thick) so you have a few SCOBYs! If you’re not ready to use them right away, this article by Kombucha Kamp has a few ideas on how to keep your “SCOBY Hotel” happy. I also like making SCOBY candy with my excess mamas 🙂
Hi there! Your instructions are amazing, I’m just confused on one thing, after I set aside the scoby and 2 cups to move on to the 2nd fermentation, what do I do with the scoby? Is it back to the start in trying to make another scoby? Sorry, I’m a bit confused lol
Hi Jennifer! No problem 🙂 So once you move onto the second fermentation (carbonation), recycle that 2 cups + SCOBY into the first fermentation again (the one that takes 6 to 10 days). Now that you have a SCOBY, you shouldn’t have to repeat the SCOBY-making step again, you can just keep repeating the 1st and 2nd fermentations to always have ‘bucha brewing. Does that make sense?
I would like to print this off to make it too, if you don’t mind. Can you please send me a copy of the PDF ? I can’t wait till I try this. Ty
Thereasa
Hey Thereasa, if you enter your email in the box at the end of the post the PDF will be emailed right to ya! 😀
Hi Sarah,
Thank you so much for your easy to follow Kombucha
Did my first fermentation and bottled it and added lime and ginger
been 3 days or so and hopefully i will get more fizzz
Have started another batch with a baby Scoby with 2 litres of water
Hope for a good batch as this is only my 2nd time trail and error
ONCE again Thank you
So happy to hear, Shariq!! 😀 The lime + ginger combo sounds delicious. I’d love to hear how it turns out for you!