BoltsFan704

Recipes 

I was thinking of using a 6 gal glass carboy to brew 5 gal of Kombucha. Has anyone tried this? How would siphoning off the finished tea and then adding a new 5 gal of tea on top of the baby scoby work? No airlock just cloth with rubber band.

Tbone66

Recipes 

siphoning off and adding tea is the easy part. The bad part I can see in this is not being able to have access to the scoby. Eventually the scoby would have so many daughters that it would take up the entire volume of the carboy, and when they get thick they are very tough. Instead of a carboy you could use a 6 or 7 gallon brew bucket to brew 5 gallons.

Ryan

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ChessRockwell

Recipes 

Good point Tbone - I used to ferment Kombucha in little 32oz fruit juice bottles with small necks, since I had them left over from using the juice to prime the Kombucha. Worked great until there became so many stuck scoby's inside that I couldn't get out, I had to toss the bottles.

Although it would be a fun experiment, if you did the first batch at a normal level, to get a nice big mother scoby, and then all later batches filled almost to the complete top, so the baby scobies were the same size as the carboy opening, then you could fish 'em out if you wanted to. Probably have to stab 'em with something though, and that's just scobicide. lol...

Big brew bucket is probably the better idea.

Vance71975

Recipes 

I have read not to make Kombucha in any sort of plastic or metal container. I would just find Big glass jars, i have hear Costco has 3 or 4 gallon glass jars with a spigot on them that makes bottling a breeze. Something like these:

http://www.cooking.com/products/shprodde.asp?SKU=282721&CCAID=CKSCFRGOOG&mr:tracki ngCode=76A3B948-DB54-E011-AD03-001B2163195C&mr:referralID=NA

http://www.infusionjars.com/veronagrande650ozinfusionjar-5gallonglassjar.aspx

http://www.webstaurantstore.com/anchor-hocking-85679-2-5-gallon-barrel-jar-with-brushed-aluminum-lid/55085679.html?utm_source=Amazon&utm_medium=cpc&utm _campaign=Amazon+Campaign

Just make sure you get one with a plastic Spigot instead of metal, Kombucha is acidic and you dont want to drink heavy metals!

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camiller

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Not sure why a plastic container is bad if a plastic spigot is OK. I suspect "tradition" is more in play here.

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Vance71975

Recipes 

Well the reason they say not to use plastic is that it scratches and that can harbor bad bacteria that you do not want in your kombucha, But Food grade plastic brew buckets are safe as long as they have no scratches in them. Glass however is a lot easier to clean and harder to scratch. But it is a personal choice thing.

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