Kombucha Won't Carbonate - What Am I Doing Wrong?

Hi,

I bottled my first batch of Kombucha about ten days ago but still no carbonation. What am I doing wrong?

The Kombucha itself took around two weeks. I used PH strips and the PH of the finished Kombucha is at about 3. It tastes great. Very clean, tart, but still some perceived sweetness to balance the tartness. Tastes just like it should to me.

I followed some basic instructions I found online and bottled, expecting to give it 3 more days or so and have nice, fizzy Kombucha. But ten days later it's still totally flat. I'd swear I can see little baby scoby's in some of the bottles, but still no fizz. Did I need to add additional sugar? Would opening the bottles and adding a little fruit juice cause it to restart?

I used a hydrometer before and after and saw very little movement. But the PH and flavor did change, and I even got a baby off of the mother, so I'm certain things did what they were supposed to. I read that hydrometers don't give accurate readings for bacterial fermentations... Is that right?

Where did I go wrong?

Your bottles might not have a tight seal. That would be my suggestion. Plus it depends what your second fermenting with. Hope this helps.

Keltravis said:

Your bottles might not have a tight seal. That would be my suggestion. Plus it depends what your second fermenting with. Hope this helps.

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Hi,

I'm fairly confident it's not the seals of the bottles. But I didn't add any additional sugar/juice/etc for a secondary. The instructions I was going off of said to just bottle after primary and wait a few days. Is that wrong?

I used a hydrometer which suggested there was still plenty of residual sugar in there for continued fermentation, and it did taste as though there was still some sweetness in there, but as I mentioned above, I've read that hydrometers were not accurate with Kombucha, so I'm really not sure. Any thoughts? Do I need to add some new sugar solution in order to get things to carbonate?

When my booch has no fizz, I'll flip the tops, add a half tsp. of sugar for a 16oz bottle, re- seal and let it ferment for another 2-3 days (depending on the temperature)

chyna said:

When my booch has no fizz, I'll flip the tops, add a half tsp. of sugar for a 16oz bottle, re- seal and let it ferment for another 2-3 days (depending on the temperature)

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Great, thanks. I'll give that a try. So you do need to add more sugar at bottling? What's the rule on that?

My second ferment is usually made with 1/5 juice or sweetened fruity tea and 4/5 Kombucha. It usually has fizz but if not I do as above

If you're not going to flavor your booch, then yes, I'd add sugar for your second ferment

I make 3 gallons of booch at a time and I use a mixture of 3 cups of flavored tea with 1/2 cup sugar in it to carbonate. Fruit juice is also an excellent flavoring. I am kind of partial to cherry acai juice myself, but I have had good luck with all of them except for orange juice. Orange juice was NOT a good combo.

Make sure you have 2 fingers of head space at the top of the bottles. Too little space and you won't develop enough carbonation, too much space and you will develop too much.

I carb in PET bottles because I already had them and they are safe. I can squeeze them to see when they are ready. I find it takes 2 weeks to make a batch of booch and 2 weeks to properly carbonate. YMMV.

Thanks everyone.

It often takes 3-4 brew cycles to build up enough yeast to create a CO2 reaction

A lack of carbonation in Kombucha first being brewed is normal, and as anyacreate has indicated, it can in fact take several brew cycles before carbonation occurs. The important thing to remember is that a lack of carbonation doesn't necessarily indicate a problem with the Kombucha itself, though it can be the result of an overabundance of Bacteria to Yeast.

Additionally, there are a few tricks you can do which will aid in carbonation. First, use Green Tea primarily over Black or Rooibos, as the nutrient profile is better suited for yeast and results in more carbonation in comparison. I'd recommend loose-leaf tea over store bought bags as it's much tastier and higher in nutrients that the yeast need to survive.

Secondly, try doing a staggered sugar addition which is useful as it will give the yeast more time to build up in numbers before the Kombucha becomes increasingly acidic from bacterial fermentation. Basically, to do this technique you'll want to brew your Kombucha as normal, but add half the amount of sugar to the initial fermentation. Add the rest of the sugar a few days later, after fermentation has already kicked off. One of the reasons this works is similar to beer brewing, where a high-gravity environment with lots of sugar tends to make the yeast lazy due to it's initial abundance. Additionally, oxygen is important since yeast will convert Sugar to CO2 in the presence of oxygen, but switch over to producing mostly alcohol once oxygen levels decrease.

Lastly, make sure to remove the old Scoby at the end of your brew as opposed to leaving it in. The new Scoby that forms on the top of the container should be used for the next batch, and not the old one that you started the batch with. This again will help to stabilize the bacteria/yeast ratio, since most of the yeast will either be living in suspension or dangling off the Scobies that house huge colonies of bacteria.

For additional info, check this page out here as I've found it helpful in the past to troubleshoot various types of Kombucha problems. http://users.bestweb.net/~om/kombucha_balance/

I've had the continuous brew going for about 6 months. What we find works best is pulling 30% of the finished tea and replacing with new. We then add approx 10% of a club soda(pet) bottle of simple syrup.
We find when pulling 30%, both fermentation and bottle conditioning take exactly 1 week at room temp. After that, they go in the fridge. We settled on simple syrup since its so easy to make a stable syrup of any flavor you want.
I feel like the trickier option is to bottle when it's a bit sweeter than you want it, and let some of that sugar ferment out.
Good luck!

Dusting off an old thread!

I've read through this and it all makes sense. I do however I few additional questions.

I should note that I'm very new to the Kombucha world but understand fermentation quite well.

I currently have my third batch of Kombucha fermenting in the basement. I've opted for continuous brew. I live in Canada, my basement is very cold during the winter but I keep my kombucha at 22.5c (72.5f) via temperature control/heating belt. I wasn't going to pull any scobys out and leave them all in there but maybe I should change that? I should also note that I want to get a great handle of unflavoured Kombucha before going down the road of adding fruit. I gather that this might make carbonation more difficult (only using priming sugar, specifically organic sugarcane).

Both UncleRusty and anyacreate's comments about the first few batches not carbonating makes sense. Might be as simple as that? The first batch I pulled right from the tap on the vessel (304 stainless). That didn't work. Did some reading, my second batch I transferred to a secondary vessel which had the priming sugars and I stirred the kombucha to make sure there was even distribution of yeast and it didn't improve my results. Do I simply need to wait a few more batches and do staggered sugar additions?

UnclueRusty's comment about using green tea over black is interesting, any notes or watchouts about blending different types of basic teas? I've read about herbal and flavoured teas. Not touching them. So far I've used black tea. My black tea is in bags. I've been intending on getting loose leaf but it's what I have and we're in the middle of a pandemic so my options where limited as I started this during lock-down.

I also like my kombucha quite acidic. I'm wondering if I'm letting it go too long before bottling? My first batch went at 22.5c for 9 days then I turned off the heat and let it drop to around 14.5c (ambient) for 5 days, then bottled. The second I did around 9 days at 22.5c then bottled.

Last, I did some reading elsewhere and I'm getting mixed opinions on continuous brewing. Seems like the ideal route on paper, you don't need a hotel, you drain most of it and top up. Easy and quick. Only down side I've heard of (before carb issues) was that your juice turns acidic quickly. Doesn't seem like a bad thing to me, especially because I prefer more acid than less. Maybe this last question is for another thread?

Have you tried bottling your brew in soda bottles? After brewing in a large jar for 3 weeks, I transfer them into bottles and leave them in a dark room for 1-5 days where I "burp" them at least once a day. Some of my batches carbonate more than others, but this trick has worked for me without fail. I saw a response above where it took a few cycles to carbonate. However, I believe this is a false statement. I was able to do it on my first batch with a new SCOBY using the soda bottle technique.

RedefiningAllDiets said:

Have you tried bottling your brew in soda bottles? After brewing in a large jar for 3 weeks, I transfer them into bottles and leave them in a dark room for 1-5 days where I "burp" them at least once a day. Some of my batches carbonate more than others, but this trick has worked for me without fail. I saw a response above where it took a few cycles to carbonate. However, I believe this is a false statement. I was able to do it on my first batch with a new SCOBY using the soda bottle technique.

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What do you mean by soda bottle technique? I use swing top bottles.

The soda bottle technique is pouring it into bottles (like you're doing already) and then letting it sit for 1-5 days for a second fermentation. As it continues to ferment, you need to "burp" the bottles, which means that you open the swing-top bottle and close it again. This lets some of the air out so your bottles won't explode. Have you tried that before? As it continues to ferment, you'll see it start to bubble. Once it gets to your desired carbonation level, you can put it in the fridge for 24 hours before consumption. Hope this helps.

maffou said:

What do you mean by soda bottle technique? I use swing top bottles.

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Oh I see. Yes I’ve done this. I don’t burp because there isn’t carbonation to release though. I added half a teaspoon of sugar for every 16oz of liquid.

You add more sugar after bottling? I've never heard of that before. I only add sugar at the very beginning when I'm fermenting the SCOBY with the first fermentation. I add 1 cup of sugar to 8 tea bags and 4 (1 quart) cups of water. Then, I transfer it to a gallon jar where I add 10 more cups of water (2.5 quarts). I put the SCOBY in there, top it with a 100% cotton dishcloth and rubber band, and put it in a cool, dark, place for 3 weeks. By then, the second SCOBY has formed. After that, I'll add flavorings (usually fruit, spices, and some honey) to infuse for 24-48 hours. THEN, I do the bottling. I'm going to create a blog on this so thank you for this post.

Setesh said:

I make 3 gallons of booch at a time and I use a mixture of 3 cups of flavored tea with 1/2 cup sugar in it to carbonate. Fruit juice is also an excellent flavoring. I am kind of partial to cherry acai juice myself, but I have had good luck with all of them except for orange juice. Orange juice was NOT a good combo.

Make sure you have 2 fingers of head space at the top of the bottles. Too little space and you won't develop enough carbonation, too much space and you will develop too much.

I carb in PET bottles because I already had them and they are safe. I can squeeze them to see when they are ready. I find it takes 2 weeks to make a batch of booch and 2 weeks to properly carbonate. YMMV.

Click to expand...

I'm curious as to why orange juice did not work well for you? I have tried all kinds of fruit and juices and orange juice (not from concentrate in my case) always seems to be one of the quickest ones to become fizzy! Also, orange and ginger is one of my favorite flavors. If you're open to it I encourage you to give it another go