Carboy for Kombucha?

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.

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

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.

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/shp...-DB54-E011-AD03-001B2163195C&mr:referralID=NA

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

http://www.webstaurantstore.com/anc...n&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!

Vance71975 said:

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/shp...-DB54-E011-AD03-001B2163195C&mr:referralID=NA

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

http://www.webstaurantstore.com/anc...n&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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Not sure why a plastic container is bad if a plastic spigot is OK. I suspect "tradition" is more in play here.

camiller said:

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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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.

I have two Scobys each brewing in 1 gallon Sun Tea jars with spigots. I just received my five gallon wide mouth carboy with spigot, and wanted to know if one of my Scobys would work to get the five gallons going, or should I add both to the new carboy?

I'd go with both just to be safe, although I think the more important part is to use enough starter tea to keep it acidic enough. I'd use one of the whole gallons as starter tea, bottle the other gallon, and toss both scobys in.

ChessRockwell said:

I'd go with both just to be safe, although I think the more important part is to use enough starter tea to keep it acidic enough. I'd use one of the whole gallons as starter tea, bottle the other gallon, and toss both scobys in.

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Thnx for reply Chess. I like the idea of using one gallon as my starter. I will let ya know what happens. Do you think 5 gallons would take more than my usual 7 day brew cycle that I'm getting right now?

I don't see any reason it would take more time than usual, but I've never done a batch that big so I don't know!

7 days and the 5 gallon carboy is all good. My two mamas have now merged to one big smooth mama. As for flavor, I could taste some tea tenons yesterday but not so much today. The sweet tea taste is all but gone and I think I may bottle tomorrow.

On a fermentation note, it seems two weeks in an ez-cap 16oz bottle with half of a quarter tsp of sugar is great for fizz and body. Glad I went to the 5 gallon carboy as 2 weeks is a long wait. At least I will soon have stock.

Glad to hear it went well! I don't quite have the time/space to ferment/bottle 5 gallons of kombucha (beer takes priority, or course), but I am thinking of starting to use my mr. beer keg (2 gallons) for kombucha, so we'll see how that goes. It's got a spigot right on it so I can just pour straight into the bottles and dump the new tea right into the top.

I had a similar thought, about using a 6 gallon carboy to brew 5 gallons of 'second ferment' kombucha in it. Not keeping the SCOBY in the jar, but putting the already fermented kombucha, you would otherwise bottle, into it and using some kind of single or twin Bubble Airlock with a carboy bung? Or some sort of cap that you could periodically release the gas, during the second ferment? Then transfer it into individual bottles, AFTER the second ferment is complete.
I just thought my entire batch of flavored kombucha would have consistency; flavor, body, effervescence.
Anyone ever try this?
What other apparatus did you use?

I am thinking about scaling up to 5 gallons of kombucha.

What do you do with bottling?
Right now I brew 3 liters of kombucha and I have 3 450ml and 2 1L swing tops that I bottle kombucha with.

I have a lot of beer bottles that I can use but I am worried about bottle bombs.
Thanks.

trinity3018 said:

I had a similar thought, about using a 6 gallon carboy to brew 5 gallons of 'second ferment' kombucha in it. Not keeping the SCOBY in the jar, but putting the already fermented kombucha, you would otherwise bottle, into it and using some kind of single or twin Bubble Airlock with a carboy bung? Or some sort of cap that you could periodically release the gas, during the second ferment? Then transfer it into individual bottles, AFTER the second ferment is complete.
I just thought my entire batch of flavored kombucha would have consistency; flavor, body, effervescence.
Anyone ever try this?
What other apparatus did you use?

Click to expand...

I know this is an old post, but I was wondering the same thing. Did you ever manage to try this? How did it turn out?