Experience with more alcoholic 'bucha?

Hey guys, I am new to this site.
Lately I have been trying to look up how to make a more alcoholic 'bucha. I dont have ANY experience with brewing beer nor do I have the equipment, so I was wondering if anyone had any experience with just putting an airlock on a 2nd fermentation and what happened? My theory is (based on little knowledge I have) that the yeasts will keep producing alcohol and the airlock will keep the bacteria from using it up. My experiment I have going now is on its 2nd day and is bubbling a bit. I also put a good amount (approx 30% of the bottle volume) of organic strawberry lemonade in the 2nd fermentation, just to give it something to work on.
Again, I am just wondering if anyone knows if this is a bad idea or whatnot, ha ha ha.

I'd be interested in hearing how this works. I'd also like the ability to make higher alcohol content in my kombucha

Ok, so I tasted it again today and it tasted really sour, not vinegary, but just sour. Anyhow, so I bottled it and added honey for sweetness. So I'm gonna give it a few more days and taste it again. The other kombucha that I made with this concoction/batch was really delicious, though I got too impatient and it wasn't as fizzy as I wanted it.

@Ruthie I generally do kefir, but many of the processes are similar to kombucha, and when I make a longer fermented batch I make sure it's in a sealed container or one with a bubbler. To much oxygen seems to feed the critters and they eat up the alcohol.

Now kombucha has the scoby which should reduce the amount of oxygen that gets into the liquid.

What I'm not to sure about it how well the scoby will survive in an oxygen free environment.

O.

@orillian
I wasn't trying this out on the initial kombucha batch. I just took a bottle that would've been going thru it's 2nd fermentation (for making it fizzy) and stuck a balloon on it with a little pinprick in it as a make-shift airlock. I wonder if any alcohol forms in the initial batch at all, I always figured that oxygen could get thru the scoby.

Is there even a way to measure the alcohol content of kombucha. I was under the impression that the bacteria ate it all up.

@n240
The bacteria does eat up the alcohol, if there is oxygen. By putting an airlock on it the CO2 can escape (which I guess is what the yeast gives off when it turns the sugar to alcohol) while keeping the oxygen out which will keep the bacteria "at bay" so to speak. There is probably a tool that will measure the alcohol percentage (there was another thread posted quite recently about it) but I am just winging it, going by taste (plus this is just a wild hair experiment).

Well I'm still interested to see how this turns out. How long can a scoby be without oxygen?

I have no idea

I'm gonna assume a shot of vodka, and a glass of kombucha would be the best, easiest was to achieve this.

n240sxguy said:

Is there even a way to measure the alcohol content of kombucha. I was under the impression that the bacteria ate it all up.

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A vinometer will probably work. You can get one at your lhbs for about $6

Fuzzymittenbrewing said:

A vinometer will probably work. You can get one at your lhbs for about $6

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This is what I found out about how they work. I don't think it would work at all due to the alcohol content and co2.

This is a very simple way to check the alcohol content of your home brew wine but remember - it is very approximate and you need to know how it works to avoid the common pitfalls.
It works on (still) wine only, not beer or spirits.
It will only work if there is no CO2 left in your wine.
It will only work if your wine is 8-13% or around these values.

The homebrew wine alcohol meter uses the capillary effect in the liquid to determine the alcohol. This will only work on "normal" strength home brewed wines. Unfortunately most meters are graduated between 0-25% but the error outside 8-13% is too large, it simply doesn't work there.

Trick: If you have a very strong wine, dilute it with equal amount of water, then take a reading. If reading ends up inside the interval 8-13% you know you can trust it and in reality it is twice as high.

Yeah, a shot of vodka and kombucha would do the trick

When you put kombucha under airlock many of the bacteria go dormant, not all of them. So you still have conversion of present alcohol to acids, albeit slower, plus the yeast shift to anaerobic and continue to produce alcohol. Want a higher alc content, introduce a strain of cultivated yeast after removing the scoby. Step feed it sugar, proceed to make kombucha wine. Remember you started at 1.020 if using one cup sugar per gallon but a hydrometer will not give you adequate readings, false positives due to the conversion of alcohol to acids and all that. I think the Honneyman Method is the most reasonable way to check ACV of your finished batch. Maybe do it on your base kombucha before adding yeast and more sugar. Happy Herbalist website has a great overview of what happens when and reference articles, etc.

And there is definitely alcohol being produced in primary ferment. Scoby can hang in anaerobic state as long as you keep it in base kombucha, pH below 4, feed it occassionally with some sweet tea. People call them kombucha hotels, and can be aerobic or anaerobic. Scoby are produced in aerobic and anaerobic mode, many bottles have been opened with developed scoby inside.

Wow, thanks for the info! I finally cracked into my experiment and it did taste/smell slightly beery to me. But it also still sweet, which was fine, cause when I tasted it before finally bottling it it was way way sour, so I added some honey to it. Anyhow, I will try this again, but I think I will invest in some yeast to make a wine, and look into that method of ACV measurement.