brewing kombucha to add to beer

i posted this already in the lambic/ wildbrew thread and am getting no responses, but i just now realized there was a special kombucha thread also! maybe this will be more productive.

i am currently brewing a batch of kombucha (my first) to try blending it with a home brewed beer for the tartness. i know kombucha left at room temp produces a scoby, and that seems like it would be really gross come time to bottle condition. i'm not sure, but it seems like you would get a teeny tiny scoby in every bottle neck. some kombucha brands you buy at the store are pasteurized to keep them from further fermentation, so i figure i can just bring my kombucha up to 150º (i read somewhere not to let your kombucha get above 160º, no details as to why. i'm guessing nasty off flavors), and if i do this before blending it it should be fine. i have no experience with this so far, but you got to do it to learn it. anybody else try brewing beer with kombucha? any tips, ideas on what i just said?

i'm going for a very kombuch strong flavor presence. i tried a goose island fleur recently with such high hopes that were very quickly dashed. a good beer, but i didn't even get a hint of kombucha (why even advertise it as such?). i hear there is another brew out there on the market that is more potent, but i do live in oklahoma... my chances of having it are so so very slim. hence my homebrew experiments.

If I were going to experiment I would ferment the beer until it is done. Dump some unfiltered kombucha in without raising the temp. This way the kombucha will continue to ferment the residual sugars in the beer. I'd let it go for 2-4 weeks at room temp and you should wind up with sour beer. I'm interested to see how it comes put if you do this. You won't get a fully formed scoby in the bottle necks I don't think. Just some floaters

i will probably try a few different methods this first time around. your idea sounds good, i am trying to stay away from floaters though, as i think it might gross my beer drinking friends out. also, i don't have lots of fridge space to halt fermentation on more than a few beers at once. i usually just let them sit at room temp until about an hour before i am going to want them.

i will definitely post my results though, what worked and what i would never try again.

Please do post back with results. I just learned about kombucha last weekend at a beerfest. I loved it. So much in fact, that I'm growing my own mother now.

However, there doesn't seem to be a lot of info on kombucha out there. From what I've gathered so far, the yeast makes alcohol, and the bacteria eats the alcohol. If you put a scoby in beer, won't it just eat the alcohol and turn the beer to vinegar given enough time?

Acetobacter xylinum (the main contributor to the structure of a scoby) is aerobic, so your beer shouldn't form much of a scoby after bottling. Acetobacter are also responsible for metabolising alcohol into acetic acid, so once the beer's sealed away from air you shouldn't need to worry about that process continuing.

However, pasteurisation is probably still the way to go, as Acetobacter is not the only bacterial component of the scoby, and some of the others (plus whatever environmental contaminants you've picked up during fermentation) may not be as obliging.

Rahahb said:

However, there doesn't seem to be a lot of info on kombucha out there. From what I've gathered so far, the yeast makes alcohol, and the bacteria eats the alcohol. If you put a scoby in beer, won't it just eat the alcohol and turn the beer to vinegar given enough time?

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i will be pasteurizing the kombucha before i add it to the beer, so there won't be any live bacterias to do that. i will be adding the scoby to another batch of tea for next time, not to the beer.

I had this stuff (Lambrucha) over the weekend @ a sour beer fest and it was amazing http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/22399/56855

My wife brews kombucha and bottles it with fruit juice and sometimes pieces of fruit in swing top bottles. There is always some little bit of "growth" in each bottle so that I have to pour carefully into the glass if I don't want to drink it. It's usually in the bottom.

You may or may not get this in your beer-kombucha, not sure. I can take a photo of what I'm seeing in my wife's bottled kombucha when I get home tonight. Will post it here.

frailn said:

My wife brews kombucha and bottles it with fruit juice and sometimes pieces of fruit in swing top bottles. There is always some little bit of "growth" in each bottle so that I have to pour carefully into the glass if I don't want to drink it. It's usually in the bottom.

You may or may not get this in your beer-kombucha, not sure. I can take a photo of what I'm seeing in my wife's bottled kombucha when I get home tonight. Will post it here.

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you won't get it if you pasteurize. i've drank a few bottle scobies, it's not pleasant. they're usually clear and hard to spot, but slimy.

what was the base beer that you wanted to blend with?


i think that they discouraged boiling so that you don't denature some of the healthy amino acids and such that are created during fermentation. i don't think that would be a problem for the beer/kombucha mix.

FromZwolle said:

you won't get it if you pasteurize. i've drank a few bottle scobies, it's not pleasant. they're usually clear and hard to spot, but slimy.

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But, if you pasteurize, won't that kill the yeast/bacteria combo that primes the bottle with C02?

frailn said:

But, if you pasteurize, won't that kill the yeast/bacteria combo that primes the bottle with C02?

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you want to kill all the stuff in the kombucha, not the yeast that are in the beer. the kombucha would get pasteurized and then blended into the beer at bottling time. there would still be plenty of yeast to carb from the beer portion.

FromZwolle said:

what was the base beer that you wanted to blend with?

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no particulars in mind, i just usually have a few things going and was going to try bottling a few kombucha blends whenever i bottle anything really.

yesterday my kombucha finally tasted nice, so i mixed it in with a witte that i had going. i'll know the results in a couple weeks.

Heyo,

I brewed a pretty rad Kombucha porter a couple months back. I only did a gallon batch because I wasn't sure what was going to happen, but it was one of the better beers I've ever made.

Essentially I brewed an english porter, but took about a 5th of it on brewing day and threw my mother on top. I primary fermented both beer and kombucha-wort for about 10-14 days (can't remember/don't wanna dig up my notes), then when it came time to transfer to secondary, took out the mother and brought the soured portion up to 140 for about 10 minutes, then combined it with the rest of the batch in secondary. Then did everything like normal.

Honestly, the taste was a decent approximation of oud bruin, almost cherry tartness, mixed with delicious malty english porter. It was rad. I've never screwed around with traditional souring methods, but with this I was brew-to-beerstein in 6 weeks, and it was very well-balanced.

The obvious limitation here is that you need a big SCOBY to get decent sourness in a portion if you're only exposing it to the culture for a week or two, as normal kombucha fermentation time is at least 2-3 weeks.

Important to note: there is a characteristic kombucha acid undertone, which is not at all like a traditional sour, but in my mind it fits alright. Probably one of the many more acids that kombucha cultures produce.

nice, i like your method of kombucha-ing the beer as opposed to just blending in regular tea kombucha later on. i did a couple test bottles with a blend of 1/3 kombucha to 2/3 beer, but it was very overwhelming with kombucha. i plan on just tossing in a bit of kombucha (pasteurized) into a couple bottles of whatever i am bottling at the time just to see what happens. based on how that last blend tasted, i will probably do more like an 1/8 kombucha to 7/8 beer.

Yea, that sounds interesting, but I'm not a real big tea drinker. The real interest for me is a cheap fast way of approximating a lambic flavor profile, which I think you can do with this method with a little tuning.

Hi Guys,
I know this is an old post. Do any of you guys have any updates? I had a Ginger Kombucha Beer at a beer fest last Saturday and loved it. I have a mother growing now and I intend on using it in a beer flavored with pineapple and ginger Kombucha. I figured I would inoculate the secondary with the Kombucha and mother. Once it is at the right tartness I will keg it.

If you kombucha the whole thing you're going to get some snotties unless you want to filter at all, plus it'll keep getting sour fast. I personally think souring a portion, pasteurizing and then recombining is the best method, especially if you have a decent sized SCOBY.

D

Hey Dirk,
Thanks for the info. I'm using a quart jar to start my mother. I would expect that to be smaller than what you call decent size. yes? I agree with you, we need to do something to control the souring portion.

Thanks I really appreciate your feedback!

Update?

Kombucha is in it's third day of fermentation. It took a while to grow a SCOBY from a commercial bottle of GT Original. Onward and upward!

I bottled off the first batch of kombucha. I have the next batch fermenting and that one is slated for the beer. I'm thinking an oue bruin type of beer. I'll post back when that happens. Right now I'm thinking once the Kombucha is at the desired sourness level (Which will be overly sour for straight Kombucha. I will sterilze the buch at 140 deg F for 30 minutes then add it to the bottling bucket with the fermented oue bruin and bottle. If anyone has any other thoughts please let me know. I'm open to ideas!

how did it taste out of the bottle?

I recently did a radical experiment with kombucha beer. I mashed with 3.5 gallons of kombucha instead of using water on a 2 gallon brew. Otherwise It was brewed like a very low hopped beer. I held the hops down to avoid overpowering the kombucha. The result was not wonderful......... If I do it again, I'll make a very light beer.... This was made with enough CR60 to make it pretty red. I'd probably make a Cream Ale type recipe, or brew with just two row or pilsner. Hops were East Kent Golding. The maltiness of the beer kind of overpowers the sourness of the kombucha. It completely failed to achieve my desired result.

That said, I brewed 5 gallons of kombucha and gave it a ginger secondary, and gave it to a microbrewer friend who has it on tap as a freebie. It's wonderful mixed half and half or so with his APA. Blending after brewing seems to be the best.......... blending at the tap works very well. It allows you to optimize the flavor to your own taste.

It's well worth noting that you do NOT need a scoby to make Kombucha. Start with about 50% active culture commercial like GTs, and 50% sweet tea (1C sugar and 4 bags to the gallon). In a week or so you will be getting a nice sour booch..... give it more time and it will continue to get more and more tart. You will soon have a scoby. The scoby does NOT make kombucha, it is a byproduct of the acetobacter that is almost entirely cellulose. A lady friend of mine makes candy out of the scoby for her grandchildren who love it. She pulls her scoby out and sprinkles it lightly with sugar, cuts it up and dehydrates it. It makes a tart tangy "candy" the kids love.


H.W.

My plan is to make enough alcohol with the scoby and not mash the Kombucha at all. I have started this process it will be a while yet. I'm in no hurry. I'm halfway through Sandor Katz's Book The Art of Fermentation. Great read by the way.

TheNobleBrewer said:

how did it taste out of the bottle?

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I added about an 1/8 of Orange Juice and it came out bubbly and delicious! I'm still going with the Kombucha beer project. I'll let you know when I get a product to try. Thanks for the like

racin_ny said:

I added about an 1/8 of Orange Juice and it came out bubbly and delicious! I'm still going with the Kombucha beer project. I'll let you know when I get a product to try. Thanks for the like

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Any updates?

I've got my first batch of kombucha going now and am interested in adding it to a beer (either blending or using some culture to inoculate a beer). Looking for any feedback you might have on yours.

Well I drank it. I still would like to do it. I'll let you know when I do

so from what I read, 2 workable methods are mentioned so far:
1) Mix kombucha and beer while pouring the glass. (but where is the fun in that)
2) Brew kombucha (with or without some wort) - pasteurize - mix with fermented beer (I see 1 to 5 ratio mentioned) and bottle.

I agree that dumping the scoby in the fermenting/fermented beer is non-workable due to not inhibiting scoby activity.

About number 2, I have a reservation that leftover sugar within the kombucha might mess with priming sugar calculations and create bottle bombs.

So my proposed method, and I will probably try this in about 6 months time due my brewing schedule is this:
Brew X volume kombucha as normal. Pasteurize for 30 mins at 140F. Take to fermenting vessel, add in 3X or 4X volume wort with whatever recipe (I will probably go for a simple irish stout extract kit) + the ale yeast and let ferment as if brewing a regular beer.

Does it sound like a reasonable plan or not? Would the low acidity or anything else inhibit the ale yeast activity?