Do I have to use a SCOBY?

[thegreateater]

I want to try making fermented coffees, cocoas, and teas. But I don't want to have to buy a SCOBY, and I can't find info on how to truly create my own rather than have a child SCOBY I have to grow after buying Kombucha (which is odd since I don't think the first Kombucha ever made spontaneously gave birth to a SCOBY out of nowhere.).

That and I want to make something with a higher alcohol content than 2 - 3 % that normally forms in Kombucha. Could I do that (use bread yeast / yeast extracts) and still get a good fermentation? Or are SCOBY's the only thing that creates a good alcoholic tea / coffee / etc.?

 

[drgonzo2k2]

You'll probably find a lot of conflicting information, but some of the modern thinking is that the scoby is really more like the pellicle you get when brewing sour beer, and is not directly responsible for the fermentation. The starter tea is much more important.

In fact, to grow my scoby I just used some unflavored GT's kombucha as my starter tea and brewed a batch of kombucha. A few weeks later I had a very nice scoby.

If you want to make "hard" kombucha (I do it all the time), then you will want to do a sacc fermentation after your scoby has got the tea to your desired level of sourness. At that point I rack the kombucha off to another fermenter and add sugar, a simple syrup solution, honey, fruit, or some combination of all of those. Then pitch champagne yeast (it does okay in acidic environments) and let it go for a couple of weeks with an airlock.

I'm on my second batch of a kombucha "kriek" with sour cherries using this method, and I've also done a nice honey mango. There doesn't seem to be a lot of folks doing this, so information is a bit scarce. There's some info in the book Speed Brewing, which is where I got my idea.

Happy to chat further!

 

[thegreateater]

You'll probably find a lot of conflicting information, but some of the modern thinking is that the scoby is really more like the pellicle you get when brewing sour beer, and is not directly responsible for the fermentation. The starter tea is much more important.

In fact, to grow my scoby I just used some unflavored GT's kombucha as my starter tea and brewed a batch of kombucha. A few weeks later I had a very nice scoby.

If you want to make "hard" kombucha (I do it all the time), then you will want to do a sacc fermentation after your scoby has got the tea to your desired level of sourness. At that point I rack the kombucha off to another fermenter and add sugar, a simple syrup solution, honey, fruit, or some combination of all of those. Then pitch champagne yeast (it does okay in acidic environments) and let it go for a couple of weeks with an airlock.

I'm on my second batch of a kombucha "kriek" with sour cherries using this method, and I've also done a nice honey mango. There doesn't seem to be a lot of folks doing this, so information is a bit scarce. There's some info in the book Speed Brewing, which is where I got my idea.

Happy to chat further!

Hmmm ... I'll try making it without a Kambucha starter, just using Champange yeast (thanks for the heads up ^_^). Then another using a Kombucha starter, then champange yeast.

Finally a third using bacteria made from the carbohydrate gunk from raw potato juice, gelatin, and homemade yeast. Set aside for a week or two in clear water. Should make a nice yeast rich gel. Hopefully, and that should be close enough to a SOBY (since it has good nutrients for bacteria and yeast, as well as naturally forming yeast on the stuff that doesn't breakdown into alcohol.) *Note: This is experimental, will take me about a month and a half (~5 weeks) to get this part started.*

Then about two weeks to ferment everything all at once. It'll be a nice experiment to see which one tastes better.

 

[hunter_le five]

Sure, you can ferment tea without a scoby and just use yeast, but it ain't going to taste even remotely the same.

The flavor profiles and liquid byproducts of bacteria and those of yeast are wildly different.

 

[Curtis2010]

The physical material that most think of as the SCOBY or "mother" is really just the by product of fermentation. Sure, beasties live on it, but the same beasties exist in the Kambucha liquid itself (provided its not been pasturized, etc). The real SCOBY is the community of beasties, not the physical gunk on top.

I just stepped up a SCOBY from a Kambucha my wife likes, just from the tea. The Kambucha has a big hunk of gunk on top now and tastes just like the source tea. I just decanted off some of the Kambucha, fed it some sugar, and let the beasties do their thing.

 

[Curtis2010]

Hmmm ... I'll try making it without a Kambucha starter, just using Champange yeast (thanks for the heads up ^_^). Then another using a Kombucha starter, then champange yeast.

...

The SCOBY for Kambucha is both yeast and acetabacteria. To taste like Kambucha you will need to get acetabact in there too (not hard to do).

 

[drgonzo2k2]

Agree with both of the previous posters. The SCOBY (Symbiotic Collection of Bacteria and Yeast), or the same collection of bacteria and yeast in the kombucha, works because the yeast eat the sugar and create alcohol, which in turn the bacteria eats to produce acetic acid. There are also lactic acid producing bacteria present. These things combined are what give kombucha its twang or tartness.

If you just make some sweet tea and pitch champagne yeast, I'm certain that you'll produce something alcoholic; however, how it will taste is another matter, and it is certainly not a kombucha at that point.

 

[thegreateater]

Sure, you can ferment tea without a scoby and just use yeast, but it ain't going to taste even remotely the same.

The flavor profiles and liquid byproducts of bacteria and those of yeast are wildly different.

That's no problem. I'm mostly going to be making normally fermented teas, coffee, cocoa's, and what have you. I just didn't know if SCOBY's were the only way to get it started.

Although I will play around with SCOBY's as a starter. Honestly I've never had Kombucha, but was pointed here as the closest thing to what I want to accomplish in some of things I want to try.

The SCOBY for Kambucha is both yeast and acetabacteria. To taste like Kambucha you will need to get acetabact in there too (not hard to do).

True ... but how do I get the acetobacter that's the good kind, and not the stuff that'll turn my stuff into vinegar?

Agree with both of the previous posters. The SCOBY (Symbiotic Collection of Bacteria and Yeast), or the same collection of bacteria and yeast in the kombucha, works because the yeast eat the sugar and create alcohol, which in turn the bacteria eats to produce acetic acid. There are also lactic acid producing bacteria present. These things combined are what give kombucha its twang or tartness.

If you just make some sweet tea and pitch champagne yeast, I'm certain that you'll produce something alcoholic; however, how it will taste is another matter, and it is certainly not a kombucha at that point.

Quick Q. While this is called the Kombucha, and Fermented Tea forum, how many people here work with Fermented Teas besides Kombucha?

Not to say that I won't play around with it. I'll try almost anything once. But I don't know if I want to stick with it, or go straight for something else.

I'm not really interested in a sourness right now, or a twang to my drink. As much as I want to bring out the caramel notes, and mellowed bite of the coffee. Or with tea (which sounds good) not corrupt the natural flavors too much (at least not every batch). Although a yeast / flavor (instilling / altering) colony of yeast and bacteria does sound like something I'd like to work on building from scratch. See if I can't make something that'd make a sweet / aromatic fermentation rather than only a sour fermentation (although sour will be useful to work with as well. For certain things like sour apples, or sour beers.).

 

[hunter_le five]

If all you're trying to accomplish is an alcoholic tea, and you're not interested in "sour" flavors, yeast will do that; I wouldn't even worry about the bacteria. Kombucha SCOBYs produce very little alcohol anyway.

That slightly vinegary acetobacter taste is generally desireable in kombucha; if you're trying to avoid that, then we're talking about something else entirely.

I've heard of people making alcoholic tea by just adding sugar and yeast, but I've honestly never heard of fermented coffee or cocoa. I'm not sure if they'd be conducive to fermentation or not, or what the end result would even taste like.

 

[drgonzo2k2]

Acetobacter is acetobacter. There is no "good" or "bad." It eats ethanol and produces acetic acid.

It's how much alcohol you give it access too which determines how acetic the finished product is.

It seems that you're generally interested in these experiments, so I encourage you to try them out. There are some folks that have made home brewed versions of "hard" iced teas (think the Mike's drink but a home brew version). I'm sure if you do a bit of searching and poking around in the recipe section you will find some threads.

I'm not sure about coffee or cocoa though. That might be new territory. I've had one coffee kombucha that was fairly tasty, but my couple of experiments did not turn out so well, and from reading other folks attempts on the Internet, they did not either.

 

[Zuljin]

I made a booch with a tea that had roasted coffee beans in it. At first, it was kind of nasty. About like you'd imagine tea would taste if you poured some stale coffee into it. After a while, it got good. The coffee flavor was subdued. Kind of a subtle aftertaste.

 

[55x11]

You'll probably find a lot of conflicting information, but some of the modern thinking is that the scoby is really more like the pellicle you get when brewing sour beer, and is not directly responsible for the fermentation. The starter tea is much more important.

In fact, to grow my scoby I just used some unflavored GT's kombucha as my starter tea and brewed a batch of kombucha. A few weeks later I had a very nice scoby.

If you want to make "hard" kombucha (I do it all the time), then you will want to do a sacc fermentation after your scoby has got the tea to your desired level of sourness. At that point I rack the kombucha off to another fermenter and add sugar, a simple syrup solution, honey, fruit, or some combination of all of those. Then pitch champagne yeast (it does okay in acidic environments) and let it go for a couple of weeks with an airlock.

I'm on my second batch of a kombucha "kriek" with sour cherries using this method, and I've also done a nice honey mango. There doesn't seem to be a lot of folks doing this, so information is a bit scarce. There's some info in the book Speed Brewing, which is where I got my idea.

Happy to chat further!

Most interesting thing I have read on HBT in a while. How does it taste? More like alcoholic kombucha, or more like weird sour beer?

 

[drgonzo2k2]

Most interesting thing I have read on HBT in a while. How does it taste? More like alcoholic kombucha, or more like weird sour beer?

Hey, thanks! Most people look at me really weird when I mention this sort of thing to them at home brew club meetups.

The first batch tasted more like alcoholic kombucha, but that wasn't really what I was going for. I just used too much sugar in the simple syrup I used and underestimated the attenuation I'd get from the champagne yeast. Wound up being almost 9%, which was way too much.

I dialed it back on the subsequent batches and am getting stuff much closer to 6-6.5% now, which seems about right.

I was really looking at this as a way to make quick funky/sour alcoholic things to drink, and for that it's pretty good. I'm particularly fond of the "kriek" I made with sour cherries. In fact I've got another batch going right now.

I'd listed out the recipe in some thread here before, but forget where. Let me know if you're interested, and I can share it again.

 

[GregP507]

I want to try making fermented coffees, cocoas, and teas. But I don't want to have to buy a SCOBY, and I can't find info on how to truly create my own rather than have a child SCOBY I have to grow after buying Kombucha (which is odd since I don't think the first Kombucha ever made spontaneously gave birth to a SCOBY out of nowhere.).

That and I want to make something with a higher alcohol content than 2 - 3 % that normally forms in Kombucha. Could I do that (use bread yeast / yeast extracts) and still get a good fermentation? Or are SCOBY's the only thing that creates a good alcoholic tea / coffee / etc.?

I used some kombucha starter concentrate to start my first batch, which appeared to be a ground-up scoby in solution. It took more than a week to get started, and to reach the proper state of fermentation.

Now, I just use a few ounces of my last batch as a starter instead of scoby. It seems to work much faster than the scoby, only taking about a day at room temperature.

 

[BrewDawg79]

Hey, thanks! Most people look at me really weird when I mention this sort of thing to them at home brew club meetups.

The first batch tasted more like alcoholic kombucha, but that wasn't really what I was going for. I just used too much sugar in the simple syrup I used and underestimated the attenuation I'd get from the champagne yeast. Wound up being almost 9%, which was way too much.

I dialed it back on the subsequent batches and am getting stuff much closer to 6-6.5% now, which seems about right.

I was really looking at this as a way to make quick funky/sour alcoholic things to drink, and for that it's pretty good. I'm particularly fond of the "kriek" I made with sour cherries. In fact I've got another batch going right now.

I'd listed out the recipe in some thread here before, but forget where. Let me know if you're interested, and I can share it again.

Would you mind sharing your recipe for this? As a sour beer and kombucha lover, this sounds right up my ally. Thanks.

 

[BrewDawg79]

Double post - deleted.

 

[drgonzo2k2]

Would you mind sharing your recipe for this? As a sour beer and kombucha lover, this sounds right up my ally. Thanks.

Funny, you are the 2nd person in two days to ask me for the recipe. Of course, happy to share. Here goes...

Overall I've been pretty happy with the hard kombuchas; I've also done a mango honey one, and this is the 2nd batch of the kriek. I did dial back the sugar from the first batch as it ended up being about 9%, which I thought took away from the flavor. Also I couldn't find the frozen sour cherries this time around, I must have looked at every store in town with no luck, so I ended up using cans of the Oregon brand. The juice had a lot of color and flavor, so I just chucked the whole cans in. I used 3 cans for 3 gallons.

So anyway, I start with this base Kombucha recipe, which is what I use for all my Kombucha:

3 Gallon Base Kombucha Recipe

3 gallons water
24 oz sugar
15 black tea bags
9 green tea bags
2 cups starter Kombucha

Bring 1 gallon of water and the sugar to a boil. Remove from heat, add tea bags, and steep for 15 minutes.

Chill down in ice bath until temp reaches ~70F.

Meanwhile combine starter kombucha with 1 gallon, 7 pints of water to make 2 gallons and add to fermenter.

Add tea to fermenter, shake well to combine, and then add SCOBY.

This should give you 3 gallons of Kombucha.

Ferment for 7-10 days until desired tartness is reached.

Then I do this:

3 Gallons Kombucha Kriek

Start by following base kombucha recipe.

1 lb cane sugar
500 ml water
3 lbs frozen sour cherries
7.5 grams champagne yeast
10 grams Go-ferm
¾ cup water
¼ tsp Fermaid

To Rehydrate Yeast

Heat water in microwave to 104F
Stir in go-ferm until it is completely dissolved
Sprinkle yeast evenly on top, avoiding clumps
Cover with plastic wrap and allow to sit for 15-30 mins
Stir yeast in (sanitized spoon), recover, and allow to cool to pitching temp

Create a simple syrup using cane sugar and water, heating just long enough to get everything combined.

In a clean fermenter add frozen sour cherries and the simple syrup.

Rack your base Kombucha off to the fermenter with the cherries and simple syrup in it, Fermaid directly to the kombucha. Shake well to combine, and pitch yeast.

Allow to ferment at room temp (65-75) for 14 days.

I keg everything, so I really don't know about bottle conditioning these. Champagne yeast + GoFerm will pretty much ferment lead I think, as these guys all finish way low, like 0.9 range. I understand though that the acetic acid from the scoby ferment can mess with hydrometer readings a bit, but all 3 of mine have measured down there.

Anyway, good luck, and let me know how it goes!

 

[GregP507]

I want to try making fermented coffees, cocoas, and teas. But I don't want to have to buy a SCOBY, and I can't find info on how to truly create my own rather than have a child SCOBY I have to grow after buying Kombucha (which is odd since I don't think the first Kombucha ever made spontaneously gave birth to a SCOBY out of nowhere.).

That and I want to make something with a higher alcohol content than 2 - 3 % that normally forms in Kombucha. Could I do that (use bread yeast / yeast extracts) and still get a good fermentation? Or are SCOBY's the only thing that creates a good alcoholic tea / coffee / etc.?

I think the key to getting a higher alcohol content is to start with more sugar or starch.

You need the proper organism to start your first batch. I was able to by a bottle it in a health food store. Some stores maintain their own scoby, and may give you some. You could buy a bottle of live Kombucha tea and use some of that to get your batch started.

My original batch, using a scoby, took over a week to get started. Now I use a few ounces of my last batch to start each new batch, which seems to happen much quicker. It usually takes less than a day to get it to where I want it.