zid
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- Joined
- Sep 7, 2019
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I've been making my own kombucha for about a year now. Recently, decided to graduate to some hard kombucha, using Boochcraft recipe (https://boochcraft.com/diy-high-alcohol-kombucha/). I've never tried to homebrew anything so I'm not really sure what I'm doing, and something's not right.
The first problem I had was the yeast, or maybe I'm doing that step wrong. I bought some red star blanc yeast on Amazon and tried to activate it in simple syrup (1 cup sugar, 1 cup water). The recipe suggests I should see some active reaction relatively fast. I've tried 3 times with 3 different packets, waiting between an hour and overnight, and there was literally no reaction or bubbling. I got some other yeast, thinking the whole batch was bad, and that was kinda doing something, but not overly reacting.
Anyway, I decided to keep that last batch and mixed it with my kombucha. I left it for about 14 days. I'm not really sure what to look for, but there definitely wasn't a lot of activity. Some bubbles appeared on the surface, but I haven't seen anything bubbling through the airlock. I opened the brew today and had a taste - it's not very alcoholic, tastes very sweet, so clearly the yeast hasn't broken down the sugar.
Couple of things I considered:
- bad yeast - but it's unlikely that 4 packets, from 2 suppliers were all bad, isn't it?
- acidity - my kombucha wasn't overly acidic when I added the yeast, so that should be fine, but maybe I should use some different, acid-resistant yeast?
- scoby - there was no scoby in the second fermentation, I decanted the kombucha from the scoby container for the second fermentation, so the acidity levels were not building up.
So my question is - where am I going wrong? And what should I do with this batch? Should I just dump it or there's a way to save it? Should I be adding more or less yeast (I used 3/4 of a teaspoon)? Should I use some specific yeast? How can I know it's working before adding to kombucha - can anyone share a picture of how it should look like when everything's going right?
The first problem I had was the yeast, or maybe I'm doing that step wrong. I bought some red star blanc yeast on Amazon and tried to activate it in simple syrup (1 cup sugar, 1 cup water). The recipe suggests I should see some active reaction relatively fast. I've tried 3 times with 3 different packets, waiting between an hour and overnight, and there was literally no reaction or bubbling. I got some other yeast, thinking the whole batch was bad, and that was kinda doing something, but not overly reacting.
Anyway, I decided to keep that last batch and mixed it with my kombucha. I left it for about 14 days. I'm not really sure what to look for, but there definitely wasn't a lot of activity. Some bubbles appeared on the surface, but I haven't seen anything bubbling through the airlock. I opened the brew today and had a taste - it's not very alcoholic, tastes very sweet, so clearly the yeast hasn't broken down the sugar.
Couple of things I considered:
- bad yeast - but it's unlikely that 4 packets, from 2 suppliers were all bad, isn't it?
- acidity - my kombucha wasn't overly acidic when I added the yeast, so that should be fine, but maybe I should use some different, acid-resistant yeast?
- scoby - there was no scoby in the second fermentation, I decanted the kombucha from the scoby container for the second fermentation, so the acidity levels were not building up.
So my question is - where am I going wrong? And what should I do with this batch? Should I just dump it or there's a way to save it? Should I be adding more or less yeast (I used 3/4 of a teaspoon)? Should I use some specific yeast? How can I know it's working before adding to kombucha - can anyone share a picture of how it should look like when everything's going right?