Sorry for the late reply. I'm an occasional lurker nowadays, but when I saw "Jun" I had to log in and share! Fair warning: brain dump ahead.
We moved into our house at the end of October last year, and I pull the trigger on getting a mother this past February (had only done extract brewing before, but did a ton of reading/research). Since it was winter, I decided to go for a Jun mother. I bought a culture from someone on a Facebook group (I can look it up if someone needs me to), did a couple small batches to make some extra daughters, and went straight into CB.
Here's what I read / was told: Jun mothers like colder temps (60-75F), work faster than Kombucha mothers (3 days ish), and don't reliably grow new daughters each batch.
Here's what I've found: My scoby was thriving even when the house was 85F, and the brew is actually the most acetic at 3 days. 5-7 gives a more mellow brew. And I have more daughters than I know what to do with! I've got about 1.5" of layers of pellicle in my CB container. They're even growing in the hotel!
I've got city water, and I'm not sure if they use chlorine or chloramine, so I buy Poland Spring water ($3 for 2.5gal) (was using generic Acadia water until there was that E. coli recall in the summer), Bigelow organic green tea (40pk is like $5-6), and Golden Blossom Honey ($8 for 1.5lb). 2 jugs of water, 1 40pk of green tea, and 1 jug of honey ultimately make up ~4gal of honey tea, which is enough for 4 batches of 6-8 500mL bottles.
I brew up 10 teabags in 4 cups of water at 170F-ish for 10-15ish minutes, add 8 cups to each of my mixing vessels (beer growlers) along with a "20 count" of honey to each (roughly 1/2 cup). Aerate water/honey well, add steeped tea, top off with spring water. Decant about 100oz Jun into vinegar-sanitized swing-top bottles direct from the spigot, and replace with the contents of the growlers.
The only issue I've had thus far is consistent carbonation. Even bottling after 3 days, the culture takes a week or more to get even remotely fizzy. Bottling after 5-7 days never produced carbonation (likely due to my drinking the results before they carbonated). I tried ginger, but I never got consistent results. Carbonation was either weak, or I was cleaning Jun off of the ceiling.
For my two most recent batchs I pureed and strained about a quart of watermelon juice, and added 1/2 cup to each 500mL bottle (8 total). So far that recipe is a winner. Great taste and wonderful carbonation. I just have to remember to invert the bottle to let the pulp mix up.
The second go-round I pureed an entire watermelon (a quarter at a time) and experimented with filtering using paper towels in the mesh strainer, to try and keep the pulp to a minimum (cheesecloth is next on the list). A small-medium watermelon produced about a gallon of juice, so I bottled a second quart in a 32oz swing-top for the next round of bottling, and put the the remainder in old KT bottles for general family consumption (those went FAST).
I had been debating on getting a KT culture, but with my Jun CB being so prolific, I think I'm going to invest in a 3gal CB container with a proper SS spigot first (current CB is 2gal w plastic spigot).
/brain dump
