Brewing a month

[Jokester]

I got a cup of kombucha from Healthy home market and used that to start myself a Kombucha batch.
So I put like 2 oz in a 32 oz sweet tea. 4 weeks it has brewed and I am getting a vinegary smell and taste from it.
10 days after I started it I started another batch of sweet tea with the mini scoby from the first one. Also going vinegary and lightly fizzy. If you add a sprinky of sugar to it, it nicely forms a head. It even tastes 1/2 way decent.

But is 4+ weeks too long to fermet it.
Should it grow the scoby continously, cos it seems to have stopped "growing".

Now I want to secondary ferment it with champagne yeast.
Is it a good starting point for it ?
Can I get a bunch of champagne yeast, filter these 2 and add more sugar and let it fizz away with an airlock.
What is the best way to get between 6-8% alcohol ?

 

[Johntodd]

I ferment my Kombucha 7 days, up to 9 if the weather is cold. Then I drink it. The longer it ferments, the more vinegary it will be. Also, the more amines you create (think nitrogen), giving it a bitter kick.

Do not add any yeast to it if you want Kombucha. You're wanting a lot of alcohol, and Kombucha is a non-alcohol drink.

HOWEVER, it's your brew. Adding yeast and making sure there is sugar in there should get you another ferment to make alcohol. If that floats your boat, then more power to you. But it ain't Kombucha anymore. IDK what to call that, but it seems doable.

Let us know how it turns out.

EDIT: It stopped growing because it's out of food. Get it some more sweet tea. Those are living beings in there, they need to eat on a regular basis. Before long, you'll have a Scoby like a can of pumpkin!

 

[Jokester]

Thanks for that advice. I found plain kombucha hard to drink.
I'll start yeast and sugar. I was thinking of doing this batch with champagne yeast.
I just tried it, its very mildly vinegary. I'd say it will drop kick that kombucha I bought from healthy home market for drinkability. That one tasted like a mixture of ginger ale and vinegar. I think much of its undrinkability was due to the ginger though. It was ginger flavored.
But the next set is going to have sachromyses boulardii (sp).

How to remove the bacteria and save it for the next batch. Its not quite a scoby, its a couple of little things floating on top. before putting yeast in it, dont I have to filter out the bacteria/scoby ? Else wont the yeast make alcohol, and the bacteria feed on that and turn it into acetic acid ?

Its alcoholic tea flavored beer of course. Hey, its Teer.

 

[Johntodd]

How to remove the bacteria and save it for the next batch. Its not quite a scoby, its a couple of little things floating on top. before putting yeast in it, dont I have to filter out the bacteria/scoby ? Else wont the yeast make alcohol, and the bacteria feed on that and turn it into acetic acid ?

The floaty things are new Scobys forming. What I think you should do is nurse them for a while. Just make several small batches of "throwaway tea" and let them mature up until they are nice and firm. Right now they are very delicate. Give them some grow time.

Or just make one quart of sweet tea and let them sit for a month. I recommend 5% of that quart be distilled vinegar to ward off nasties.

Yes, you have to filter them out of each batch as it finishes or you lose the Scoby and can't make any more K.

Either way, they need time to develop. The wait will be well worth it because you'll have new life-long friends that will make a wonderful brew for you until the day you depart this universe.

As for K being hard to drink, it sounds like your Scoby is out of balance. That is typical of new formations. Another reason to not make any "drinking tea" and just concentrate of throwaway batches for a while. A well-made K-tea is delightful, light, refreshing, crisp, and only slightly "edgy". You should be able to sip it outside on the patio on a hot summer's day.

 

[Jokester]

It is almost a month, and its not bad at all. I found the store K hard t odrink and very vinegary.
I started with sweet tea, and have been adding sugar to it.
Maybe I need to keep at it for a while longer.
I didn't add vinegar to it at all though so far.

 

[Jokester]

I bloomed a pack of fleishmans yeast in warm sweet tea. Original active dry yeast.
It bloomed very good. I spooned out the 2 mini scoby's from the K'cha's I started last month and put those in.
There isn't any more bubbling in that batch looks like. Maybe it will bubble over a few days, right now I have 16 oz yeast bloom in 2qt of sweetish tea.

I will add more sugar tomorow, I added a few spoons and saw nothing much.

The K'cha tasted very very good. Not a throw away at all, it was seriously good. If I didn't care about making it alcoholic, I'd have stashed it in the fridge and drank it.

I am hoping to make K'cha that is drinkable while growing the scoby. The K'cha I started on the 21st of oct was almost as good as the one started on the 11th oct. I transfered the scoby to the one started on 21st form the 11th one. So essentially the transfer made it "catch up" on the 10 day lead to end up equal. Hope I grow a scoby that will ferment it in 10 days or so and I can make a new batch every 10 days

If this works, I'll have a gallon of hooch every 10 days. Hope it works.

 

[Jokester]

Sitting overnight, it is not bubbling. I am adding more sweet tea today.

 

[Jokester]

Added lots of sweet tea to it. It acquired a thin layer of bubbles on top. Sat that way almos tall day. hen I added more sweet tea. It seemed to not do much.
Is it doing a slow ferment thing ?

 

[Jokester]

Adding a spoon of sugar in the thing causes it to sorta fizz up like you shook a coke can before opening it. I added more sweet tea. That makes it foam up rather slower, cos I guess yeast has to find the sugar and eat it.
The k'cha scoby is also feeding on the sugar nice and good but much more slowly. Add some sugar and it takes 2-3 mins and you have to stir it up to get it to foam and it foams slower. Sorta like the first 2-3 days.
So I've got good k'cha and a secondary ferment going at this stage I think.
Hope I get some good hooch out of this.
I am probably just going to ferment grape juice next just to run the 18% yeast into something and have fun with it.

 

[Johntodd]

The Scoby really needs time to adjust. When you are changing recipes, they don't do as well as they would have. Pick a recipe and stick with it. It will take several weeks for the Scoby to be at it's best for a given recipe.

Seriously, it takes at least a week to properly ferment. Give it some alone time.

 

[Jokester]

They are getting some quiet time now. They are both happily eating sugar if I put in a spoon ful. They are slowly eating the sugar in the sweet tea.
Thanks. Hope it turns out good.

Oooo The alcohol will never become methyl alcohol right ? When all the sugar is eaten, the yeast will slowly die off and I'll have as much % of ethyl alcohol as the sugar I started with right ? Or close enough right ?

 

[Johntodd]

It won't go methyl. Remember, you have acetobacter in there that will convert alcohol to vinegar the longer your ferment time is. That's why I think you may not be able to get a "kickin' Kombucha" adult beverage. I think a lot of your ethyl will be eaten up and converted.

But this is new territory for me. Who knows? You may be about to innovate!

 

[Jokester]

I am hoping to get that alcohol in the secondary fermentation.
If I dont - and I get only vinegar, I'll switch to not making K'cha. rather, I'll keep K'cha separate from the alcoholic brew.
In a way the 2 are very different looking. The yeast added one is nearly all bottom sediment, and its also making larger bubbles faster upon addition of sugar.
The one with scoby has floating scoby, and if I add sugar - the sugar seems to drop into the liquid, and a few mins go by, and the bubbles slowly rise, and its a very fine bubble set, and it also stays on longer.
Will yeast turn acetic acid into alcohol ? or only sugar ?
And what else can the yeast eat ? can I toss in barley ? Potatoes ? What else will a yeast eat and make alcohol.
My next set is fruit juice and champagne yeast. No K'cha. I am going to ferment something to get me hammered.

 

[Johntodd]

Yeast converts sugar in to alcohol, and acetobacter then converts alcohol into acetic acid (vinegar).

Acetic acid is always the end result. When making wine or beer we use only yeast and sanitize everything so that no bacteria can get in and make vinegar,

I'm not aware of any life process that will convert acetic acid into alcohol. If there was, we'd all be fermenting vinegar form the store! LOL!

EDIT: You can ferment any vegetable or leaf, so long as it contains no wood, including stems. Wood makes methanol. So, yes, you can ferment taters and peas and tomatoes and broccoli and bananas and so on. In fact, I've made a cooking wine that was tomato with onions and bell peppers. Terrible for drinking, but oh so good simmered in a stew of chili.

 

[Jokester]

LOL, sauerkraut beer, delicious on hotdogs.
The K'cha is going on good, the keg is good too.
The K'Cha is almost all bacteria.
The Keg is all yeast. Should be fun, just gotta wait till I get them all fermented.

 

[Jokester]

Should I stir these ?
How does the scoby eat the sugar sitting in the bottom of the solution ? The foam is forming slowly now. The scoby's are growing.
How does the yeast eat the sugar in the top ? Keg is stopping to foam it looks like.

 

[Johntodd]

You may have to stir them. In the future, draw out some of the liquid and mix the sugar in that, then pour it in. Kombucha Scobys are usually left alone during the ferment.

What happens is the bacteria and yeast propagate out form the Scoby. They reproduce and inhabit the fluid, just like yeast in beer. So they will eat all the sugar, it just takes time.

But stir it. There may be too much sugar at the bottom (ie, sugar toxicity).

 

[Jokester]

The yeast mix is doing fine. Its foaming slowly again. I just think its a slower process now tha tthe easy sugar is eaten.
The K'Cha I'll stir regularly, its foaming up when I stir it.

 

[Jokester]

I started this on the 9th and I took the scoby out and put it in a bottle and in the fridge today.
It tastes like a mixture of vinegar and somewhat rotten sweet tea. I think there is too much sugar left in it cos I didn't have a proper scoby.
I am growing a scoby in the other one, and its nicely getting bigger and even in this one there was yeast on the bottom of the bottle that I put in the other one. I started that one on the 11th, but will let it ferment till the 11th of december.

 

[Johntodd]

Which one are you fermenting till December 11th?

 

[Jokester]

That is the Raspberry TAZO tea, about a pint or a bit more than that. Started with a dime sized scoby on the 14th of nov. Its now got a 1/2 dollar sized not too thick scoby.

 

[Johntodd]

Cool! Grow that one.

 

[Jokester]

I didn;t have enough of a scoby on the other one I made, so I have K'Cha that's tasting sweet and acidic and pretty much like its been 1/2 way done and given up on.
Is there a test to do so I know its turned into K'Cha and not incomplete ? or will 1 month even with a small scoby do it ?

 

[Johntodd]

Too much liquid on a small scobey runs you the risk of contamination.

Good K'cha does have a sweet and acidic taste.

WHen you brew the tea, you should brew is insanely strong and put insane amounts of sugar in it. This should be a tea that no sane man will drink. THen the scoby has plenty of nutes and fuel to work with.

 

[Jokester]

Its nicely turning vinegary. I am also growing the scoby I guess. Pretty soon I'll have a scoby that will ferment a bottle in 7-9 days. Then it will get bigger and I guess I will get to a 1 gallon scoby sometime in a few months.
Should scoby sink or float ? All of mine floated so far. But, I bought a scoby and I dropped it in sweet tea. It has dropped to the bottom. Maybe it will surface later ???

I didn't make it sickly sweet, but I add sugar through the process, the end result is sickly undrinkably sweet. The tea is very strong though.

 

[Johntodd]

OK, it floats because of trapped gas under it. So, it really doesn't matter if it floats or not.

If it's still sickly sweet, then it is not finished, as far as making K'Cha is concerned.

 

[Jokester]

Not sweet at the end I hope.
I have not fermented one to finish I should say, but once the 1 month K'Cha is done, it shouldn't be sweet.
What I meant was, I add enough sugar in the time its fermenting to have an end result that has had enough sugar to be sickly sweet.

 

[Jokester]

The Scoby I bought is still on the bottom, but strands of it are climbing to the top. The smell is fruity vinegar like. But there is some pieces floating on top that are white and fuzzy looking. Could that be mold ? Or fungus ? Or can I just wait it out and see, it may just be scobys ?

 

[Johntodd]

If it's fuzzy, it's mold. Just be sure it's fuzzy. Immature scobys can look pretty weird sometimes.

If in doubt, remove it.

 

[Jokester]

Looks more like a film, not much fuzz. I think its a scoby. Mold is greenish, these guys are white.