Favorite Kombucha Flavorings

[pirateforhire]

I'm a longtime lurker on HomebrewTalk, mostly in the home brewing section. I've never actually come over to the Kombucha forum until now and thought I'd ask if anyone has any favorite/unique flavors for their kombucha.

I've been making kombucha for over a year and I've done the obvious fruit flavorings (added as "secondary" when bottling) -- raspberries, blackberries, even apples.

I think some of the most creative flavorings I've done include a blueberry lavender, an orange "galaxy" (with galaxy hops) and recently I'm trying pina colada. The pina colada was made by steeping the peels from a fresh pineapple (with a decent amount of fruit left behind) with some desiccated coconut that I'd already steeped once before for a coconut beer. I won't really know how that turned out for a few weeks, since I have older kombucha to drink first.

Of all the flavors I've tried, I think I've been most disappointed with strawberry variations, just because they don't have very much natural sugar and I avoid adding extra sugar when I can.

 

[ellijayman]

I like the pomegranate hibiscuse

 

[Scientific hippie]

I am trying different teas right now. I like my current kombucha (black and green tea mixture usually flavored with ginger, dried elderberries, or blueberries), but I like the flavor of tea and am trying to get its flavor to be more pronounced. I am using Lapsang in my current batch; I just tasted it on Day 3. It's very assertive and smoky! What kind of flavors might go well with this? I'm sure the ginger will, but I'm not sure about the berries. Maybe plain?

 

[Scientific hippie]

Well, after experimenting, I'm back with my original green/black tea blend. The first tea had too much caffeine. The lapsang was awful with fruit; it was like fruit and luncheon meat.

 

[hottpeper13]

I was at the store yesterday and they had Ceylon Orange Pekoe black tea in the bulk bin. After passing the fermenter this morning and looking at the calendar ,I'll be using that today , and tasting it in about 3 weeks.

 

[Tommydee]

We've tried a few things, but keep coming back to two favorites that we like to alternate in my 2 corny kegs: 1 bag Costco berry mix + ginger, 1 bag Costco frozen mango bag + ginger.

We brew black tea in 3 gallons, then secondary in a keg for 1 week with big nylon bag,spunded at 6 psig.

 

[Scientific hippie]

Sounds interesting! I don't have kegs; I use the jugs-on-top-of-the-refrigerator method.