Using brown sugar in Kombucha?

[shaven_lotus]

Hey, about to start my first two brews of kombucha and I was wondering if brown sugar would be a suitable substitute for white. I plan on stirring in the sugar while the unfermented tea sat on some heat in a pot.

Any advice is appreciated!

 

[buzzerj]

Regular cane sugar should be fine. No molasses is added as it would be with brown sugar. The sugar is the energy source for the scoby to feed on. Other types of sugars may lengthen the brew time by involving more complex sugars and result in off flavors for those higher chain sugar molecules that the scoby can't consume. Just cane sugar, the disaccharide sucrose, will hydrolyze to fructose and glucose when it dissolves, which is what the mother wants to consume. All you need is to sweeten the tea.

 

[shaven_lotus]

Okay, so from what I gather is that the molasses in the brown sugar would make the fermentation process take longer and potentially end up with a funky tasting end product??

 

[buzzerj]

You can try it but I think you're better off with cane sugar. Yes I think the more complex sugars may leave different flavors than cane sugar would. Although brown sugar doesn't have much molasses. I still would recommend cane sugar. Good Luck. Let us know how it comes out.