Everything you need to learn how to make kombucha: the SCOBY, the tea, the two fermentations, a brew calculator, and honest answers to the classic beginner worries.
How to make kombucha, in one sentence: brew sweetened tea, add a live SCOBY with its starter liquid, let it ferment 7 to 14 days at room temperature, then bottle with fruit for a naturally fizzy, tangy tea. The SCOBY grows a new layer with every batch.
Learning how to make kombucha is a two-week adventure the first time, then a relaxed routine of one session per week. This guide gives you real proportions, timings and the small habits that keep a culture thriving for years.
| Item | Quantity for 2 L | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Live kombucha SCOBY | 1, with 200 ml starter | The mother culture; ours ships alive with starter tea |
| Black or green tea | 4 to 6 bags (8 g) | Plain tea only; flavoured teas weaken the culture |
| White sugar | 140 g | Food for the culture, mostly consumed during fermentation |
| Glass jar | 2.5 L wide mouth | Covered with a breathable cloth, never sealed |
How many litres of kombucha do you want?
For 2 litre(s): 8 g of tea, 140 g of sugar, 200 ml of starter.
The first fermentation makes kombucha; the second makes it spectacular. Bottle the strained kombucha in swing-top bottles with 10% fruit juice or a few pieces of fruit, close tightly, and leave 2 to 4 days at room temperature. The trapped CO2 turns your brew into a fine, naturally sparkling drink. Refrigerate to stop the process, and open over a sink the first few times.
| Flavour | Per 500 ml bottle | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Ginger + lemon | 3 slices + 1 tbsp juice | The classic, dry and fiery |
| Raspberry | 5 crushed berries | Pink, fruity, crowd-pleaser |
| Apple + cinnamon | 2 cubes + a pinch | Autumn in a glass |
| Hibiscus | 1 tsp dried flowers | Tart, deep red |
Every batch grows a new SCOBY layer. Keep the spares in a “hotel”: a jar of sweetened tea in a quiet corner, refreshed once a month. It is your insurance policy (if a batch goes wrong, you restart the same day) and your gift stock, because everyone who tastes your kombucha will ask how to make kombucha themselves.
| What you see | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Brown strings under the SCOBY | Healthy yeast strands | Nothing, it is a good sign |
| New white layer on the surface | A baby SCOBY forming | Celebrate; move it to the hotel later |
| Fuzzy blue or green spots | Mould (very rare with enough starter) | Discard everything, restart from the hotel |
| No fizz in the bottles | Not enough sugar or time in F2 | Add a little juice, wait 2 more days |
You cannot make authentic kombucha without the culture. A raw, unpasteurised bottle can theoretically grow one in a few weeks, but starting from a vigorous live SCOBY with starter is faster and far more reliable.
Plain black tea is the reference; green tea gives a lighter brew. Avoid earl grey and flavoured teas: their oils weaken the culture over time.
Traces, usually below 1%, comparable to very ripe fruit juice. Longer, warmer fermentations raise it slightly.
Very sour kombucha is perfect as a vinegar substitute in dressings and marinades. Next batch, taste from day 6 and bottle earlier.
One 20-minute session per week covers a 2 L rhythm. The culture waits patiently in its jar between sessions.
Ready to brew your first batch?
Our live kombucha SCOBY ships in 24/48h with its starter tea and this guide. Prefer to try everything? The complete kit adds water and milk kefir grains. And the history of kombucha on Wikipedia is worth the detour.
The tea changes the flavour and the pace, not the method. One rule decides everything: it has to be real tea from the tea plant, because that is where the nitrogen comes from. Anyone working out how to make kombucha with a herbal infusion can do it once without harm, but several batches in a row weaken the culture because the yeasts run short of what they need.
Flavoured teas containing essential oils, Earl Grey among them, are the one category to avoid entirely. The oils sit on the surface and weaken the disc over several cycles.
Moving from one litre to three needs more culture and more starter liquid, not simply a bigger jar. Fermentation follows the ratios. The most common mistake when scaling is to keep the same 150 ml of starter liquid for three litres, which leaves the batch exposed for the first few days.
Two jars started a few days apart work better than one large one: there is always a bottle ready while the next is still fermenting. That is the practical answer to how to make kombucha continuously rather than in bursts.
| Item | Per litre | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Sugar | 70 to 90 g | the main item |
| Tea | 6 to 8 g | loose leaf is cheaper than bags |
| Water | 1 litre | filtered or left standing |
| SCOBY | 0 | it grows a layer every batch |
| Bottles | 0 | the same ones, reused |
| After 12 months | several spare layers | enough to give some away |
That table is the honest economic case. The question of how to make kombucha cheaply answers itself after three or four batches, because the culture is the only expensive part and it is bought once.
A jar left three or four weeks is no longer a drink, but it is far from wasted. It is the best starter liquid you will ever have, because its pH is exactly what the next batch needs, and it makes a better salad vinegar than most bottles sold as such.
The one exception is visible mould: a dry, fuzzy patch on the surface, blue, green or black. In that case discard the liquid and the disc together. A very sour batch and a mouldy batch are not the same situation.
There is no number of days that is right everywhere, and this is the single most common reason a first batch disappoints. A guide that says ten days without naming a temperature cannot hold in January and in July. Kombucha ferments roughly twice as fast at 28 C as at 18 C.
| Room temperature | First fermentation | Second fermentation | What to watch |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18 C | 14 to 21 days | 4 to 6 days | find a warmer shelf in winter |
| 22 C | 9 to 14 days | 3 to 4 days | the usual case |
| 24 C | 7 to 10 days | 2 to 3 days | the most comfortable range |
| 28 C | 5 to 7 days | 1 to 2 days | check daily in summer |
Pin that table inside a cupboard door and the question of how to make kombucha consistently is largely solved. The clock is a guide, the thermometer is the reason, and the taste is the decision.
Straight from the jar, kombucha is tart and flat, because gas escapes from under a cloth. Everything that makes it sparkle happens afterwards, in a sealed bottle, and this is the step most often skipped.
| Stage | Vessel | Duration | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| First fermentation | jar with a cloth | 7 to 12 days | acidity develops, gas escapes |
| Bottling | swing top bottle | 5 minutes | keep 150 ml back as starter |
| Second fermentation | bottle fully sealed | 2 to 4 days | pressure and fine bubbles |
| Chilling | fridge | from 6 hours | fermentation slowed, gas held |
Watch the pressure. A bottle left four days at 28 C with fruit juice in it can overflow or force its stopper. Open it briefly over the sink once a day until you know the rhythm of your own kitchen.
Flavour goes into the second fermentation, never the first. Fruit in the first phase brings competing organisms along with its sugars, which is a needless risk when the second phase does the job better.
| Addition | Per litre | Result | Second fermentation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fresh grated ginger | 1 teaspoon | sharp, strongly fizzy | 2 days |
| Raspberries | a handful | fruity, deep red | 3 days |
| Lemon and mint | 1 slice, 3 leaves | fresh and light | 3 days |
| Apple juice | 50 ml | mild, sweeter | 2 days |
| Dried hibiscus | 1 teaspoon | tart, strongly coloured | 3 days |
Two habits keep results predictable when learning how to make kombucha with flavours: change one ingredient at a time, and shorten the second fermentation whenever the addition is high in sugar.
None of the five destroys a culture permanently except genuine mould. A weakened disc recovers over two or three normal batches with a warm spot and generous starter liquid.
None of them is the calendar, and checking all three takes half a minute.
Those three replace any fixed number of days, which is why they matter more than the timings in any guide to how to make kombucha, including this one.
Two live cultures in one kitchen do not interfere, with one precaution worth taking.
| Point | Kombucha | Water kefir |
|---|---|---|
| Base | sweetened tea | sugared water with dried fruit |
| Cycle | 7 to 12 days | 24 to 48 hours |
| Effort per week | 15 minutes once | 5 minutes three times |
| Caffeine | yes | none |
| Distance needed | about one metre | about one metre |
| Covers | cloth | cloth or loose lid |
A metre of separation is enough. Yeasts travel through the air, and a water kefir that picks up kombucha yeasts drifts in flavour over several weeks. Nothing worse than that happens, and no separate room is required.
