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Kombucha: First Brew to Second Ferment
Brew guide 🫙 · Cellar crew · Nov 2026
Setup: the honest kit
| Item | What to get | Why |
|---|
| Glass jar, 2–4 L | Wide mouth if you can | Scope for the pellicle; never metal for long contact |
| SCOBY + starter liquid | From a friend, or grown from a store-bought raw kombucha | The starter's acid is what defends the first batch |
| Sugar | Plain white sugar, 1 cup per gallon-scale batch | Food for yeast; not for you — it gets eaten |
| Tea | Black or green, 4–6 bags per batch | Nitrogen + flavor; avoid oils ( Earl Grey bergamot sulks) |
| Bottles | Swing-top, strong glass | Plastic deforms; flimsy glass becomes a bomb |
The first ferment (7–14 days)
- Brew sweet tea: 6 tsp loose black tea + 1 cup sugar per ~13 cups water; cool fully to room temp.
- Pour into the jar, add starter liquid (≈1 cup per gallon) and the SCOBY.
- Cover with a cloth; keep at 24–28 °C, away from cross-contamination (no kombucha above a sourdough bench).
- Taste from day 7 with a straw: too sweet = keep going; balanced-tart = bottle.
- pH checkpoints: a healthy batch drops from ~5 quickly toward 3–4. Under 2.5 and it's misidentified vinegar — reseed with a fresh sweet brew.
The second ferment (3–5 days)
- Remove the SCOBY + save 1 cup of liquid for the next batch.
- Bottle with 5–10% fruit or juice by volume; seal.
- Room temperature, 2–5 days. Burp caps daily at first — the fizz builds with surprise.
- Refrigerate when carbonated to your taste.
Bottle safety: only pressure-rated bottles, only cold-storage once carbonated, and open them over the sink the first time. "Never Get Mold" is a real guide's promise — the
video this site curates is the one it endorses.
SCOBY care
- Layers build with every batch; peel off extras as gifts, or they jam the jar.
- A SCOBY hotel (a jar of strong sugar-tea) stores spares for breaks of weeks.
- Brown strings = yeast strands, normal. Dried outSCOBY = compost and start a baby.
Fixes at the shelf
- No fizz at 2F → more sugar in the bottle, warmer room, or a weak starter liquid — check yeast strands.
- Vinegar-flat taste → next brew starts earlier at bottling (day 7).
- Mold (fuzzy dry patches) → compost, clean, start over with strong starter + correct temp.
The full timeline, logged per batch, is what the app's cellar shows — pH, fizz and taste in one strip per jar.