Boil 4 cups of water and add 6 tbsp white sugar and 3 black tea bags. I used the Ceylon Orange Pekoe Black Tea. Boil until the tea is fully black in colour. Add more teabags if needed.

Once completed, let it cool to room temperature then add the scoby into the tea. If you don’t have a scoby, the recommendation is to add a bottle of store bought kombucha instead. I am using both a glass jar cover with a tea towel and some rubber-bands and also a ceramic food jar - usually used for food fermentation.

When using a scoby to ferment your kombucha, it will usually take 10-14 days to be ready for drinking. It’s okay to keep it a bit longer but it will get more sour over time as all the sugar are consumed by the yeast. However, if you are starting fresh with a bottle of kombucha, it will take up to 4-weeks before the kombucha is ready. By then you should see a scoby forming on top of the kombucha. Please keep your kombucha stored in a dark and cool place.

It’s also worth to note that I usually would keep the younger scoby for future kombucha projects in the same tea liquid for the purpose of growing more scoby. The picture on the left is a younger scoby, lighter in colour, thinner, firmer and have less wrinkles. The one on the right is the older scoby, darker, more wrinkles and less firm.