In which I discuss what to do with your bottle of storebought kombucha or the mother someone so nicely gave you.

So you’ve gone through the list in Vol. 1 and gotten what you need. You can always pick up the “wants” later, once you decide you need them. Now you’ve got either a bottle of unflavored (or ginger) storebought kombucha or a SCOBY from a good home and a nice person. Here’s what you do.

Bottle:

Pour half the kombucha into a glass, leaving the stringy mass of kombucha baby in the bottle, and drink it, because you probably like kombucha, or else why are you trying to make it? Clean your pint jar well with a soap that does NOT contain antibacterials (avoid “triclosan,” for instance; Dr. Bronner’s unscented or pretty much any bar soap is OK) and then rinse it out with vinegar. Pour the remaining kombucha and its baby into your pint jar and cover it with the cloth, securing with the rubber band.

SCOBY:

Clean your pint jar as above, rinsing with the white vinegar. Without touching your SCOBY, pour it in the pint jar and add whatever liquid came with your SCOBY, about a cup at most.

If at any point you need to put your hands in the kombucha liquid or touch the SCOBY, wash with non-antibacterial soap and then rinse your hands with vinegar. Anything that touches the liquid or SCOBY must be rinsed with vinegar (utensils, hands, containers).

Now you’re going to proceed the same way whether you are starting with a bottle baby or a full-grown SCOBY.

Make your kombucha a cup of tea: the usual amount of black tea + 2 Tbsp sugar. Don’t worry about how much sugar it is – the yeast is going to eat most of it. Let the tea cool to room temp. I usually make it in a Pyrex cup and set that in a bowl of ice water to chill it rapidly. You want to minimize the time the tea is uncovered (so mold spores don’t get in). Pour your room temp tea into the kombucha lair and re-cover it. Done for today!

Now you wait. Put the kombucha in a warm place – the sort of place you’d put bread dough to rise – out of direct sunlight. Try to minimize sloshing it around once you’ve found a place for it. Your new SCOBY will be growing on the top of the solution.

In a few days you should see bubbles form around the top near the jar’s sides. You may be able to see stringiness coming down from them – that’s the yeast excreta. That means things are working! Smell it through the cloth at least once a day so you can get used to the progression from sweet tea to fully fermented kombucha.

Give your new kombucha at least a week to settle in before proceeding any further. In the meantime I’ll post some general kombucha tips to peruse.