This batch of kombucha additional tea was added to the first fermentation and tasted really good.
Found some nice grapefruit at the market. The large batch we made 15 bottles with 1/3 cup grapefruit juice, 1 tablespoon of sugar.
With the medium batch we made 9 bottles of plain with 1/2 tablespoon of sugar.
We pulled the grapefruit at 5 days which is normally fine but the new narrow bottle was explosive. The old bottles had a healthy pop. Greg thought it could be sweeter as it was very dry.
This batch of kombucha was weak but better than the 11/27 batch. We could taste the oolong tea this time and that odd lemon taste was gone. The medium batch was a bit stronger but still weak.
From the large batch we made 13 bottles of tangerine dream with 1/3 cup of tangerine juice and 1/2 Tablespoon of sugar. The medium batch we made 8 bottles adding 1 teaspoon of sugar.
This batch of kombucha tea lacked the oolong flavor, was sour and almost lemon like in flavor. We are not sure if it was the tea is different (it smells different – more grassy) or human error. Both the large and medium batch that was brewed last week tasted watery with a lemon flavor. We could not taste the usual nutty oolong tea.
From the large batch, we made 8 bottles of orange kombucha using 1/3 cup of orange juice and 1 tablespoon of sugar. We made 4 bottles of rootbeer kombucha as well, using an organic rootbeer syrup. Two bottles contained 4 tablespoons of syrup and 1/2 tablespoon sugar (old caps) and two bottles contained 5 tablespoons of syrup and 1/2 tablespoon sugar (new caps).
The medium batch also tasted off but we made 8 bottles with 1/2 tablespoon of sugar and will see how this turns out.
Update: We pulled the orange after 5 days. It has that odd lemony flavor but works okay with the orange – still not up to usual quality. The rootbeer was gross and we dumped it. That will not happen again.
We still have dozens of apples so we made more apple pie this week. The tea for next weeks batch will be strong and next week we’ll use less (adjusted in “How we do it”). So we used 1/3 cup of apple-cinnamon-lemon puree with 1 tbsp sugar for the apple and 1 tsp of sugar for the plain.
The apple pie was pulled at 6 days which was about right. The lemon cut the sweetness. The plain was pulled and refrigerated on 12/5. We tried to pull them earlier but they were too sweet. So 16 days is about right for the plain.
This week we increased the large batch to 1.5 gallons and and our 1 gallon batch is now the “small batch”
Will be making apple juice w the apples I picked w Becky and Ginger from apple trees on Jules’ Aptos vineyard home.
OK here’s the new recipe for the nute:
Large batch:
1.5 gallons (24 cups) water
48 grams tea
3 cups sugar
3 cups starter buch
Small batch:
1 gallon (16 cups) water
32 grams tea
2 cups sugar
2 cups starter buch
At least I’m hoping that’s the water situation. I figure we lose a cup of water in the tea so hopefully we’ll add an additional cup. We can only brew 20 cups at a time so we’ll have to add 4 cups of cold water to the big batch.
Barbara pureed the apples she picked w Becky and Ginger from apple trees on Jules’ Aptos vineyard home and created a concoction of apple puree, sugar, cinnamon, water and a squeeze of lemon. We’ll use 1/3 cup of that with 1/2 tbsp of sugar. The small batch we’ll flavor with just 1 tsp sugar.
We made passion fruit juice from crop of passion fruit from the vine in our backyard. For the large batch used 1/3 cup passion fruit juice, 1 Tablespoon sugar. For the small batch we did the usual house plain with 1/2 tablespoon of sugar.
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