10/25 Tangerine Dream

by gregtpayne | Oct 25, 2018 | Kombucha

We bottled after 8 days in fermentation and flavored the big batch with 1/3 cup of tangerine juice (Evolution brand from Whole Foods) and 1/2 tbsp sugar. The plain we added just 1 tsp of sugar to since there was still some sweetness from the shorter fermentation. We’ll let the tangerine go 5 or 6 days in 2nd fermentation. We’ve been letting the plain go 16-20 days but for a few we’ve found that to be a bit much so we’re back to refrigerating the plain after 12-14 days in second fermentation.

10/8 Passion Fruit

by gregtpayne | Oct 8, 2018 | Kombucha

This is our new favorite. Our Passion Fruit buch turned out so good we made a full batch of it tonight. Our liliko’i plant is dropping fruit now and there are a ton of purple ones on the vine so we should have plenty through the fall and into winter. LIke last time we used 1/4 cup of de-seeded passion fruit puree and a full tablespoon of sugar (it’s been hot so the buch was strong). We used 1/2 tbsp for the plain. We did a 6 day 2nd fermentation last time so we’ll probably do the same this time.

9/29 Strawberry and Passion Fruit

by Barbara Tajima | Oct 1, 2018 | Kombucha

From our awesome neighbor Rindon…

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And from our own liliko’i vine …

We just got 3 bottles of passion fruit and used the rest of the big batch for strawberry. We used 1/3 cup of strawberry puree and 1/2 tbsp of sugar and 1/4 cup of passion fruit puree (de-seeded) with 1 tbsp sugar. This batch went 10 days and the passion fruit was young and tart so we used extra sugar everywhere. The plain even got a 1/2 tbsp this week. I built a pressure tester to try to help with the strawberry fermentation. It seems that 2 days isn’t enough and 3 days is too much. After 3 days the entire bottle ends up all over you kitchen ceiling and walls (not kidding!, just the the strawberry!, well, especially the strawberry). The passion fruit will probably take 5-7 days on the shelf to get fizzy.

I’ll try to update this post. Between the liliko’i and the pressure tester, we’re curious how it will turn out.

9/19 Tangerine Dream on steroids

by Barbara Tajima | Sep 19, 2018 | Kombucha

We’ve been busy baking so we let this batch go a full 10 days in fermentation. It’s strong! We flavored the big batch with 1/3 cup of tangerine juice (pasteurized store-bought) and 1 full tbsp of sugar since there wasn’t much sugar left in the buch. For the plain we used 1/2 tbsp of sugar.

9/9 Arnold Palmer

by Barbara Tajima | Sep 10, 2018 | Kombucha

This week we flavored the big batch with 1/4 cup of fresh squeezed lemon juice sweetened with sugar syrup (about 2 3/4 cups lemon juice with 8 pumps syrup) plus 1 tbsp of sugar. We are thinking this may be more like ice tea with lemon and that we could have used more lemon but we’ll see. Not sure how long the second fermentation should be. We’ll probably try one in about 5 days.