How To Make Kombucha At Home 🦠 Saves money & tastes better!

Oh, this one is very, very fizzy. Make and butcher, they said. Look at that. Natural carbonation. Oh my word, that is good. Let's pour this. Oh, look at that. Incredible fizz. Oh, that is so good. That fizz just carries all the flavours. So kombucha is one of my favourite drinks. I actually haven't made my own batch in such a long time because, as you can see, I've been building a new kitchen. I'm finally in here now and the first thing I wanted to do was get a new kitchen kombucha going. This, when I've made my own kombucha and bottled it up, it goes within a few days because friends, family, they all have a bottle and they all love it. So to make kombucha, it's a very simple process. All you need is tea, sugar, water and a scoby. More on the scoby after, which is a vital ingredient in kombucha, but let's just make our strong black tea for now. So first up, what you want to do is figure out what vessel that you're fermenting the kombucha in. Mine is five litres, so I need to make enough tea to fill that. For every cup of water, you're going to want around one to two teaspoons of black tea. Guys, I'm struggling to explain this. I actually slept really bad, nervous about filming in my new kitchen. This is a big moment, but anyways, what I actually do to speed up the process, because we're going to have to wait for this to cool down once we've made our tea, is I make a really strong tea. I add the same amount of tea into this pot as I would if I was doing the whole five litres, but I actually only put 2.5 litres of boiling water in here. And then I'll dilute it with an additional 2.5 litres of cold water. I'm making this way more complicated than I should, but I just want to speed up the cooling process. You know what I mean. But look, I've got a fancy boiling water tap, thanks to the lovely people at Kettle. They supported me. Look at this. 100 degrees. Ah, that is amazing. I have cups of tea all throughout the day because of this. All right, so sugar. This is important in kombucha making. This is what makes it the drink that we know and love, that makes it so beneficial. The yeast in the scoby that we'll talk about actually eats the sugar and makes it so good for us. So we're going to add enough sugar just to make this like a really sweet tea. I'll put the full recipe on the website so you don't have to guess. We'll get that in now. You can have the nicest kitchen in the world, if you still can't change the donkey in the kitchen. I had a bad sleep, all right. So this is really strong, sweetened black tea now. Obviously, this isn't the mix we want. We're going to be diluting this with a load of more water just to sort of take that edge off because it's so sweet and it's so rich. But that's just to help me speed up the process. So I'm not waiting all day for it to cool down to room temperature. My first memories of cooking were at home with my dad about seven or eight years old when he was making evening meals. And I was so fascinated by the knives and the fire that I wanted to get involved. My dad started teaching me how to chop and use the chef's knives at home. Early on was quite critical. He would tell me that I needed to be a bit more uniform and a bit more precise. And it was a good little teaching for me and made me realize the importance of having a good quality chef's knife at home. And then when I first walked into the professional kitchens aged 15, 16 in the restaurant kitchens, the only sort of control I felt I had was over my knife. It was like an extension of me. And when I treated it with respect and care, it rewarded me with making me way more efficient and diligent and better at everything, really, when I looked after my knife. So I think the relationship between a knife and a cook is basically sacred. And that's why I'm so proud to share with you this incredible, beautiful work of art. This is a knife I've been making for a long while now with the top knife makers Kato. It features nods to me throughout, such as the handle, which is made from oak, Welsh oak from my homeland and Japanese steel, the finest steel, which has my chef's knife and rose tattoo embezzled on the blade. It's perfectly balanced that I can balance it on just one finger, thanks to this way to design that actually has my signature on the back. Now, this for me is a knife for life, and I'm so happy to extend this to you so you can get your hands on one. Inside each box, there's a package of seeds to grow one of my favorite ingredients and a lucky coin. But in certain five boxes, there's a gold lucky coin. If you get a gold coin, you're invited for lunch with me. So good luck getting a knife. Click the link beneath this video if you want one. I really cannot recommend this enough. I'm so grateful to work with Kato and also just to be able to share this gift with you guys. So there we go. There's some filtered cold water going in just to help this cool down faster. I don't want to be waiting all day for this. But as you can see, I've left a bit of room here because what you do actually have to add, along with the SCOBY, you need to add some starter kombucha, which is just kombucha that's been previously made. It's just to help kickstart the fermentation with all this new tea and sugar. So we'll add that once this is at room temperature. So let's talk about the SCOBY. SCOBY stands for a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast, and it's the key ingredient in making kombucha. It looks really weird, like a rubbery disc, and works by fermenting the sweetened tea, producing all the beneficial probiotics and acids. It's important to keep everything clean, including your hands, before handling the SCOBY. And for this batch, I've actually bought a SCOBY with kombucha starter online, just to show you that you can do the same. Alternatively, you can just get a SCOBY from a friend who makes kombucha, because each time kombucha is made, it produces a new SCOBY layer. Just make sure they give you at least one cup of the kombucha liquid with it. I simply add both the SCOBY and the kombucha starter to my room temperature tea, and then it's time to ferment somewhere warm and a little dark for up to two weeks, although it is very temperature dependent. Ah, it's an exciting day today. Time to bottle up my kombucha. Oh, there's some bubbles forming. This is ready to be bottled up. I actually gave it a taste after about a week and a half of fermentation, and it was at the perfect level of sweetness to acidity. If it's too acidic, that means it's over fermented. You can still use it, but it's just not as pleasant to taste. And if it's too sweet, it means it's under fermented, obviously. Now it's time to bottle it up, which is the most exciting part. And you can choose the flavors or the flavor that you want to incorporate and infuse into your kombucha. So today I'm going to be using three different flavors. I'm going to use my homegrown rhubarb and some rose. So rhubarb and rose, I think that will work nicely together. I've also got some hibiscus, aka salt, an incredible ingredient that I was introduced to in Mexico and Jamaica. And then finally, I'm going to do my all-time favorite kombucha flavor, blackberries and mint. So the first task is to add my flavors to my sterilized bottles. I basically just added my bottles to a big saucepan of water and brought it to a boil. That heat's going to kill off any bad bacteria. We'll then drop our flavorings into each bottle and then fill up with kombucha. It really doesn't matter how much you add. I just tend to just cover the base of the bottle in whatever flavor I'm adding. And generally that's enough to really infuse the flavor, but also there's enough sweetness within the fruit or whatever you're adding to help add even more fizz, because that sugar is basically eaten by the kombucha and it produces a gas that creates the fizz. And because during this second fermentation, the lid is going on, it's been sealed, there's nowhere for that gas to escape. So the gas is actually forced within the liquid, creating a really lovely bubble when you drink it. However, there is a possibility that you can have a bomb here. So what I do after a week of the second fermentation is pop them in my fridge, or if it's really warm in the house, generally just after four days. And that cool temperature in the fridge just slows that fermentation down so much more and you don't have to worry about any explosions. Dried rose. This is a bit of a weird ingredient to add, but I know it's going to work because what is it with ingredients with the first, or the same letter at the start of the word, always working together? Rhubarb and rose. Rocket and rhubarb would work together. Rocket and rose salad, that would do good. What else? Tomato and tahini, we know that's going to work. So we'll add like a small spoonful into each bottle. Now carrying on with my fancy flavour word alliterations, this is my blackberry and bint flavour. It works sensationally well, obviously because of that alliteration. Now you may be thinking, when you've bought kombucha in the past from the supermarkets, there's never any bits floating in it in terms of the flavourings. That's because often they will strain it out or they will add like a fruit puree or syrup or something like that during the second fermentation. I like this way a little bit more because it saves you having to make like a blackberry puree. It also looks a bit more rustic and authentic, and I actually like snacking on the bits of blackberry when you pour the kombucha when it comes to tasting. But if you didn't want any bits in it, you could just strain it out before serving. Finally, it's my hibiscus, and I'm just going to throw a few leaves into each bottle. All right, it's time to bottle up. So you're going to need a funnel and a sieve, and we'll get our bottles filled up. But before I do that, I just want to talk to you about what a healthy scoby should look like. Look at this here. We've got a fresh layer of scoby formed during that first fermentation. So when you're keeping your eye on your fermentation and your kombucha, you will notice a new layer formed each time you make kombucha. You can actually peel them off and give them to your friends and family to make their own kombucha. If there's any sign of any mold, that means it's failed. So do not use it. Start the process again. But it's very rare that that happens. So I'm going to fill up my bottles, leaving around three centimeters at the top. All right, so I got this special bottle capping machine. It's not fancy at all. I just got it online. I'll pop a link below. You can also use one of those sort of, what are they called again? I don't know. Flick bottle capper thing. I don't know what they are. Anyway, just pop that on top. This makes me excited. Oh, and there we go. Sealed up. And I just turn it upside down. I just infuse those flavors a little bit. They will sink eventually. That's my first bottle done. Exciting. All right, last one. I've got only two hibiscus, three of every other flavor. The reason being you need to leave some kombucha leftover so that when you refill this, there's enough energy and life and bacteria within the kombucha that you leave remaining to kickstart the new batch. Around one to two cups of the existing kombucha is enough to leave. All right, so that's my kombucha bottled up. These are ready for the second fermentation. I'm going to leave them somewhere sort of warm and dark for around or up to a week. But good news for you guys, I've pre-made some already. They've been fermenting for about a week and I popped them in the fridge so they're cold and they're going to be perfect to test and taste on this warm sunny day here in Wales. I've even dug out my champagne flutes. The only time they'll ever get used for this momentous day, which is to taste my kombucha. Now I know I love my blackberry and mint, but what I'm amazed at is that incredible color of the hibiscus. It's really deep and rich. And then we've got my beautiful rhubarb and rose. That's a lovely tangy orange color. So without further ado, let's give them a taste. This one is very, very fizzy. To be honest, I kind of turned this one upside down as I took out the fridge. Not a good idea. It was fizzy enough. Make kombucha, they said. Look at that. That is natural carbonation. No gases added. Oh my word, that is good. Wow. Oh, look at that fizz. That is spectacular. Even though it was a bit messy when it happened, that is going to be the most amazing mouthfeel. I'm very proud of this. I do believe that kombucha is a sacred drink. Obviously it's been drunk for thousands of years around the world for the health benefits, for the enjoyment. And we should be drinking more kombucha for our gut health, but also just as a sort of alcohol replacement, really, I think. There will be trace levels of alcohol in this. I need to stop talking and just try it. So here we go. Maybe I'll be the first kombucha sommelier. Oh, wow. I don't want to sound too pretentious like a sommelier, but you're hit with that acidity that kombucha has. That's beautiful. The fizz just carries the flavor through because at the end, I then get a punch of rhubarb and it tastes so good. It tastes like a rhubarb crumble, that kind of level of intense rhubarb flavor and a little floralness from that rose. Wow. That is a very good combination. I think I'll give that a strong 9.7 out of 10. Oh no. This could have been a disaster. Please don't let this put you off making kombucha. This rarely happens to me. It's just because I was waiting to film this moment, I left them out of the fridge a little bit too long. I did that second fermentation for longer than I should have, which means so much more gas has built up. If I was to have put them in the fridge for at least two days, it would have slowed down that fermentation so much and the fizz would have been calmed down to a really enjoyable, easy opening kind of fizz. Wow. All right, so here is my hibiscus kombucha. Fizzy as anything. Wow. Subtly flavored, a little bit on the sour side because hibiscus is generally sour anyway, but it's really almost, I think a sommelier would describe this as almost dry because it hasn't got too much sweetness, which is nice. The rhubarb one is very sweet, but this has got a sort of more of a grown up taste. Just so you know guys, you can just pop the lid back on and pop them in the fridge and they'll last for at least three months in the fridge. All right, last but not least, my favorite flavor, the blackberry and mint. Less fizzy. Oh gosh, that's how it's supposed to be. Why do I do this one first? It's still beautifully fizzy, but it's not like crazy, which is good. I wonder why, that's interesting actually. So I think that could just be because blackberries maybe don't have as much sugar in them to create more gas, or it may have just had less of a shaky ride before getting to this table to taste it. It's interesting, but it's still really beautifully fizzy. There's loads of bubbles in there. Oh yeah, there's something about blackberry and mint, it just is the best combination I think. It's sweet, it's fruity, the mint is very floral almost, and just has that sort of cleansing taste to it. The only way I can describe it, it's almost like a mojito, a blackberry mojito. It's very, very good. And for someone that hardly drinks alcohol nowadays, kombucha is an incredible drink to drink at social events and gatherings, so you don't feel sort of left out, because often you do. But this has been a brilliant journey. I've really loved making kombucha over the years, and it's the first sort of fermentation experiment that I started doing in my kitchen years and years ago. Now I'm obsessed with sauerkraut and kimchi and miso paste, but it was always kombucha that first got me into fermentation. And when you can produce drinks like this, at a cost saving too, in comparison to how much kombucha costs at the supermarkets, it's so fulfilling. And when you have guests come around and you're like, oh do you want to try some of my kombucha, and it doesn't explode, it's a really nice occasion. So I hope you enjoyed the video. You've been asking me to make a kombucha video masterclass for a long time. This is how I do it. There may be other ways, there may be more easier ways, or if you have any tips for me, or any flavor combinations that you really like, then please pop them below. I recommend drinking kombucha for all the gut health properties. Replace alcohol with it. And I think if you're new to kombucha, don't drink like loads straight away. Ease yourself in a small little glass every now and then. For me this is very intense. I'll have like that much per day, or every other day, and it's good for me. So I'll see you soon with another video from beautiful Wales. For now, I'm going to enjoy my kombucha.