Cathy125

I just wanted to share that I tried my first bottle of my homemade Komucha last night.  It had only been 2 days at F2  in the cooler.  I choose the Ginger/Lemonade flavor.
Oh My - - SOOO much better than store bought- It had a hint of carbonation and interesting to me that I was satisfied w/ just 1/2 of the bottle and put
the rest in the fridge for today.  I left my other 3 bottles in the cooler and will tranfer them to the fridge tonight giving them an extra day to ferment.
One thing I'm not sure about is how to know it's ready...  So much depends on the amount of starter tea / temperature .  They say to determine when ready is to just start  up to tasting it each day after about a week.  I let mine go about 2 weeks before I bottled it - To me it tastes wonderful but, still leary if it was long enough for the cup of sugar in
my sweet tea batch to be consumed.   I know that testing the PH level will help to determine this??  I've got my strips on order but, have not yet received so for my next batch
will try to use that as a gauge  along with the taste test... So much to learn yet about this process.
  Can't hardly wait to start to explore the endless combination of flavors.. 
   

Hi Jen,
I'm a new Kombucha brewer too.  I just finished up my first F1 yesterday ( 1 gallon Batch Brew) and saved quite a bit of the starter fluid for my
new baby Scooby that developed that is not sitting in it's own hotel waiting for my CB crock to arrive  :).  Meanwhile, I started up another batchf
in my gallon container from my original mother Scooby.  I only got five 16 oz bottles from my first batch due to needing starter tea for my new batch
and sufficient tea for my hotel but, ok with that for now  I put dried ginger and lemon juice in 4 of them and tart cherry juice in the 5th  I'm re-cycling my GTS Kombucha bottles.
Put them in an empty cooler 'just in case' and gave them each a small burb this morning.  There was a slight hiss but, nothing too bit.  I might let them go for
another 2 days before putting in the fridge until ready to drind to slow down the F2 process  I agree , I spent hours reading all of the information on this
thread plus KombuchaKamp.com.  I started with a Scooby from Amazon that came in a baggie with about a cup of tea.  Was so nervous at first but,
quickly learning it's a waiting game.  Looking forward to sharing our experiences and anyone else on these boards that are still active.  My motivation
was the cost of the commercial brews and the fact the closest store that sells it is over 20 miles away.
 

Hi Jen,
I'm a new Kombucha brewer too.  I just finished up my first F1 yesterday ( 1 gallon Batch Brew) and saved quite a bit of the starter fluid for my
new baby Scooby that developed that is not sitting in it's own hotel waiting for my CB crock to arrive  :).  Meanwhile, I started up another batchf
in my gallon container from my original mother Scooby.  I only got five 16 oz bottles from my first batch due to needing starter tea for my new batch
and sufficient tea for my hotel but, ok with that for now  I put dried ginger and lemon juice in 4 of them and tart cherry juice in the 5th  I'm re-cycling my GTS Kombucha bottles.
Put them in an empty cooler 'just in case' and gave them each a small burb this morning.  There was a slight hiss but, nothing too bit.  I might let them go for
another 2 days before putting in the fridge until ready to drind to slow down the F2 process  I agree , I spent hours reading all of the information on this
thread plus KombuchaKamp.com.  I started with a Scooby from Amazon that came in a baggie with about a cup of tea.  Was so nervous at first but,
quickly learning it's a waiting game.  Looking forward to sharing our experiences and anyone else on these boards that are still active.  My motivation
was the cost of the commercial brews and the fact the closest store that sells it is over 20 miles away.
 

Hi
I'm Jen. I'm hoping to resurrect this thread because I ordered my starter kit yesterday and it would be great to have others to share the fun with. I'm about halfway through reading all the posts from the start (it's taken HOURS!!) so most of the questions I had, have been answered already but no doubt when I start brewing I'll have even more questions. I wish I'd started reading from the beginning before I ordered my starter kit cos I'd have felt braver about growing my own SCOBY.
I've cleared out part of a cupboard for my mother brew and now have a mason jar of water sitting in there so I can test the temp later. Can't wait to test out some of the flavors I've been reading about on this thread.

Oh hey!
I'm just finishing up consuming our first batch. Second batch is in F1.
Adding a little blueberry and some ginger when we get to F2. Last batch we did one plain, one with a little ginger, and one with some bing cherry. All were pretty delish.