- Gather your ingredients
- Boil your water and dissolve the sugar in the water.
- Steep the tea in the hot water for 5 minutes. If using tea bags, simply remove them. If using loose leaf tea, strain all the tea leaves from the mixture.
- allow the sweet tea mixture to cool completely. It should be room temperature before moving on to the next step.
- Once it is cool, add the kombucha SCOBY. (SCOBY can come from kombucha liquid, or pellicle, or both). Some SCOBYs float, others may sink to the bottom, either way it’s fine. (You can add in store-bought raw kombucha here to grow a SCOBY for the first time).
- Cover the jar with a cloth lid and rubber-band. You must use a cloth lid to allow oxygen flow. Make sure it’s clean and free from lint.
- Keep the jar of sweet tea with the SCOBY at moderate room temperature, out of direct sunlight for seven days. Temperature should be between 65-78 degrees F.
- After 7 days you should notice that your SCOBY is thicker or see another SCOBY forming on the surface. You can let primary fermentation go anywhere from 7-30 days. I recommend ~15 days.
- Make a fresh batch of sweet tea as in the previous directions.
- Remove the SCOBY from the fermented tea and place it in the jar of fresh sweet tea. Set the fermented tea aside for bottling. Add a tablespoon of already fermented tea to the fresh batch.
- The fermented tea is now ready for flavoring and bottling (secondary fermentation)
- For secondary fermentation, you need pressure safe glass bottles and fruit juice for flavoring. I typically fill the bottles half way to 3/4th of the way with fermented sweet tea and the rest with juice.
- Once the bottles are sealed, carbonation builds in the bottles. Secondary fermentation can take anywhere from 5 to 12 days depending on the temperature and amount of juice added.
