The Second Ferment (Kombucha)

I love the taste of plain kombucha, but sometimes it fun to create new flavors in your kombucha and it will also make the it more bubbly. I use pop top bottles in this process as well as growler bottles The idea behind the second ferment is to add flavor and a touch of sweetener in a anaerobic environment to force the CO2 that is made during fermentation to stay in the tea rather than escape as it was allowed to do through the tea cloth of the first ferment.

Experimenting with flavor is half the fun of the second ferment. By rule of thumb, when adding fruit, the kombucha will dull the flavor of the fruit. When adding herbs, the kombucha will intensify the flavor. With that being said, I like to make my fruit as intense as possible to give a load of flavor to my tea. So instead of popping a few fresh berries into the bottle, I cook down the berries in a bit of sugar to a thick syrup. Then I either pass through a fine strainer, or whiz the mixture up with my stick blender and then strain. What’s left in the strainer can be added to ice tea for a flavor that rivals any fancy tea from your favorite coffee shop.

The fruity syrup is cooled then added to each pop top bottle at about five parts kombucha, one part berry syrup. If I use a 25 oz pop top bottle, I pour about 20 oz kombucha first then add 1/4 cup or 4 oz berry syrup. Sometimes the berry syrup pours through the kombucha and settles to the bottom. If this happens I gently roll the bottle around to mix, without shaking. Now its time to ferment, round two.

I usually wait two days before giving each bottle a little burp to release some gas. If I’m working on a new flavoring I will sample it after two days to see if it has achieved the taste and level of fizziness that I’m looking for. If its right on, it goes in the fridge to chill, which slows down fermentation. If its still unbalanced in sweetness and the fizziness is lacking, give it a few more days, burp and sample again. I don’t usually wait more than 4 days on the 2nd ferment. My family’s preference is to be on the sweeter side of the flavor spectrum.

By waiting, the kombucha will continue to eat away at the sugars in your flavoring. Eventually, if you ferment long enough, your kombucha will taste like vinegar and has many uses, but drinking is probably not one of them. If I leave kombucha too long, I use the booch vinegar in making Fire Cider, or as a base for salad dressings.

Here are some of the flavors I make during the 2nd ferment: Turmeric, Blueberry Ginger, Hibiscus, Blackberry, Chocolate Raspberry, Orange Marmalade, and Celery. Look forward to the how-to’s for each flavor in a later post.