Kombucha

Kombucha is an effervescent fermentation of sweetened tea that is used as a functional food.

Sometimes referred to as a "mushroom", the kombucha culture is actually a symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast (SCOBY).

Ok so tonight I decided was a good night to switch my kombucha from my regular sun tea jar over to the super sized 3 gallon beverage jar I got at Ross for 10 dollars. so I set out to do the what should have been a simple thing. 

sun tea jar next to 3 gallon beverage jar from Ross

so first I made a large pot of sweet tea i used regular old tap water and 8 lipton tea bags.

I brewed it and added 2-3 cups of sugar not really sure how much I measured the first two cups then eye balled the rest.

this is the only sugar I use for Kombucha its a little more expensive but not much its something like brown sugar
 

I mixed it all together an then poured the whole thing in to the big jar.
then I noticed that the spigot was leaking ok so now what  I have hot tea in a huge jar and its leaking so I pour it all in to the smaller jar after taking out the SCOBYs and pouring off a large juice glass of kombucha to use as starter then dumping the rest (that had been sitting in the jar for around 4 weeks and was tooo sour for me) in the sink

here are all my scobys

 after taking the whole spigot apart and managing to get it put back together and make sure it wasnt leaking this is what it looked like.

yes I could not get the spigot on straight so i have a crooked spigot for all time but it doesnt leak so i then poured out the water and realised that the tea bags had busted and I now had tea drags all in itso i got out the colander nd put a kitchen towel in it and a large mixing bowel under it and poured it in the colander and this is the mess i ended up with

ok so I have fixed the spigot and strained the tea now I got it in the big jar and added more new unsweetened tea and then added ice cubes to make the whole thing room temp I added the scobys and the kombucha starter tea