Fermentation Support Forum

Usuall kombucha is from black tea + sugar.

Can I sometimes use green tea? Or black tea + honey? Or add other things, like little bit of lemon juice to the tea?

What is the minimal reguirement? Can kombucha ferment sugar water? What must be present for kombucha to start its activity?

Do a Christmass miracle and help me!

I don't know. I've read people being very dogmatic about just black tea with no flavors and only sugar, but I've never really tried.

I tried pu erh and it worked.

Save experiments can be done with second fermentation - first make clear kombucha, than mix fermented tea (without scoby) with honey, fruits, other liguids... and let ferment more.

But what must be present for kombucha to work? Can it ferment pure sugar water? Or what is the magical essence in black tea?

I make a delicious kombucha using 2/3 green tea and 1/3 black tea. all else is the same as the standard recipe. I have not tried a 100% green tea batch yet, but plan to after I have built my SCOBY reserves up a little bit (I just started brewing again after a couple of years off.).

When I make green tea kombucha I use a couple black tea bags also. Same with herbal teas, you can get the flavor you want and still use a little black tea to help it ferment better. I was given that advice years ago and it works for me, I'm not sure if I ever tried pure green tea but maybe use a bit more starter on your first batch just in case and see how it goes. Most of the time I use a 50/50 mix of green and black, but sometimes I do all black or about a 90/10 mix with mostly green.

I haven't made Kombucha in quite some time but I always used only green tea, no black. If the scoby is used to black tea I would slowly switch over to green. You may freak it out if you cut off black tea cold turkey-- after all it is alive and used to a certain diet. If you add flavors do it in a separate 2nd ferment(minus the scoby) and that way you keep the scoby happy with a clean diet of tea and sugar.

Hi, I have been using green tea (past sell-by date) since I started making kombucha. I add a few spoonfuls of golden syrup and it has been going well past few months.
However, I am worried that chlorine in the tap water is making it less effective as time goes on. I'm not going to buy plastic bottled water though so will keep making it like this for now.
See Sandor Katz Art of Fermentation book. I think he rules out citrus while fermenting but I added crystallized orange peel after bottling and it was delicious