You experience Kombucha for the first time. You start buying it because it’s not only oh-so-good, it’s also helping you with digestion, elimination, or some other health issue.
But uh-oh! This Kombucha habit is blowing up your food budget at $3 to $5 a bottle. You need to start making it yourself, and so you do.
What’s the next logical step for a Kombucha lover? Continuous brew Kombucha, of course. Because who wouldn’t want to have Kombucha on tap all the time — or who wouldn’t want to be able to make large batches of Kombucha with very little effort, time, or mess? Sign me up!
If you are at the point of either: 1) wanting to start making Kombucha at home, or 2) wanting to step up your Kombucha making to a continuous brew system, then listen up…
I’m thrilled to introduce you to the continuous brew system my family chose earlier this year. It’s from Dave at Get Kombucha. We couldn’t be happier.
My son has a particular love for Kombucha, so he is actually the brewer in our house. He regularly makes a full batch in the lead-free porcelain brewer, and then bottles it up with dried fruit (we love cherries) for our weekend pizza nights.
The man behind Get Kombucha’s continuous brew system is Dave Lindenbaum. I’ve met him in person and he is an energetic, genuinely caring person with an amazing Kombucha story of his own! (Dave’s system is no longer available but I recommend using Kombucha Kamp.)
A lifelong acid reflux sufferer, one day Dave tried Kombucha on a whim, never having heard of it before, and his acid reflux literally went away immediately.
He tossed his medications and started drinking Kombucha instead. Then to save the food budget, he started making his own…
…eventually developing and sharing the benefits of Kombucha, live mother cultures (scobies), his delicious custom tea blend, and his continuous brew system with the world.
You can hear more about the reasons we love Dave’s continuous brew system, plus how it works, in the video review below. And tomorrow, Dave is my guest on Know Your Food with Wardee, where he shares more about his Kombucha story, about continuous brew, and much more…
Do you make continuous brew Kombucha? Why do you love it? What has it done for you?
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So what makes it continuous? I am afraid I am lost. 🙂 I have two gallons at a time, brewing on my counter. I’m not sure what the benefits are to doing it that way vs. the continuous brewer.
Rachel – For most people, continuous brew allows you to keep fairly finished Kombucha “on tap” all the time. You drink a little and you add a little sweet tea to the brewer. So it’s mostly fermented and you’re continually re-supplying it.
For others (like us) we use the continuous brew system to make large batches in a smaller space. And easily decanting it.
Dave and I will talk about this at length in tomorrow’s podcast and the link will be:
http://KnowYourFoodPodcast.com/119 (when it’s live; it isn’t yet at the time I am replying).
I hope this helps… for now! 🙂
The tea blend………does it by any chance include Red Tea???
Dona — No red tea in the blend. It contains certified organic certified gmo-free black and green teas. It’s really delicious!
Kombucha has done wonders for my arthritis. I’ve just begun the continuous brew system, so I’m looking forward to the results….Have you considered the interaction between the plastic and the acids in the kombucha. I avoid all plastic because of BPA and other materials in plastic.
I love water kefir. Is there a way to make water kefir into a continuous brew also?
I would be concerned about aldehyde poisoning and tannins in the tea.
Not to mention $ 400.00 for this set-up…
T. Ruth this is something I have never heard of, do you have more info?
I love the continuous brew system but stopped brewing the 2nd time a scoby grew in the spigot and blocked everything. I would have to empty out the vessel, dig out the scoby in the spigot, and then put the kombucha back in. The liquid level was never low or near the spigot, so I don’t know why a scobies grow in there. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
I had the same question! I don’t even bother to try the spigot now. Using a sterilized ladle, I just push down slightly on the SCOBY and remove a quart. Then I just tilt the SCOBY in the vessel, pour in the fresh tea, mix with the same ladle and gently let the SCOBY back down. Often it doesn’t float, but still makes good Kombucha. If there is another trick, I want to know the answer to!
I used to use a gallon jar with a spigot and quit doing it that way for the same reason. For me the scoby wasn’t growing in the spigot but when I’d open it to get kombucha out, scoby “residue” would get stuck in there as the kombucha would drain out. Now I just have a regular gallon jar and dump it out from the top. One could also use a paddle to scoop it out.
Hi Guys!
This is Dave, owner of GetKombucha (and the guy with the goofy smile pictured next to Wardee in the post above).
When I first began Continuos Brewing I had the same problems. Nothing worse than coming home after a long day feeling the excitement of filling up a glass of kombucha freshly drawn from your tap, only to be welcomed with mere drops… those drops represented my tears. 🙂
Anywho. (is that even a word… and if so, is this how you spell it?)
Thankfully, there is an easy fix…. and even more, the easy fix of solving the problem doubles as an easy fix in ensuring the solution.
Let me explain.
So the first thing I did, was to fix my mood and mindset. If I was crying over spilled kombucha (or in our case no kombucha), it wasn’t going to help.
I took the inner dialogue of:
“Oh no! my stupid porcelain brewer is clogged again, by this stupid culture growing, and now I can’t drink this stupid kombucha. Nothing ever works out for me. I’m out of underwear, but you know what, I’m not going to do laundry because, what’s the point. Everything is the worst”.
And changed it to:
“Wow! How amazing is this. The kombucha tea that I made myself is so abundant with life that a new culture started forming inside of the spigot. If there was ever a shadow of a doubt if my kombucha is properly fermenting and is filled with probiotics, well the sun just shined it away. I am awesome. I must be. I just gave life to something while at work. Speaking of work. Everything works for me. I’m out of underwear, but you know what, I’m going to put on a bathing suit and head to the beach to figure out how to solve that little spigot issue. Everything is awesome.”
2 things to point out.
1. I tend to over internalize things.
2. At the time this happened I was living in Santa Monica, so swapping out under wear for a bathing suit and heading to the beach is considered a normal practice weather or not “Kombucha Crises 2008” was happening.
While at the beach I cleared my head, and I remembered all the emails I received asking about the little culture that sometimes sits on top of a bottle of commercial kombucha people get at the store.
I would reply over and over again the same way:
“Hey {insert name}… that little globby thing is actually a good sign that the kombucha you purchased at the store is not pasteurized and still contains living probiotics of yeast and bacteria.. the glob represents an itty bitty piece of cellulose forming.. it may not be as strong as a full on scoby but it is a great sign.
The reason why some bottles have it and some don’t are attributed to a few things.. but one of them is if the bottle was shaken, or handled a bit vs if it was still and settled for awhile.
The latter will sometimes form that blobby goodness. You can drink it, spit it at your friend if they are talking during a movie, or simply discard it before you drink your kombucha.
Hope you have an amazing day. Happy Brewin’, Dave :)”
Did you see that? Somewhere in the middle of the email response?
I did too.
Yes.. just like the bottles, the gentle shaking will prevent the culture from forming on top, it will also prevent the culture blob from forming at the bottom of your spigot.
BOOM!
Problem solved.
Wait, Dave… so you want me to shake my entire 2.5 Gallon Brewing System every day?
No. But you know what will achieve the exact same effect, in a fraction of the time and effort?
That’s right!
Simply drawing off a little bit of kombucha tea from your tap more frequently… liquid gold baby!
The best part about this. It actually encourages you to drink your kombucha.
Us humananoids are interesting creatures. Sometimes we are motivated more by both fear than from pleasure.
“You want me to have a little kombucha everyday to cleanse my liver, improve digestion, restore gut flora, balance my ph, and have more energy?”…
hmmm, let me think about it.
“You want me to have a little kombucha everyday because if I don’t my spigot will be clogged”…
quick! get me a glass!!!
Amazing, but it works.
For people that find themselves already with a clogged up spigot before they read this novella?
If you are a customer of one of our Continuos Brewing Systems.. the good news is we dedicated an entire DVD video series to this that solves this issue and many more like:
-What to do if your scoby starts growing too big for your brew.
-How to get that perfect balance of yeast, bacteria and taste when you go to bottle a large batch.
-And a ton more!
They are on the second DVD of the 2 DVD series that were included in your system when it shipped to your door.
So grab some non gmo pop corn and pop that bad boy in and enjoy.
Oh.. and remember if your friend is talking while you are watching, you know what to do with the clogged up blobby thing, right?
Happy Brewin,
Dave 🙂
PS: It has been a true honor and privilege serving the Traditional Cooking School community.. Wardee and her crew are like nothing I have ever seen.. class acts through and through!!
EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!!!! 😉 😉 😉
Thanks for this post, Wardeh!
I’m wondering . . . Where do you buy the food-grade plastic brown single-serving bottles? Would be great for days we take lunch out . . .
I have a question. When you do a second ferment and put dried fruit in your bottle, how do you get the dried fruit out after you drink the kombucha and it’s time to wash the bottle. Do you just cut it small enough in the first place so you “drink it” with the kombucha?
I don’t use dried fruit, I use frozen that is thawed to not being cold anymore and let sit for several days. Then I stain, rebotttle and refrigerate. I like fruity additions, not the mxes wit Kalr in them.
I’ve been trying to figure out if the ceramic water dispenser I’ve been using for continuous brewing this year is the right recepticle for the task. It’s a little hard to ask this question on the sites that sell continuous brew kits since they of course believe their dispensing product can’t be beat! I live overseas, so the shipping is more of a hurdle than even the basic price tag. My two questions are:
How do i know if my ceramic dispenser is leaching chemicals (like lead) into the kombucha?
What is the sugary syrup seeping through the crock? Does that possibly show it’s not a good container for anything but water? Thanks for anyone’s insight, Karen
I just found your blog and I am curious about the kombucha tea. Where do I get the alreadyformed tea? I’m thinking maybe a health food store? And I just order a mushroom online? I really want to try this but seems a little over my head!
Hi Becky,
You can buy already prepared Kombucha at most health food stores and even many grocery stores carry it. You can order the SCOBY online from Cultures For Health: http://tradcookschool.com/recommends/culturesforhealth/
or if you know someone brewing kombucha you may be able to get a SCOBY from them. 🙂