Citrus Free Plain Kombucha
Homemade kombucha is one of those deeply satisfying fermentation projects that rewards patience with a tangy, lightly fizzy drink you can feel good about sipping every day. This version keeps things beautifully stripped back — just black tea, sugar, water, a SCOBY, and starter liquid — which makes it a natural fit for anyone avoiding citrus in their diet. So many store-bought kombuchas are flavored with lemon, orange, or grapefruit juice, making the label-reading game genuinely exhausting, but brewing your own from scratch puts you completely in control of what goes in the jar. The process is straightforward: brew strong tea, dissolve the sugar, cool it down carefully so the SCOBY stays healthy, then let time and beneficial bacteria do the heavy lifting over seven to fourteen days. That cooling step is worth taking seriously — temperatures above 90°F can damage your culture, so patience here pays off in every future batch. Once it hits that perfect balance of tart and mildly effervescent, you bottle it up and you've got a clean, plain kombucha with zero hidden ingredients to worry about. Keep your SCOBY and a half cup of starter liquid from each batch, and this becomes a self-sustaining ritual that just keeps giving.
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Learn more →Ingredients
8 servings
- 3.5 quarts filtered water, divided
- 4 bags plain black tea (or 1 tbsp loose-leaf black tea)
- 1 cup white granulated sugar
- 1 scoby (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast)
- ½ cup starter liquid (unflavored, unpasteurized kombucha from a previous batch or store-bought raw kombucha)
Instructions
- 1
Bring 1 quart of the filtered water to a boil in a large pot. Remove from heat, add the tea bags (or loose-leaf tea in a strainer), and steep for 5–7 minutes, until the tea is deep amber and strongly brewed. Remove and discard the tea bags or strainer.
- 2
Add the sugar to the hot tea and stir with a long-handled spoon until fully dissolved, about 1 minute.
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