Pecan Free Plain Kombucha
Brewing your own kombucha at home is one of those deeply satisfying kitchen projects that rewards patience with something genuinely delicious. The process starts with a strong, dark brew of black tea that gets sweetened and then handed off to a living SCOBY, which slowly transforms it into a tangy, lightly effervescent drink over the course of a week or more. There are no nuts, no nut-derived ingredients, and no shared processing lines to worry about — just tea, sugar, water, and a culture doing its quiet, remarkable work on your countertop. Tasting it daily from day seven onward is one of the best parts, watching it shift from sweet to pleasantly tart right before your eyes. The longer you let it ferment, the more sour and complex it becomes, so you have real control over the final flavor. Once bottled and chilled, it keeps for a couple of weeks and makes a fizzy, probiotic-rich alternative to store-bought drinks that often come with long ingredient lists and uncertain sourcing. Save your SCOBY and a half cup of the finished batch, and you can keep this cycle going indefinitely.
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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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