Ingredients 101: Tea, Sugar & Water

Tea: feed the culture real leaves

Kombucha Basics: Tea · Watch on YouTube

What counts as "real" tea? Most people don't realize that all true tea comes from one single plant species: Camellia sinensis. Black, oolong, green, white and pu-erh are all the same plant — the differences in color and flavor come from how the leaves are processed and oxidized. These are the teas kombucha thrives on: their leaves contain the polyphenolic compounds (commonly — and mistakenly — called "tannins") that the yeast and bacteria eat to turn your sweet tea into kombucha. Black tea, being the most oxidized, contains the most of them. More food for your culture.

Why black tea is best: Ange's house pour is plain black loose leaf — 2 tablespoons English Breakfast + 1 tablespoon Assam per gallon. English Breakfast is a blend of black teas (usually Assam plus a few others, no flavorings) that yields really good kombucha flavor, takes fruit beautifully in F2, and is affordable per pound. Her picks: organic English Breakfast or non-organic English Breakfast.* Black teas are also hardier — they handle the long steep kombucha needs (10–15 minutes loose; halve it for bags) without going bitter. Gotta have the green? Her favorites are organic gunpowder green and non-organic gunpowder green — if green alone tastes bland or vegetal, blend in some black.

Flavored and herbal teas: not for F1. Use only pure tea, with no flavorings, essences or oils — even "natural" ones can weaken your SCOBY over time. Herbal "teas" (mint, chamomile, rosehip) aren't tea at all — they're tisanes — and mostly don't carry the nutrients a culture needs. Read labels carefully: even common blends like Earl Grey contain bergamot flavoring that can degrade a SCOBY. There are exceptions experienced brewers play with (hibiscus, yerba mate, rooibos — alone or blended with black tea), and that's fine once you know the process and have backup SCOBYs. Ange's borrowed mantra from Picasso: "Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist." Keep F1 pure; flavor anything you like during F2.

Loose leaf vs. tea bags: Ange prefers loose leaf because it's better quality (bags often hold chopped-up dust that turns bitter in a long steep — quality tea should look like leaves, not dust, but hey, that may just be her), it's a better deal per pound, it's more environmentally friendly, and cheap bags can carry bleach or chemicals in the bag material that never appear on a label. Plenty of good bags exist though — if you've found one you like, do what you've gotta do for your bucha. Just cut the steeping time in half to avoid bitterness (and use 6–9 bags per gallon).

How much should good tea cost? Like wine, tea quality depends on region, farm, processing and shipping. Ange — a tea enthusiast with an actual tea-plant tattoo — brews kombucha with loose leaf in the $15–25/lb range. Pricier than that and the flavor gains stop being worth it: fermentation masks the nuanced, complex notes that make rare single-estate teas special. Those she saves to drink straight — fermenting them would be like adding sugar and fruit to a rare aged wine. Yikes. Curious how far quality takes you? Quality tea for kombucha → And yes, you can rotate different teas over the same SCOBY: here's how it plays out →

Tea nerd? Same. Visit Ange's Tea Corner for the loose-leaf and Gong Fu Cha rabbit hole.

Sugar: it's SCOBY food, not a health decision

Kombucha Basics: Sugar · Watch on YouTube

The best sugar for a consistent, healthy brew is cane sugar — which goes by a few names and forms that are all great for kombucha: table sugar, cane sugar, plain white sugar, raw sugar, evaporated cane sugar. Differently-processed cane sugars (brown, muscovado, demerara…) can affect your brew differently than the plain stuff. Use ¾ to 1 cup per gallon — remember who it's for: the culture eats most of it during fermentation.

Skip the substitutes. Your SCOBY feeds on cane sugar and needs it to do its job — give it something else and you risk starving, harming or weakening it over time. That means avoiding: artificial and alternate sweeteners (stevia, monk fruit, aspartame, Sweet'N Low, Splenda, Equal), honey — especially raw honey, whose bacteria can compete with your kombucha's (the honey video; honey belongs to jun, kombucha's cousin), maple syrup, molasses, coconut sugar, agave, and powdered sugar (it contains cornstarch). Experimenting is welcome once you have backup SCOBYs and starter tea — just know the risks first.

Cutting back on sugar? Real kombucha needs a certain amount to feed the culture — at least ¾ cup per gallon — and cutting it starves your SCOBY and stalls the ferment. The good news: a good amount of that sugar gets eaten during fermentation, and what remains has been broken down into fructose and glucose, which have a lower glycemic impact. To drink less sugar: ferment F1 longer (dryer, more tart), dilute with sparkling water (a great kombucha "mixer"), or simply pour smaller servings. For the health angle — including why Ange's Type II diabetic parents happily drink her brew — see how much kombucha should I drink?

Water: the easiest one to get right

Kombucha Basics: Water · Watch on YouTube

Lots of opinions out there; Ange's recommendation is to start with whatever water you like to drink.

• Filtered water — her personal preference, the most cost-effective route, and the "cleanest"-tasting brew. Any filtered water of your choice works beautifully: a counter-top filter you refill with tap water means clean brewing water on hand whenever you want it.
• Spring water — real spring water is a really good option; its minerals feed the ferment. (Beware: lots of bottled "spring water" is just repackaged city water.) The downside is buying bottles — not the most cost-effective or eco-friendly, but if you have it around, use it.
• Tap water — many brewers succeed with it, but it depends where you live. (Ange's LA tap batches always picked up a dirty, musty taste.) Most tap water contains chlorine, whose whole job is killing microbes — and your brew is microbes. Boil it ~15 minutes first, or let it sit in an open container for 24 hours so the chlorine dissipates. Experiment freely — with backup SCOBYs on hand.
• Distilled water — not recommended: it's essentially "dead water" with the minerals that help fermentation stripped out. Unnecessary at best, unhelpful at worst.

Pro tip: if you like big multi-gallon brew days, keep a few spare gallon jugs filled with filtered water — you'll always be ready to brew on a whim.

*On this page, you'll find some affiliate links to sources where Ange has purchased the ingredients she uses. She may get a small cut of Amazon's profit for finding + recommending them to you — it won't cost you any more than you'd normally pay. Feel free to purchase from wherever you like!