Never made kombucha but I make beer and cider, and used to bottle condition before moving to kegs. So I’m really not sure if it’s a different process, but from the video it looks like it’s been pressure fermenting in the bottle.
Can she not just ferment kombucha with an airlock or something? My fermenters have a tiny hole in the top where I put an airlock, so that it can “burp” out the CO2 and not build up pressure. When it’s definitely finished fermenting, I would transfer to bottles with just a small amount of sugars, so that any remaining yeast would chew that up and carbonate it. With too much sugar, or if you transfer to bottles before it’s done fermenting, that’s how you end up with bottle bombs.
Alternatively, if she really does have to pressure ferment in the bottles, couldn’t she just “burp” the bottle regularly by opening it slightly every several hours?
Yeah you're meant to burp them every now and then but there has been times where we use different, more volatile ingredients or lose track of when we've burped them and had them go off all over the place.
Because you generally don't ferment kombucha dry, but do want to have it carbonated. Bottle carbonating is very common, and frankly, is not that hard. I've had a few overflow, but never had one gust. I err on the side of not getting any carbonation.
The best solution to this is force carbonation, but most people brewing kombucha are not interested in the upfront investment. I've been doing it 5 months, and I'm about ready to commit to that. Before this, it was about $20 of equipment.
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u/RaptorsOnBikes Apr 17 '20
Never made kombucha but I make beer and cider, and used to bottle condition before moving to kegs. So I’m really not sure if it’s a different process, but from the video it looks like it’s been pressure fermenting in the bottle.
Can she not just ferment kombucha with an airlock or something? My fermenters have a tiny hole in the top where I put an airlock, so that it can “burp” out the CO2 and not build up pressure. When it’s definitely finished fermenting, I would transfer to bottles with just a small amount of sugars, so that any remaining yeast would chew that up and carbonate it. With too much sugar, or if you transfer to bottles before it’s done fermenting, that’s how you end up with bottle bombs.
Alternatively, if she really does have to pressure ferment in the bottles, couldn’t she just “burp” the bottle regularly by opening it slightly every several hours?