Everything You Need to Get Started with a Continuous Brewing Kombucha System

My family started brewing kombucha at home about five years ago. We had decided that we wanted something to give us a boost to our gut health. It's packed full of probiotics to help increase the good bacterial in your gut. This in turn helps with digestion, and will improve your gut health.

Initially we I brewed it it small batches. Usually I brewed it in gallon jars, sometimes in half gallon jars. It just depends on how much I thought I would be drinking. Mainly it was just me drinking it, so it wasn't a big deal do do small batches. As the kids grew older, and my husband decided he wanted to start drinking it too, it became more of burden to do gallon sized batches. As the kids grew I realized I had been brewing 3-4 gallons brewing a week and it still wasn't enough!

After a lot of research I decided that I wanted to try continuous brewing of my kombucha. Continuous brewing kombucha is very similar to small bath brewing. It's the same process of adding sweet tea to your scoby (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast), but you add sweet tea whenever the vessel gets about half full. It ferments quicker due to more yeast being in the vessel, so you generally can drink it almost every day.

First I needed to order a few items, so that I could be successful.

The first think I wanted to order was a 2 gallon beverage dispenser with a stand. (the stand was very important to us because I wanted my kids to be able to easily serve themselves) I also purchased a stainless steel replacement spigot.

I decided I wanted an idea of the temperature of my brew (if it's too warm or cold it will die), so I settled on these temperature strips. My kitchen gets on the cold side in the Winter, so I decided to buy a small strand of Christmas lights to help keep it at temperature. Instead of the lights you may also consider a fermenting mat if your house also gets on the cool side.

In hindsight, I wish I had purchased a larger one because we go through it faster than expected. You can do continuous brewing in vessels that are 2-5 gallons. As a family of 4 I thought we would be fine with a two gallon vessel. I probably should have purchased a three gallon vessel. So when deciding on what size to buy consider your family size, and how much you expect them to consume.

In my this post I write out my recipe for the concentrate I use to easily refill my brewing vessel.