5. Total brew time should be around 2:30–3:30 minutes.
This is a guide Oskar found on internet and Tzeyu finds useful. We sometimes adjust the brewing time when we want to achieve different tastes. For example, for coffee beans that taste bitter, we reduce the brewing time to 2 minutes.
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## Kombucha
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### First fermentation (F1)
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You need: black or green tea leaves/bags, sugar, water, a glass vessel, a breathable sheet (kitchen paper towel or a cheese cloth), a rubber band that fits the opening of the glass vessel
Cool down the sweet tea to room temperature before adding mother tea into it. Cover glass vessel with a breathable sheet and secure it with a rubber band. The kombucha should be able to make contact with the air to ferment, but protected from flies or dust.
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Place it at the corner of your room, it will ferment in the room temperature. Wait for 10 days and your first fermentation is done! In this 10 days, a layer of pellicle form on the kombucha's surface.
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Drink it directly (we like it with ice), move to second fermentation, or use this as mother tea to ferment another batch of F1 kombucha.
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Store it in the fridge to slow down the ferment process, but it will still be fermenting (getting more sour) slowly if you don't consume it.
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You can adjust the ratio and fermentation time and experiment the outcome.
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Tzeyu likes her Kombucha made from green tea and prefers less sugar during F1 so that the kombucha tastes refreshing.
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Oskar likes to ferment the kombucha longer to reach a sour-sweet strong taste.
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### Second fermentation (F2)
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If you want to add some flavourings and make your kombucha gassy, you need a second fermentation.
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You need: Glass vessel with a cap. Chopped fruits/ fruit juice or puree/herbs. Sugar.
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Add your preferred flavourings and F1 kombucha into a glass vessel. Fill the vessel as full as possible and seal the opening tight so that the gas produced during the fermentation will go back to kombucha, instead of escaping to the air. Add more sugar if you want to make it fizzier. Keep it for 1-5 days in room temperature. The longer you keep, the fizzier and more sour the kombucha will be.
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Tzeyu's favourite flavours: Basil, Watermelon with lemon, strawberry
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We hosted a [kombucha party](https://duriantruck.com/Parties/2026-04-04) and asked our friends to rank their favourite flavours we made. Check them out!
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### How it works?
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Kombucha is made from or IS (Tzeyu thinks) SCOBY: Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast.
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The yeast eats sugar, release carbon dioxide (the fiz in kombucha) and alcohol, and the bacteria turns the alcohol into vinegar (the sourness). Alcohol is broke down in this cycle, but usually you can still find 0.5%-2.5% of alcohol left in kombucha.