How the kombucha batch planner works
Kombucha is sweet tea fermented by a culture, and it scales cleanly with batch size. Pick a common batch like a quart or a gallon, choose your tea and starter percentage, and the planner lays out the whole recipe: water, tea bags, sugar, starter liquid, SCOBY, bottle count, fermentation time, and temperature. It is built to answer the real question, which is everything you need before turning a corner of the kitchen into a fermentation station.
Kombucha recipe chart
These are standard amounts at roughly two tea bags and 50 grams of sugar per quart, the sweet spot most brewers use. Scale up or down for your jar.
| Batch size | Tea bags | Sugar | Starter (10%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 quart | 2 bags | 50 g | about 0.4 cup |
| 1 gallon | 8 bags | 200 g | about 1.6 cups |
| 2 gallons | 16 bags | 400 g | about 3.2 cups |
| 5 gallons | 40 bags | 1000 g | about 8 cups |
First fermentation guide
Brew the tea, stir in the sugar until dissolved, and cool it to room temperature before adding the SCOBY and starter liquid, since heat can damage the culture. Use about 10 to 20 percent starter to keep the brew safely acidic. Cover the jar with a tight weave cloth, keep it at 75 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit out of direct sun, and leave it undisturbed. First fermentation usually runs 7 to 14 days, tasting tart and less sweet as it finishes.
Second fermentation and flavoring
Once the brew is pleasantly tart, bottle it to carbonate and flavor. For a fizzy second ferment, add a little fruit, juice, or puree to each bottle, seal it, and leave it at room temperature for 3 to 7 days so the remaining sugar builds carbonation. A rough guide is 10 to 15 percent juice or a couple of tablespoons of fruit per bottle. Use our second ferment calculator to size flavoring for a whole batch, and always keep some plain kombucha back as starter for your next round.
Fermentation timeline and temperature
A typical cycle looks like day one brew and pitch, a first taste around day seven, and bottling around day ten to fourteen. Warmth speeds things up and cold slows them down, so the sweet spot is 75 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit, or 24 to 27 Celsius. Below about 68 the culture struggles, and too hot can produce off flavors. The finished drink should smell tart and clean; discard any batch that looks fuzzy or smells wrong, and start fresh with more starter.
Frequently asked questions
How much sugar for kombucha? About 50 grams per quart, so roughly 200 grams for a 1 gallon batch. The culture eats most of it during fermentation.
How much starter tea do I need? Around 10 to 20 percent of the batch volume, so about 1 to 2 cups per gallon, taken from a previous brew.
How long should kombucha ferment? Usually 7 to 14 days for the first ferment, then 3 to 7 days in the bottle for a flavored, fizzy second ferment.
How many bottles does a batch make? A 1 gallon batch fills about eight 16 ounce bottles, before you set aside starter for the next batch.
Related calculators: Kombucha Second Ferment, Tea Steeping, Fermentation Sugar, Drink Batch, Water Intake.