Kombucha Vinegar

I was looking to see if other people are writing about Kombucha vinegar and I didn't see a post...so I thought I would start a thread!

How often do we let our kombucha go too long and end up with something too sour to drink?  I started turning these batches into vinegar.  I am so excited that I no longer need to spend money on expensive organic apple cider vinegar!  Kombucha vinegar is wonderful and just as healthy.  I use it the same way I would use apple cider vinegar in my kitchen, for its health benefits and cooking applications.  I can make the vinegar as strong or sweet as I like.  I keep a less acidic version for my salad dressings and more acidic versions for cooking and baking.

I put kombucha vinegar in the water containers for my chickens for their gut health.  I get comments all the time that people can't believe how beautiful my chickens are and how great their feathers look.  The only thing I am doing differently is giving them kombucha vinegar.  

I dry out the excess scobies for my dogs and chickens to chew on.

Here is my question for y'all.  I would love to use kombucha vinegar for disinfection and cleaning.  Does anyone know how to turn kombucha vinegar into a powerful disinfectant like distilled white vinegar?

Hi Jen,
I have had quite a few batches go vinegar. But depending on the tea I used I didn't really want to use it for the kitchen, didn't really like the taste.
Also mine is definitely weaker than "normal" vinegar, less acidic. I think I remember reading that too, but forgot where.

I make scoby jerky from the excess scobies, flavored salty and spicy. I don't think my cats would like it...

I had the same idea with the cleaning, and then read that it has less acid than normal vinegar. To make it as strong as distilled vinegar, you would probably have to distill it.

I tolerate sour more than a lot of people do, but when mine does finally go too sour, I just dilute it with seltzer or tea or juice and drink it like that.

I wonder if you can just evaporate the water out of it to increase the acid concentration. Try a hot dehydrator or a very low stove burner and see what you get. And also, I wonder if you need to. Have you tried cleaning with it as it is?

Hi Christopher,
mixing with seltzer is a good way to use it. I agree.

As to your drying/boiling idea: the acid evaporates before the water. i think the boiling point is even lower then alcohol. So boiling it will actually result in having less acidity.

Benjamin Dinkel wrote:Hi Jen,
...didn't really want to use it for the kitchen, didn't really like the taste.
Also mine is definitely weaker than "normal" vinegar, less acidic.  

This is also true for me. I would love to hear about how you tweaked the taste to make it drinkable or usable for cooking. We go through a lot of ACV and it's gotten quite expensive, I'd love a better solution.
I used my booch vinegar as a hair/scalp rinse for a while but the folks I live with threw such a fit about it stinking up the house that I don't dare repeat. I will add my booch is tasty and they both drink it happily, but when it's been overbrewed it is VERY smelly. And they're used to me cleaning with white vinegar, this is way beyond.

Benjamin Dinkel wrote:the acid evaporates before the water. i think the boiling point is even lower then alcohol. So boiling it will actually result in having less acidity.

I think the principal acid in kombucha is acetic and Wikipedia tells me the boiling point is 118-119 C. So it seems like gentle heating should drive water off faster than the acid, but I don't have the chemistry background to know if there's something that makes it more complicated than this.

Hi Christopher, that's interesting. I guess then it should work...

What a great idea! I'll be trying the chicken water tip.
I'm trying to make little strips of candied scoby, it tastes ok but is still sticky after a week. I dried the strips first and then layered them in sugar....... anyone trued this got any tips?
Thanks
Mary

To make stronger vinegar, start with higher concentrations of sugar.

During the initial fermentation, half of the sugar is converted to alcohol. Then the alcohol is converted to vinegar.

So starting with 20% sugar would yield ~10% alcohol, and eventually, ~10% vinegar.

Kombucha typically starts with around 6% sugar, so you'd end up with a ~3% vinegar solution.

Wait, people actually eat their scoby?  

My scoby is an absolute monster, looks very healthy and the larger it is, the less time it takes for my kombucha to ferment so I have not changed it out - is this bad?  

About cleaning with it, the question that comes to mind is would the tea vinegar leave a stain on what you are cleaning?  

I have eaten kombucha scoby. It's not something that I want to put in my mouth again... Nothing bad about it. Just doesn't seem like food.

Lynne Cim wrote:Wait, people actually eat their scoby?  

My scoby is an absolute monster, looks very healthy and the larger it is, the less time it takes for my kombucha to ferment so I have not changed it out - is this bad?

Sure I eat my scobys.  Super nutritious.  I don't just chow down on them out of hand - though the scopy jerky concept mentioned above sounds intriguing - but I do keep excess scobys in the fridge and throw one into a fruit smoothie.

And there is nothing bad about not changing out your scoby.  That is the beauty of kombucha: you can keep the same culture alive for many, many batches.  But of course they do multiply.  Sometimes you can easily see a new scoby distinct from your original, and then remove one or the other for the next batch.  Other times the original scoby just adds layers until it is thick as a hockey puck.  In that case, I just cut it into smaller chunks to start the next batch.  Either way, you end up with a constant supply of excess scoby to give away, expand the volume of your combucha enterprise, or squirrel away for some other usage.

I made sourdough starter with kombucha.  😊

As for higher pH, I am with Joseph, start with more sugar, or honey or what ever you ferment for kombucha.

When I make vinegar, I ferment to alcohol, then add vinegar mother for secondary ferment to vinegar.  Ferment any sugar rich juice or solution.  I have never done it but you could make grain alcohol and take that to vinegar.

I seldom put tea in mine, the various varietal honeys bring wonderful flavors .  Currently I am using rabbit brush honey, flavor is reminiscent of butterscotch.  

You could mix past prime kombucha with industrial white vinegar to lower the pH, but seems like some of the complex molecules generated by kombucha as it ages are the ones that are really good for you.  Has anyone else heard that?  I think I would take any that got that strong and dilute it and drink it.  Or salad dressing.

I don’t have a scoby.  I like it fizzy, so I cap the vessel which keeps air out, and somehow that prevents the growth or formation of the scoby.  I wonder what I am getting more of, or what the scoby is composed of (at a molecular level.)

The whole making your own kombucha sounds fun, but then I learned about kombucha worms that can be cultured accidentally when fermenting kombucha.

Not wanting to take this chance, I simply purchase my kombucha.  

William Wallace wrote:Tkombucha worms  

I understand there are also vinegar worms (eels? i forget). I would be interested to know how frequently they appear. I've been making kombucha for aaaages and never seen a worm in real life. Maybe it's time to make a survey.

Combucha is a very healthy drink, special for the intestine.

But be careful when make it, you need to be clinical clean to prevent
contamination's, it can then make you very sick.

I presume you now this already, but I want to have it said.

regards.

Tereza Okava wrote:

William Wallace wrote:Tkombucha worms  

I understand there are also vinegar worms (eels? i forget). I would be interested to know how frequently they appear. I've been making kombucha for aaaages and never seen a worm in real life. Maybe it's time to make a survey.

Have never seen a kombucha worm in real life, but the thought of them was enough to dissuade me from that type of fermentation.

I went searching for more information about vinegar worms and kombucha worms. If they are dangerous, we all need to know.

Cultures for health is a business maybe some permies are already familiar with.  They sell every kind of starter you could imagine: yogurt, kefir, sourdough, kombucha, probably cheese cultures.  They are a wealth of information.  How to and troubleshooting etc,

They have a nice article on these worms we’re talking about, which are nematodes. They are probably the same one. They’re not dangerous is the conclusion I came to.

https://culturesforhealth.com/blogs/learn/kombucha-kombucha-vinegar-eels

A simple way of raising the acidity is to put the vinegar into a plastic bottle and freeze it. Then open the bottle, put it heads down into another container and let it melt at room temperature. The water will freeze earlier and needs longer to liquify again. You will see that a typical ice crystal core stays longest in the bottle, and all vinegar flows down into the second container. When all or most of the colour is gone from the plastic bottle, take it away. The liquid in the lower container is more acidic than what you've started with.
And as stated above, in addition or alternatively you can heat it mildly. The water will evaporate before the vinegar.

A more elaborate way which will also lead to more acidic vinegar is distillation. The water evaporates and goes over first, so you'll change the receiving vessel after 1/4th of the liquid has been distilled. The second and third receiver will each be more acidic, and the final rest in your still will be the most acidic. You can reach pH of around 3-4 in the third receiver. If that's not enough, distill the result again.

Please take care: after any of the above steps you'll have more or less vinegar essence. Do not apply to the skin directly, and definitely do not take internally. Also, undiluted it might bleach all kinds of surfaces, clothes etc.

I did similar research after someone mentioned the nematodes, and they do appear to be completely harmless.

I must admit that I allowed this to skew my perspective about kombucha, although I am still a bit weirded out by it.

I also noticed that the exact species of vinegar eels are sold as a culture, although I am not sure what use they are for..... I would assume that they would be considered beneficial nematodes, and might be useful to innovulate a garden with.

The question now in my mind is if kombucha would be a easy culture medium to grow these vinegar eels, because it is said that they feed on the fermentation mother.  If this is the case, then these wigglers might deminish some of the health benefits of kombucha.  Isn't it the mother that is the source of most beneficial compounds from kombucha?

I am far from a kombucha expert, and so I look forward to someone with more experience weighing in.

I am also not an expert.

Because I brew without the mother, I find it difficult to believe the mother itself is the origin of beneficial compounds.  The microbes are in the liquid, don’t instructions all say use some fluid as well as the mother?  

It is the organisms’ life processes (metabolizing sugar molecules and reproducing themselves that generate the beneficial compounds … it’s their waste products we drink (same as wine and vinegar and so on).

I think the mother, in addition to being habitat for the organisms in the fluid, cover the surface.  I have always thought that the mother protected the fluid beneath from constant contamination and inoculation by organisms in the air that drift gently down onto all surfaces.

"Regardless of the initial substrate composition, the starter culture itself provides the main microbial inoculum into the solution"

Pretty interesting article, but does the above quote suggest the mother is the starter?


https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6730531/

William Wallace wrote:"Regardless of the initial substrate composition, the starter culture itself provides the main microbial inoculum into the solution"

Pretty interesting article, but does the above quote suggest the mother is the starter?


https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6730531/

Great article, answering many questions which previously I had only conjecture to answer.

I do not read the article to say that the mother is the starter.  Looks to me like the article says the mother is composed of cellulose created by bacteria converting sugar to cellulose, and microbes are embedded in the cellulose.  I always wondered what the mother is and where it came from!  So happy to have that cleared up for me.  

I was worried that we might be taking this thread off topic.  Looks like the topic is “kombucha vinegar”.  My logic says we are still on topic, but I didn’t start the thread, so I am checking in, do we need to make a new thread on the topic of kombucha microbiology or something similar?

This is apple blackberry juice left with the kombucha Scobie until there is no fructose left.  The spigot allows me to drain it into small bottles for convenience to have a strong dose of acid for my stomach.

I do give my extra scobies to the chickens - they love it! I slice it into earthworm-sized strips and they fight over them and chase each other around trying to get the best ones.

I use my kombucha vinegar as an after-shampoo hair rinse instead of ACV.  It refreshes my hair and seems to nourish it.  It doesn't leave a smell, but I add essential oils to it when I use it.

William Wallace wrote:"Regardless of the initial substrate composition, the starter culture itself provides the main microbial inoculum into the solution"

Pretty interesting article, but does the above quote suggest the mother is the starter?


https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6730531/

Living in a kombucha community sounds lovely.🥰 Can I be kombucha? 🥹🥰🤣

As to OP’s question, I add overly sour kombucha to soups and stews, usually add a splash to pies (I make a lot of rhubarb pie this time of year especially!) and baked goods, and to anything that I think needs a hint of sour - like liver pate or pesto.

My chickens love the SCOBY when I chop it up for them.