As I walk around our garden at night, I take in the sweet heavenly smell of honeysuckle and see the bright white elder flowers blowing in the wind. This means one thing: summer is here! 

It also means it’s time to add some flavours to my kombucha. Kombucha is fermented tea, which enables you to brew your own probiotics at home. It’s even better when it’s made from the environment in which you live, as there’s nothing better than balancing your internal bacteria with the bacteria in your external environment. If you are new to the land of kombucha, then you can check out my video all about kombucha below:

Once you have brewed your kombucha, you can either drink it straight away or use it to complete another ferment and add in extra flavours. Throughout the year, I use different flavours depending on what our garden and land has to offer. My personal favourites are elderflower in early summer, blackcurrant and blueberry as we approach mid-summer and blackberry during late summer.

To double ferment it’s very simple. I fill a bottle halfway with kombucha and then add the berries or flowers, poking them in with a chopstick to get them fully inside. I then put a lid on the bottle and tip it gently upside down to allow the extra ingredients to mix in. I then place it away from direct sunlight and at room temperature to ferment for an additional three to five days, depending on the heat and ingredients. The general rule is the sweeter the ingredients and/or the hotter the day, the shorter the time needed. Each day I ‘burp’ the bottles by unsealing the lid and then resealing to release the build up of gas. After day three, I taste the mixture each day until it has the flavour I want. If, by any chance, you forget about it and it starts to taste too acidic and vinegary, then you can try to revive it by adding a teaspoon of sugar and leaving it another twenty-four to forty eight hours. There’s no exact science to this, as it depends on the flavour and the temperature of your house. The main thing is to test taste, experiment and have fun.

I’d love to know what kombucha flavours you’ve been experimenting with. Let me know your fav in the comments below. And don’t forget, if you’ve enjoyed this blog post and the videos then share them with your besties, friends and family.

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