Here Are the Best Kits for Making Your Own Kombucha at Home

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When you’ve mastered sourdough, beer, and countertop pickles and you’re ready to broaden your at-home fermentation skills, it might be time to invest in a kombucha starter kit. Instead of spending money buying bottles of brew at the store, you can simply make your own right from your own kitchen.

Kombucha, which is a flavored fermented tea, is both delicious and thought to aid digestion, and has recently grown to Goop-level trendiness. And, yes, you can make it at home, so long as you have all the right ingredients and tools. Fortunately, you can buy a simple kombucha kit to make the process much easier.

What Are the Best Kombucha Starter Kits?

Making your own kombucha is really all about the starter, which you can either make at home or order as part of your kit. Here is everything you should look for when buying a kit.

Kombucha Starter/SCOBY: A kombucha starter, called a scoby (which means symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast), is like your sourdough starter’s sibling. It’s a slightly flat, round, rubber-like substance that provides the bacteria and yeast that gives kombucha its signature tang and effervescence.

Quality of Ingredients: While the scoby is the most important element, your kombucha kit will also come with the rest of the necessary ingredients, including loose-leaf tea and sugar that you’ll brew before adding the scoby. We especially like organic ingredients and a wide selection of tea varietals and flavors.

Included Instructions or Manual: To avoid accidents and chemistry mishaps, you’ll need a clear, quality instruction guide that walks you through every step. Complete kits take out a lot of the detective work of scouring YouTube videos and guides, and help cut down on any mistakes.

Brewing Vessels & Bottles: Another benefit of buying a kit rather than starting from scratch is that they will often come with the proper brewing vessels and bottles rather than using your own from your kitchen or searching for the right-sized containers.