Home made kombucha (which is often called чайный гриб, pronounced: chaynyy grib) and store bought are two very different things. The diversity of live cultures, the numbers of culture forming units, as well as the presence of organic acids, can be far higher in home made.
Store bought can be pasturised (ie the beneficial microbes are dead), or filtered (removing some of the larger microbiota), and more often than not it is unripe and does not contain the full range of beneficial organic acids and other substances that kombucha can produce. While live microbes are likely beneficial, the organic acids are probably the healthiest part of kombucha. Store bought often is often higher in sugar, and can have various other additives that I don't want to drink.
The stuff you get in a can or bottle in the shops if often so under-ripe that it contains few organic acids, and has a low concentration of the few acids it does contain. The stuff from the shops would probably be better described as 'kombucha flavoured ice tea'.
While store bought probably isn't bad, comparing the two would be like comparing apple juice with apple flavoured sugary cordial. While not the greatest analogy, you get the idea.
Now that I've said not to compare them, I am going to do exactly that. I am going to compare home made kombucha with store bought kombucha. I am not comparing flavour, or health benefits, or presence of live cultures, or number of colony forming units, or presence of organic acids, or any other nutrient, I will be comparing the price of home made kombucha with the price of store bought kombucha.
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| Kombucha looks like a jellyfish in a jar |
My kids and I go through a lot of kombucha over summer, sometimes less and sometimes more over winter. I could not afford to buy kombucha flavoured drinks from the store, but can I can easily afford to make kombucha at home. Making kombucha at home is cheap, really cheap.
I make continuous brew kombucha. This is the easiest and safest method. I don't add any flavouring or do a second ferment because I like the taste of raw kombucha. Making kombucha is simple and it never goes wrong if you do it the traditional way. If you can boil water, you can make чайный гриб the traditional way.
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| Traditional continuous brew чайный гриб |
Price of store bought kombucha
The price of store bought kombucha is strangely a difficult thing to find. Most shops sell a weird and wonderful array of drinks with amazing sounding flavourings that may or may not taste like kombucha, and may only have a small percentage of kombucha in the final product. Some are high in sugar, others have non-sugar sweeteners added, some pasturise it and then add one species of probiotic of so they can claim it is a probiotic drink. I assume store bought kombucha are similar to the wonderful array of ice tea that is sold in supermarkets. They are expensive, and some sound utterly delicious, but I have never tried them.
I looked around and the price of supermarket kombucha varies wildly. I considered trying to find raw kombucha and comparing those prices, but raw unflavoured kombucha is difficult to find and seems to often cost more than the flavoured kinds. I think the most sensible way to compare prices is if I found a few places that sell kombucha, and then listed their cheapest variety (whether it was flavoured or not). I decided to use the cheapest unit price as this is most easily comparable even when they have different size bottles or cans.
The cheapest I could find in Coles was $6.35 per litre. The cheapest I could find in Woolworths was $8.80 per litre. The cheapest I could find in Harris Farm Market is $15.12 per liter. If we average out the two lowest ones (and ignore the higher one), this gives a rough idea of the price per litre of about $7.57 per litre.
It is noteworthy that there were plenty of places selling kombucha flavoured drinks for a lot higher prices than these. Some of the micro breweries charged prices so high that they make me consider quitting my day job and becoming a full time kombucha maker. But I digress.
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| Kombucha biofilm looks unappetising |
Price of home made kombucha
I make continuous brew kombucha. For me it costs under $0.15 per litre.
Given the price at the supermarket is around 50 times more expensive, the cost of making it at home seems so low that it seems hard to believe. I will break down the cost below so you can see I am not making this sound cheaper than it really is. If anything I am rounding up.
I make continuous brew kombucha, I have this in a glass jar with a line that I drew on the jar. We drink чайный гриб, once the liquid drops to the line on the side of my jar I add 2 litres of cool sweetened tea. It is very simple, the time and effort needed per batch is negligible.
Let's add these costs up so you can see the the total comes in slightly under 15 cents per litre.
I use 1/2 cup white sugar (about 110 grams) which costs ~14 cents to make 2 litres of kombucha, or just over 7 cents per litre.
Tea bags costs about 2 cents per bag, I use 2 or 3 teabags to make 2 litres of kombucha, or about 3 cents per litre.
Cost of electricity to boil kettle 5-6 cents for a 2 litre kettle, or about 3 cents per litre.
Total: Around 26 cents per 2 litre batch of sweet tea, or around 13 cents per litre of kombucha.
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| чайный гриб is very cheap to make at home |
There are some one off costs that are not factored in above. You likely already own a kettle and a measuring cup so I won't go into the price of buying new ones. Perhaps you want to buy a jar with a tap?
You don't need thermometers, you don't need heaters or a warm spot in your house, you don't need special sterilisation equipment, you don't need pH test kits. I never use any of these things, and I never had a batch that failed. Remember, countless generations of people brewed kombucha in Siberia without issue and they certainly didn't have comfortably warm houses, or (until the 1950s or 1960s) electricity, or use anything fancy.
I found an 8L jar with tap at Target or Kmart $24. Perhaps you prefer the 8.7L glass jar about $40 from Bunnings or a set of 2 for about $30 each. You could probably find something cheaper online, or you may be lucky enough to buy one from a garage sale.
Traditionally, no one had a jar with a tap so babushkas would ladle kombucha out of the jar and give it to members of the household to drink. Perhaps you already have a large jar that lacks a tap, and can just buy a ladle to get the liquid out, in which case this would be even cheaper.
Another one off cost is the kombucha scoby/culture. Some people use supermarket kombucha to begin their scoby, this often results in weak scoby with low diversity of microorganisms and needs to be carefully looked after to prevent mould and contaminate issues.
Perhaps you can find someone who will give you a scoby, or maybe you need to buy one online. If you need to buy some, it should not be expensive. Plenty of places online sell them for around $20, even though this is a once off cost, don't pay more than that.
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| My little monster in a jar |
As mentioned above, I normally make чайный гриб in a large jar that has a tap. I also make small jar batches as back up cultures in case my large jar breaks or gets knocked over or something. I sometimes sell kombucha scoby (which is living in the pellicle with some starter tea) through my for sale page. The scoby I sell is from these smaller batches, it has one (or more) biofilm that is about 10cm across and about a cup of starter liquid. This is more than enough to make 2 litres of kombucha. Once you have the scoby/culture you can keep it going indefinitely.
If you like kombucha, it is well worth making some at home. Making kombucha at home takes next to no time or effort, and is so easy it is difficult for anything to go wrong. Given how cheap it is to make at home, even if you need to buy a scoby and a jar it only takes a few liters until you are well and truly ahead financially, plus you have control over the ingredients that are added.
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