Guest guest Posted March 20, 2006 Report Share Posted March 20, 2006 I wanted to share with you my experience with my new large 2 1/2-gallon containers. A while back one of the members on this board told me about these containers so I purchased them at Wal-Mart. They are beautiful large glass candy jars and were on sale for 10 bucks, so I bought three jars at the time. As I posted I try to let my brew set long enough to sour completely so as to use all the sugar. However, once I set out to make sour brew it seems like every batch I made was turning up too sour even the batches I was not intending to make sour at all and no matter what I did, the brew was too sour. My family was pretty vocal about the fact they did not want to be drinking vinegar all the time, and they were missing their cider tasting KT. But I noticed when trying to make a sweeter brew I was just not getting it right. Either the brew was too sweet without enough fermentation or it was really sour after only 4 or 5 days fermenting. I was about to toss the lot out and start over thinking it was the culture's strain and there just was nothing I could do to change the taste when I read an article online at http://www.bluemarble.de/Norbert/kombucha/Oxygen/oxygen.htm It stated that more room in the container could make the brew sourer because it is the yeast that needs the oxygen to ferment. So using the tips on the " Kombucha Balance " website to take tea from the top (and this time I only used about a cup and half of starter to the entire jar) and the tip of reducing the amount of airspace at the top of the container from the " Bluemarble " website, I finally got a beautifully tart but not too sour brew this week in my large 2 1/2 gallon containers. The container took a full 9 days to ferment. I think someone on the list mentioned that the larger containers ferment faster, but my experience has not shown this to be the case. My family is thrilled that I have plenty of pleasantly tart tasting KT again. Also I am experimenting with continual brewing in one of the containers, I cannot wait to see the results with it. Right now the only complaint I have is the jars are REALLY heavy when filled so high. I am on the lookout for some plastic tubing so I can decant from the tubing using a siphon method with a large syringe. Kellie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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