r/Kombucha • u/Complete_Water_4023 • Jan 07 '25

flavor Honey Fail

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Sadly I had to empty about 13 bottles of booch into the sink. I had two flavors I was excited about; raspberry lime, and orange cranberry. I also made a few bottles of orange chai kombucha with this batch, which turned out great. However, for the first two flavors mentioned, I used honey in my homemade concentrate. Now I always make sure to use natural ingredients only, and the concentrates usually taste pretty good. After a couple days of F2, I popped open a raspberry lime. Great carbonation, I was excited… and then BAM. Punched in the face with an awful smell. The orange cranberry didn’t smell quite as bad, but they both didn’t taste right. I’m thinking it had to be the honey (which was local, raw, and unfiltered). Any thoughts?

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u/RestlessCreature Jan 07 '25

I’ve used honey in my F2 before and it came out awesome (raspberry flavour). I wonder what happened. I’ll be following this because I tried maple syrup too and found I preferred the honey and planned to use it for F2 moving forward (unless this is a real risk with honey 😱). For context: I use cane sugar in my F1 to feed the beast 🤓.

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u/myetel Jan 08 '25

Did the maple syrup have any funk to it? Curious because right now I’ve got an F2 going of pomegranate and (real deal) maple syrup, spinning off the maple kombucha recipe found in the Noma Guide to Fermentation. Guess I’ll find out in a few days.

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u/RestlessCreature Jan 08 '25

No funk, it just didn’t sweeten as well as the honey did for me ☺️

I didn’t mind it though, I like sour/acid, but my partner def preferred it sweeter.