It’s that time of the year, again! Food season! Time to whip out your holiday thinking caps and experiment with the flavors of the season.

I love how the end of the year is so focused on food. Not just any food, but specific flavors that instantly open books of nostalgia, transporting your brain to moments of comfort and coziness from years past.

Today I’m talking cranberry and cinnamon. These two together transport me instantly to the best day of the year–Thanksgiving. Can’t every day just be Thanksgiving! :D …Every other day?!

Cranberries are delightfully tart, like little baby sour apples. That similarity might be why cinnamon pairs so well with cranberries as it does with apples. With the cranberries, you get a little more zing, however.

I like to add a little bit of lime juice to the mix. Limes are a great flavor smoother and add another layer of sweet tartness. In this case, I also add a little bit of sugar. If you want your kombucha to get nice and fizzy, you’ll want to add a little bit of sugar here as well. Depending on how long you let your primary ferment go when you bottle, there may be little to no sugar left for the yeast. The yeast needs the sugar to produce CO2 and thus fizzy kombucha! Being that there’s not a ton of sugar in cranberries, adding just a pinch of sugar when you bottle will do the trick.

A delicious, cold, glass of bubbly cranberry and cinnamon kombucha is a great way to start your morning off right. And fulfill your Thanksgiving cravings. Let’s get into how you can make it at home.

This recipe is for the secondary fermentation stage of your kombucha.

By this time, your kombucha should have fermented 7-14 days, to where it tastes slightly tart and only slightly sweet.

You can either brew traditional kombucha, how to brew kombucha or jun kombucha, how to brew jun kombucha. Traditional kombucha is going to yield a bolder brew, while Jun kombucha is milder.

One gallon of kombucha will yield about 6 or 7, 16 oz bottles. The bottles should be airtight in order to capture carbonation. Our kombucha bottling kit works great. You can also use these airtight widemouth mason jar lids.

Cinnamon Cranberry Kombucha Recipe

Kombucha Secondary Recipe

For each 16 oz bottle, you’ll need:

• 8-10 cranberries, quartered
• One cinnamon stick
• 1/8 tsp brown sugar (can sugar works, too)
• Juice of 1/2 lime (optional)

1. With clean hands, remove the SCOBY from your brew jar and place it in a clean container. Measure out one to two cups of kombucha and add it to the container with the SCOBY. This is the starter tea for your next brew.
2. Take your clean 16 oz bottles and place them in the sink.
3. Add the cranberries, cinnamon sticks, and sugar to each bottle. Swirl slightly to incorporate sugar with the cranberries. The sugar is only there to reactivate the yeast, so they produce a lot of C02 in a short amount of time. You can omit the sugar here but understand that your kombucha might not get super bubbly.
4. Using a funnel, squeeze half of a lime into each bottle. This is optional, but it adds an element of brightness to round out the flavors.
5. Using a funnel, slowly pour kombucha from the brew jar into the bottles, leaving about one inch of headspace from the top of each bottle. The kombucha may foam up with the puree, so just go slowly and let it settle in between. Leave about 2 cups of kombucha in the jar with the SCOBY for the next brew.
6. Tightly place the caps on each bottle.
7. Keep bottles at room temperature for 1-3 days, depending on temperature.
8. Once per day, you’ll want to “burp” the bottles by removing the cap to allow built-up pressure to escape and place the cap back on. As soon as you put the cap back on, the carbonation will begin to build back up, so no worries about it getting flat. Try not to skip this, or you will have kombucha all over your face and your kitchen when you do go to open it.
9. When you are happy with the flavor and fizziness of your kombucha (1-3 days), place bottles in the fridge to chill and halt the fermentation.

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