Cranberry Cinnamon Kombucha Recipe
A taste that instantly transports you to the holiday season
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.
PRIMARY VS SECONDARY FERMENTATION
- Primary Fermentation: The primary fermentation is the first step of the kombucha brewing process. This is where your SCOBY transforms regular sweet tea into the tart and slightly sweet kombucha we love. At the end of this stage, you will have finished kombucha, but it will be flat and unflavored. Have you skipped this step? Then check out our guide on making kombucha at home or our guide on making jun kombucha at home. Traditional kombucha is going to yield a bolder brew, while jun kombucha is milder and a bit more tart.
- Secondary Fermentation: The secondary fermentation is the step where you bottle, carbonate, and flavor your kombucha by the addition of sugar and flavors. This step is essentially adding a bit of sugar/flavor to each airtight bottle and letting it ferment a little longer, allowing the yeast to carbonate the beverage in an airtight environment naturally. How exactly does this happen? See our post on kombucha secondary fermentation here.
Since this recipe is for the secondary fermentation, to make this recipe, you’ll need to have kombucha that has finished the primary fermentation and ready to bottle.
INGREDIENTS
- Kombucha: You need kombucha that has completed primary fermentation and is ready to bottle and flavor.
- Cranberries: The main tart ingredient of this drink.
- Cinnamon Stick: A sweet woody flavor.
- Brown Sugar: A strong caramel flavor.
- Lime Juice: This is an optional ingredient.
SECONDARY FERMENTATION PREPARATION
This recipe makes one 16 fluid ounce bottle. For a 1-gallon batch, make 7 16 ounce bottles of kombucha or times the ingredients by 7. Before beginning this recipe, you will want to:
- Reserve 12 – 16 fluid ounces of kombucha and your pellicle from your completed primary fermentation and set aside. It’s best to pour from the top of the brew jar as the bottom will have a much higher yeast concentration. You will use this as your starter for your next gallon batch of kombucha.
- With your kombucha starter tea and SCOBY placed aside, you will now have enough kombucha left to make seven 16 oz bottles. These bottles are the most popular as they are considered the best bottles for kombucha secondary fermentation, but any other airtight bottles made for carbonation will work.
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Cranberry Cinnamon Kombucha Recipe
Course: Kombucha, Kombucha Recipe, Cranberry Cinnamon, Cranberry Cinnamon KombuchaCuisine: KombuchaDifficulty: Easy
1
Bottles
10
minutes
1-3 Days
This Cranberry Cinnamon recipe is for one 16 fluid ounce bottle. For a quart batch, make two bottles. To scale this recipe to a quart batch, multiply the ingredients by two or toggle the serving size up to two above. Before bottling your water kefir, remove the water kefir grains and reserve them for your next batch.
Ingredients
-
16 Oz Kombucha from a completed primary fermentation.
-
8-10 Quartered Cranberries
-
1 Cinnamon Stick
-
1/8 TSP Brown Sugar
-
1/2 Juice From A Lime
- SUPPLIES
-
1 16 Oz Kombucha Bottle(s)
-
Measuring Spoons
Directions
- 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.
- Take your clean 16 oz bottles and place them in the sink.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Tightly place the caps on each bottle.
- Keep bottles at room temperature for 1-3 days, depending on temperature.
- 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.
- 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.
Notes
- First-time brewers may find it helpful to substitute a glass bottle for a plastic bottle of equal size. Fill the plastic bottle as directed above, leaving 1-2 inches of empty headspace at the top. This plastic bottle will now be used as a pressure gauge. Once this bottle becomes rock solid, you will know the remaining are ready. This method can help prevent bottle bombs.
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Thank You so much Ruthie. Just in time, this will be perfect for Thanksgiving. Every year everyone bring their favorite Wines, Beers and drinks to share. I will definitely have my Cranberry Cinnamon Kombucha ready to share.
Thank You and Happy Holiday to You and Yours!!
Jane ?
Thank you Jane! I love that you will be sharing your kombucha with your family. Let me know what you guys think of it :)
Happy Holidays!
Ruthie
The recipe looks delicious but do you use a full four inch cinnamon stick per bottle? Seems like a lot of cinnamon.
Hi! Yes, I used a full stick and it actually wasn’t overpowering at all! You could always start with less and see how you like it to be safe. For the super fat sticks I did peel some of the outer layer off so that it would fit in the bottle. Let me know if you try it! :)
Hi Ruthie! Thank you for this recipe. I tried it and just poured out a bottle of the finished product today. Really delicious. The Taste was not too overpowering but lovely and subtle. Plus the color was gorgeous. One thing I did differently was that I did not have cinnamon sticks, just organic cinnamon powder so used that instead. Totally worked out. I will be pouring the rest of this to share with my family for Thanksgiving, yay!
Yay! Thank you so much for sharing Cristin! Glad the powdered cinnamon worked out as well :)
Happy Thanksgiving!
This sounds very festive! I’d love to be able to serve this at a holiday dinner. Maybe even this thanksgiving! Thank you so much for sharing. Can’t wait to make this at home.
Hi Billy! It’s sure to be a great compliment to any holiday dinner. Let me know if you try it :)