Jump to Brix Kombucha Calculator
I was really curious how much sugar was in my final Kombucha’s after fermenting. So I bought an inexpensive Refractometer from amazon ( Brix Refractometer ) this tells you how much dissolved sugar is in a liquid, specifically in this case in your kombucha. It works by measuring the refractive index of a liquid, which changes depending on the concentration of sugar in the liquid. Since it is using light to pass through your liquid and tell you how much sugar is in it it requires calibration and is also temperature dependent.
Steps to get your Brix number
Step 1 Is getting your Refractometer and some distilled water, I place these next to the Tea and Kombucha to be tested as you want everything (the meter, the distilled water, the base tea, and the kombucha) to be the same temperature)
Step 2 Is to calibrate your Refractometer using distilled water, usually you place a few drops onto the lens of the Refractometer and sandwich it with the included plate. Then point it up at a light source (a very bright light works great) and usually there is a screw on the top that you can turn that will adjust the shadow (or blue line) so that it sits just on the 0 mark.
Step 3 Because your tea may contain dissolved solids (we will assume that the tea you are using to make your Kombucha does not contain any sugar) we need to see if the base tea, before any sugar is added, effects the reading of the Refractometer. So when you are brewing your tea, after it has time to steep and you have removed the tea bags, give it a really good stir, and then take a teaspoon to a tablespoon out to a shot glass, or some other cup… once it has come to room temperature, measure it on the Refractometer. This will be your base number for the future readings of Kombucha (if you change the amount of water to tea (or type of tea or water) in the future you will have to re-do this reading). Make sure you make a note of this base reading somewhere… I usually write it on a piece of tape attached to the Kombucha fermenting container, along with my recipe and the date)
Step 4 Measure your Kombucha! I like to do this after I add the sugar, but before it ferments (just out of curiosity), then I do it once it finishes its first fermentation, and again after the second fermentation before putting it in the fridge… Really only the last one is important since that is what you’re drinking.
Step 5 Math… Take your base Kombucha and subtract the base number from your Step 4 reading. The number that you get is the number of grams of sugar in 100 mL of the Kombucha. While very useful if your drinking your Kombucha in 100mL increments, not super useful if you drink in a more standard measure like 8, 12, or 16oz…
So to make my life easier I created the below calculator so that you could simply enter your final Brix number and the amount of Ounces you wanted to know about (for example if I was drinking a 16oz glass, I would enter my brix number and below that 16…)
So that’s it, use this calculator to make your life a little easier!