BoochMakers

I don't think it's weird at all, I can't tell the difference in mine either! I always have to get others to try out my batches to tell me if they are sweet or vinegary or what ever they taste, otherwise I just don't know! So my advice is to just ask others to taste it, if anyone is brave enough to try it.

Nope, you will still get carbonation, but it depends how much the bottles are leaking. I recently bought bottle caps for old kombucha bottles I have, their original caps were thrown away so I ordered what I thought were good ones. I filled almost 30 of them up and found out they were also leaking like yours, but they still carbonated really well.

If anything, it prevented the overly excess fizz that would turn my bottles into a nuke, my kitchen is much cleaner now.

Rose petals and pomegranate are my top choices, they work well every time and are not too sweet. I don't even have to add any sugar to it to get carbonation either.

I recently read that it doesn't even matter if you flip the bottles upside down and the air pocket at the bottom of the bottles instead of the top. At least for carbonation leaking, since CO2 apparently is smaller than water particles, it can still leak even if flipped upside down. So, since that can happen, I feel like it might not make much difference if the bottles are upside down, right side up, on their sides, or slanted.

Disclaimer:
It was a quick read and this very well might not be the right answer to this question!

Rose flowers! It's probably the most loved of all the flavors i make here at home. It doesn't really take that many to add a lot of flavor also.

I'm not sure what is common, but with my hibiscus brew I tend to just add what ever is read, so I would add roses, red berries, and anything else that randomly comes my way that is red and I can save until my F2.

Do you have anyone else who can taste them? I think that would be your safest bet. Can you compare the kombucha to store bought kombucha? Maybe having some and tasting both one after another can give you a sort of base line on where the flavors should be. It's probably best to buy unflavored kombucha for this as you are unsure about your first fermentation, but don't try and compare it too closely since store bought kombucha almost always tastes different from our homemade kombucha, but use it as a way to differentiate flavors better.

I had the same happen to me with a few of my bottles. I would say that based on how much carbonation the bottles are leaking, it might not be a lost cause! I have had a few bottles that did leak too much, and the final kombucha was not carbonated at all and even had a bit of an odd taste to it, but that might not be relevant. On the other hand, I had a few bottles that leaked as well, but, they still carbonated pretty well, some even very well.

Test it out! See what happens with them, a slight leak is not the most ideal maybe, but it can still carbonate, so don't give it up!

Yep! You know the old saying!

Yes! I am using old kombucha bottles with a narrower neck compared to bottles like GTs, and even got new caps for them, and it is so difficult to open them! I have to use a towel for extra grip every time! I thought that new caps would help since maybe the old ones are damaged or worn out in some way, but nope, no difference at all. But it's worth it to be able to use smaller bottles rather than the larger flip top bottles which are great but just not my preference. I also like the fact that I can open the screw top bottles a little bit at a time to let some carbonation out rather than all at once with a flip top bottle!

I asked myself the same question. In my mind, each and every F1 is a batch, but, I would also think of the F2s in a way as a batch if I am using a different recipe and trying out different things. But I guess that because everything in F2 comes from F1, F1 is what counts as the batch.

If your kombucha has very little carbonation, I would say this would almost completely remove the carbonation entirely. So it depends how much carbonation you currently have. As others have mentioned, running kombucha through sieves and filters does reduce carbonation, the type of sieve does make a difference, and the sieve you have in your picture seems like a mesh one, which does reduce carbonation by a lot.

Yes you definitely can, I have done this with fruit flavored F2 that I thought was done, but upon opening I learned that it wasn't. Since it was still pretty sweet I didn't add any more sugar, I just left it out for about another 2 days, and then opened it and it was more carbonated than it was the first time.

I would think that if you didn't add more sugar and there wasn't that much sugar in it anymore like there was in my case, then it would become more acidic. But as long as there is either already sugar still in it, or you add more sugar, I don't think it will become more acidic than if you would have just left it out without putting it in the fridge in between.

I believe that any time you pour a carbonated beverage between containers, you lose some of the carbonation because CO2 escapes. Pouring a carbonated beverage through a regular sieve causes CO2 to escape even more, and pouring it through a mesh sieve (at least it looks like a mesh sieve in the picture) will cause even more loss of carbonation.

So I would say yes, you are losing carbonation by using that sieve. If it's to filter out the fruits and what ever is in the kombucha, I would just do my best to have larger chunks that would fit through a regular wide holed sieve.

I count my F1 containers as 1 batch each. But I have heard of people counting their F2's as batches, since from 1 container of F1 they could make 4 different F2 flavors, each their own "batch".

I recently had to experiment with this because half of my F2's didn't fizz at all. I left them for like 2 days, opened them, and there was absolutely no pop, it was like I opened a bottle of water. I added some more sugar to them and left them for another 2 days, and 2 of them did get a lot of fizz, but the rest did not. I am not sure what I did wrong here, but I can say that it works, even though half of the ones I added sugar to didn't fizz, the other half did! So it does in fact work!

Also, at that point, I didn't care to measure how much extra sugar I put in, I just poured a little bit in each bottle.

From my understanding and experience, yes. Even if you put it in the fridge but decide that you want it to ferment longer, you can. Just keep in mind that it will take it a bit to warm up to room temperature and to ferment to the point you want it to.

I count each F1 as a batch. I usually have 2-3 F1s going at the same time, I count each of them as a batch, so that's 2-3 batches at once.

I am in the middle of my F2, some are natural flavor and some are flavored with fruit or herbs, I decided to lay them all down because I read somewhere that it helps with potential carbonation leaks, and I can tell you that none of them carbonated. They were more fizzy after the initial F1 than they are now after F2.

Though, to be fair, I left them for just 2-3 days for F2, and while it has been HOT here, my F1 is at 83 degrees constantly, maybe I should have left them longer, so I am standing them up now and going to give them a few more days.

That's my experience with laying them down, it would be interesting to know how this goes for others, maybe it just takes longer when they are laid down vs stood up?