Here’s a guide to all things about jun tea. Enjoy the read

Nathan Hague

Also Known As Jun Kombucha. Whatever You Call It. It’s Delicious.

At KombuchaWOW here in Phuket, our Thailand kombucha factory makes A LOT of booch! Each week, we make a minimum of 2400L of our favourite fizzy probiotic drink. But did you know there’s another drink that’s closely matched to kombucha – and some might say, an even better drink? Well, there is, and it’s called jun tea. Or jun kombucha. In this article, I’m going to give you more information on this bubbly and delicious relative of booch!

OK, first of all: You call jun “jun, as in run” rather than “jun as in June”. Glad that’s cleared up!

Next up: Jun shares the use of tea and a sugar source for the SCOBY to feed on.

You can make jun with a kombucha scoby, although a lot of people will tell you otherwise. Don’t listen to them! What you will need to do though, is make sure you brew a few times to get the kombucha scoby used to the new sugar source, which is…

The Main Difference Between Kombucha and Jun Tea Is Honey

1. The title tells you the main difference: Your SCOBY is going to use honey to turn the tea into jun tea, rather than sugar you’re currently using for your kombucha. If you can get organic raw honey to use in your jun, that’s going to give you an even better result.
2. Jun tea ferments best using green tea ONLY. You might be using green tea or a green/black tea mix in your kombucha, but it’s green tea only for jun. Sweeten with organic raw honey and you’re going to experience the best jun!
3. Speaking of the taste, your jun tea is going to taste way different to your regular kombucha! You’ll probably find your jun is way more delicate in taste than your booch. Usually you find kombucha is way more tart and sour than jun.
4. Jun can be brewed at same temperature as kombucha! A lot of people will tell you different, and that jun needs a colder temperature. Here at KombuchaWOW, we make around 500L of jun a week, and we use the same temperature range as our kombucha with no problem.
5. Bubbles: They hit different with jun! In fact, many people call jun the “champagne of kombucha” because its bubbles are utterly delicate but in their millions, if you run a second ferment!
6. Jun ferments in the same time as kombucha. Again – many people will tell you different, but here at our Thailand kombucha brewery in Phuket, we ferment for a bit longer than our kombucha so it’s at the right sourness level our customers like. But as with kombucha – you do you! If you like it fermented for less than than your kombucha – go for it! (Just be careful of the alcohol levels as usual – just because it’s jun, treat it the same as kombucha when it comes to fermentation rules and alcohol levels!)

Righto, I’m glad I cleared all that up, so let’s get on with finding out how to make our first 4L (1 gallon) of jun tea.

How To Make Jun Tea

You’re going to need:

• 3.5L of water
• 1 kombucha SCOBY (torn up in chunks)
• 16g of loose organic green tea leaves (tie up in cheesecloth to make a large teabag!)
• 0.5L of kombucha liquid
• 250g organic raw honey

METHOD:

1. Boil 1L of water only (keep the 2.5L at room temperature), and then in a large glass or container, add the boiling water to the green tea
2. Leave for 15 minutes and then stir at the end to get the most flavour out of the tea bag. Squeeze the bag to get the very end of the liquid out.
3. Now add the 2.5L of room-temperature water. The reason we do this, is just to save time from boiling the full 4L water and then waiting for it to get down to room temperature.
4. Now add in your 250g of honey and stir until it’s completely dissolved
5. Finally, add in your chunks of kombucha SCOBY and the 500ml of kombucha liquid. Stir for 30 seconds to really get the kombucha starter liquid into the tea and honey mix

Now cover like you do with kombucha and wait for at least 10 days before tasting. If you want to do a 2F to get the bubbles, I recommend you don’t add ANY flavours to it to start with (it’s delicious unflavoured – trust me!), and DON’T add any additional sugar either. There will be enough honey left over from the 1F to then turn into bubbles in the 2F. Just bottle your 1F jun into whatever bottles you use for your kombucha – plastic if you’re a beginner, and glass flip top if you’re not a beginner. Leave for at least 5 days and you’re ready to go!

And that’s how you make jun tea!

I make 500L a week of it at the moment, so when you make yours, please tag #kombuchawow so we can see your results – Alice and I love reading them! (Good time to tell you we’re on Instagram and TikTok and Facebook too!)

Now I’m off for a bottle of our own jun I make in our Thailand kombucha factory here in Phuket!

Cheers and booch on! (or jun on now eh?!)

Nate