Jun SCOBY Brewing Starter Kit

A jun SCOBY starter kit to get you started with brewing your own jun tea.

Also includes free shipping throughout Australia for the 220ml starters Made in Australia with quality ingredients and professional methods.

* GST-free.

Brewing jun tea can be fun, rewarding and most importantly, delicious. Order a jun starter kit today to begin brewing your own tasty jun.

Our jun SCOBYs are created in Melbourne VIC, Australia. We only use quality ingredients and professional methods to provide you with a fantastic starter for your own brew.

What is Jun?

Jun (also known as xun) is a fermented drink similar to kombucha. It is often described as the champagne of kombucha’s and is similar in that it’s a tart, fizzy, gut-soothing probiotic tea. Like kombucha and other fermented food, jun tea may help replenish your gut with good bacteria, which may be of significant help to the digestive system.

While kombucha is fermented using cane sugar and black/green/oolong tea, jun tea is made using honey (preferably raw/non heat treated) to ferment and sweeten it. The flavour differs in that it takes on the flavours of the raw honey and green tea, developing a unique depth in flavour and an aromatic nature. It’s also milder and less sour than traditional kombucha.

Between jun and kombucha, jun is often considered to be the fancier of the two due to its high quality ingredients and delicate flavour. Jun tea is quick to brew and can be stored using similar methods to kombucha.

What is a Jun SCOBY?

The jun SCOBY (Symbiotic Colony Of Bacteria and Yeast) is the mixed cultures of bacteria and yeast that feeds on raw honey and green tea and forms what we know as jun tea. The SCOBY is commonly referred to as a mushroom, mother, culture or starter.

It’s the jun SCOBY, which is trained to feed on honey rather than sugar, that sets the jun tea apart from kombucha. If you were to try put a kombucha SCOBY in a honeyed green tea, the bacteria wouldn’t feed on it properly and it would most likely die. Jun cultures on the other hand thrive on honey as a fuel source.

What’s Included in the Starter Kit?

Each jun tea starter kit includes:

• A jun SCOBY.
• Instructions (also downloadable as a PDF) on how to care for your SCOBY and how to make jun tea (which we’ll also go into below).

This jun SCOBY will help you create 1 litre of jun to start. As the jun SCOBY quickly grows larger, you can easily scale up your jun production to increase your batch quantities.

We also offer other items necessary for brewing fermented drinks, including a glass fermenter with a tap and a breathable cloth cover. This DIY home brewing container gives your brews the best chance of success with an ideal, high quality vessel to both brew and store your batches, meaning you can have a continuous brew jun.

We also sell the breathable fermentation cloths separately/individually as well as kombucha SCOBY starter kits.

For those that want everything to get brewing their own jun, we also offer Complete Homebrew Jun Kits. These include a jun SCOBY, brewing instructions, 100g organic raw honey, 50g organic green tea, a fermentation cloth and a glass fermenter with a tap.

Free Shipping or Tracked Shipping

All jun and kombucha 220 ml starters come standard with free shipping throughout Australia. This includes areas throughout Vic, Tas, NSW, ACT, Qld, NT, SA and WA.

If you want tracked shipping it's an extra $3.30 we'll make that available soon as an option but for now add this $6 option to your cart and we will add tracking AND include a free gift for you.

* No GST is charged for jun SCOBY starter kits.

** You can also pick up the SCOBY from our office at 54 Hope Street, Brunswick VIC 3056. Select Local Pickup during the cart and checkout process to pickup your order directly from us. We're open 10am-6pm, Monday to Friday.

Jun vs Kombucha

Feeding the jun SCOBY with natural raw honey rather than cane sugar has the benefit of potentially mineralising the drink.

Another advantage is that jun tea tends to ferment at a lower temperature, which is why many people consider it to be easier to ferment in the kitchen compared to kombucha. As the fermented honey does not need to break down as much as cane sugar does, jun tea also ferments quicker, which is an added bonus on those who want their delicious fermented drinks sooner rather than later.

Black vs Green Tea

Both black and green tea are derived from the same plant (camellia sinensis). The leaves of this plant are grown in the same way but treated differently after harvesting them, which is when the differences are established.

Black tea is oxidised, which is where it goes through a chemical reaction caused by exposure to oxygen, while green tea does not. Oxidation results in the flavour and colour changes of black tea. The effect of not being exposed to oxygen means green tea has a milder flavour as well as a higher amount of antioxidants and less caffeine than black tea.

Cane Sugar vs Honey

While cane sugar is certainly one of the best sources of sweeteners in Central America, it is easily trumped by raw honey when it comes to the health benefits. Raw honey has a huge range of health benefits including antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal and anti inflammatory properties. It may promote good digestive health, have strong antioxidant qualities, strengthen the immune system and many find it even a good remedy for skin wounds and infections. Raw honey could also assist in stabilising blood pressure, balance sugar levels, combats allergies, calms nerves and has been used to treat ulcers.

The Origins of Jun Tea

Jun has mysterious origins with legends that monks brewed it in the Himalayas for over a thousand years. The culture was supposedly created by the energy in the spiritual environment, which was then blessed and consumed as a spiritual elixir on the path to enlightenment.

Other legends claim Tibetan eco warriors travelling on horseback would brew jun tea continuously in gourds strapped to their belts. They’d stop in at the odd village to refeed their brews. The truth is that we don’t really know. Decent information on the origins of jun is incredibly difficult if not impossible to come by.

The oral tradition of jun apparently goes back several millennia but jun tea doesn’t seem to appear in many Tibetan or Chinese recipe books throughout history. The Japanese create a similar culture called koji by throwing rice onto healthy soil. Jun cultures may have arose out of farming practices in a similar way.

Wherever it came from, jun is widely found in parts of western Tibet and northern China today and more and more jun cultures are now being produced and grown in the West. In fact, each province of China has a version of Chang beer and in some parts of Tibet, the beer has jun in it.

To be honest, all SCOBYs tend to be surrounded by legend and lore. It’s part of the appeal for many people. While many of the legends concerning the origin of jun tea are pretty debatable, the health benefits are undeniable.

Regardless of whether or not jun was passed down for thousands of years by monks, eco warriors or royal families in Asia and Eastern Europe, they are today benefiting many people’s health across the world.

How to Make a Jun Tea

Once you find a jun SCOBY for sale and get it delivered from the team at the Good Brewing Company along with any other brewing tools you need, the rest is easy!

1. Bring 2 litres of water to boil in a kettle (you don’t want to make more than 2 litres for your first batch). Leave the lid off and let it cool to 80 degrees, this is a great way to “blow off” the chlorine.
2. Infuse 2 tsp of loose-leaf green tea (green tea bags are also okay) into the 80 degree water for 5 minutes.
3. Strain and place brew in a tempered glass jaror just leave it in your saucepan.
4. Once the tea has cooled to 40 degrees celcius, stir in 2 heaped tablespoons of raw honey.
5. Allow brew to cool at room temperature (at least below 35 degrees celsius otherwise the culture may die from the heat).
   Taste it.. it will be sweet and delicious.
6. Add the jun SCOBY into the cool/lukewarm liquid in the glass jar.
   Taste it again.. it will be sweet, delicious but with a very mild “vinegar flavour”.
7. Cover the top/opening of the jar with cloth and a rubber band to keep out bugs (such as fruit flies), plant spores, dust and any other pollutants. The cloth has to be adequately porous so that air can circulate and the jun culture can breathe easily, but not so porous that any small fruit flies or other bugs can get in and lay their eggs (we sell perfect fermentation cloths online).
8. Allow the tea to ferment for 3-12 days at room temperature (between 18 to 29 degrees celsius). Keep tasting the tea every day, and it will taste more and more vinegary every day.
9. After 8 days, the jun tea should smell and taste delicately sweet and tangy. The infusions starts off sweet and then gets more sour and acidic as it is brewed longer, so you can brew to your personal taste preference.
10. To use this culture again, remove the jun culture and a half cup of the liquid from the top and save for a second batch.

Jun tea is delicious served over ice or with crushed berries, mint or any other topping that you fancy.

Order a Jun SCOBY Today!

If you’re keen to get started on making your own jun brews, order everything you need from The Good Brew Company today. We are passionate about supplying quality jun and kombucha starter kits as well as quality bottle conditioned kombucha and professional quality brewing kits.

We ship all of our products throughout Australia. So whether you need a new SCOBY or a full home brewing kit, check out our range and start your brewing journey today. If you have any more questions, feel free to get in touch with our friendly team.