How to make easy Spiced Pear Kombucha with leftover fruit

I love making unique second ferment flavors in my kombucha. But it is a love-hate relationship because if it’s a total fail, then either someone has to draw a short straw to finish it or it’s just compost pile food. {See what I did there? Not ever a waste, but wouldn’t it be better to be enjoyed?}

Raising toddlers and young kids means that they love to snack on fruit. Unfortunately, it also means we have a lot of half eaten apples, one-bite-and-abandoned pears, as well as a multitude of other fruits that get left behind.

So my fridge starts overflowing with a little something that looks like this:

A couple of years ago I instituted “Save-It-Up Saturday and Sunday” whereby out family was to consume, eat up, or otherwise use up the leftovers and stragglers like the peach and pear pictured above.

Recently that meant fishing out two apples and 6 pears that were either half eaten or about to go bad.

I trimmed off the bad spots and mixed up a fruit salad. Basically just small cubed fruit with citrus juice and a tiny bit of sugar on it. Does an amazing job at making unappetizing food suddenly more enjoyable.

But my kids still didn’t want to finish it.

So instead, I decided I would second ferment the fruit salad. And that’s when this recipe came to life. I already had orange kombucha second fermenting from earlier in the morning, so I used that as the base.

Spiced Pear Kombucha Recipe {or any pome fruit like Apple and Quince too}

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• One mandarin, clementine, or small orange
• 2-4 cloves I actually got my cloves as an add-on to my misfits box. See more of y experience and/or get a discount here.
• Ginger root – cubed, sliced, or grated
• 1-2 cups of pome fruit cubed. Again, this can be pears, apples, or quince — Your choice or maybe a mixture.
• 2 tsp sugar
• Half gallon of kombucha already first fermented

While some people bottle their kombucha into swing top glass bottles for individual servings, I rarely do. This is simply because we are a large family and again with the small kid only consuming part of things, I don’t want a bunch of partially opened bottles filling my fridge. Instead, I usually go ahead and second ferment in a bucket, mason jar, or other large canister. This makes sense for our family.

While this recipe could be really great without the cloves, it adds a depth of flavor and level of warmth to a drink perfect for fall and winter sipping.

No matter what method used for second fermenting, a little bit of space needs to be left at the top so it doesn’t get overly pressurized. I would have done this differently with 2 quart jars instead of one and a half gallon jar like in the picture, but alas, this was an afterthought {that went really well} to a previous second ferment in my gallon jug. When I put all of my ingredients in though, it went to the tippy top, so I redistributed to two jars.

Let this set for 2-5 days depending on your preference of taste. I actually sipped a bit of mine the morning after I did it and it was really, really good even then.

Enjoy your kombucha!

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