The effect of fruit supplementation and incubation period on the or-ganoleptic quality of black tea kombucha

Kombucha is a beverage made from tea as its basic ingredient and fer-mented by active starter of microbial consortia. The flavor of this fermented beverage is determined by many factors, such as supplementation of the main raw ingredient with various fruits, sugar, and types of tea used as its main raw ingredient. The main objective of this research was to elucidate the effect of fruit supplementation (addition of Fuji apple and strawberry) on the organoleptic quality of the products, following incubation periods of 4, 8, and 12 days. A triplicate complete randomized factorial design (types of fruits combined with incubation period) was applied in the experiment. Organoleptic tests (in-clude taste, aroma, and color of the products) were conducted by applying quisionere method involving 7 panelis. The results showed that types of fruits and incubation period significantly affected (p<0.05) the organoleptic quality of the kombucha products. Over-all, combination of stroberry and incubation period of 4 days gave the best results (p<0.05) when compared to control (commercially sold kombucha) and other treatments, indicating that such product has potential to be widely commercialized.