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Soft drinks from Unknown

Jun

Jun is a modern relative of kombucha, made with green tea and honey instead of black tea and cane sugar. A SCOBY culture sours the sweet tea over several days, and the drink is often bottled a second time with fruit for fizz.

A short entry: the sources we found record only what is said here about Jun itself.

DocumentedSoft drinks6 days – 10 days

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedThe source gives no fixed amounts; they vary by recipe and personal preference.
Green teaSteeped in hot water and cooled[wp-jun]
HoneyDissolved in the cooled tea[wp-jun]
Jun SCOBYA symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast[wp-jun]
StarterSCOBY (jun culture)

Total time across the recorded steps: 6 days – 10 days

Start
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What changes: Green tea is brewed and cooled, and honey is dissolved in it

Step 1 of 3
Brew green tea, cool it and dissolve the honey
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented

Output: sweet green tea.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Jun is a modern relative of kombucha, made with green tea and honey instead of black tea and cane sugar. A SCOBY culture sours the sweet tea over several days, and the drink is often bottled a second time with fruit for fizz. Made in 3 steps over 6 days – 10 days. The longest step, ferment with the jun SCOBY, takes 5–7 days (Wikipedia 2026) and runs at 21–27 °C (Wikipedia 2026).

Key numbers
Main step5–7 daysReported[wp-jun]Ferment with the jun SCOBY
Temperature21–27 °CReported[wp-jun]Ferment with the jun SCOBY

What makes this one different

Unlike kombucha, jun uses green tea and honey in place of black tea and cane sugar.

Related ferments

Safety

Jun is sweetened with honey that is stirred into cooled tea and not cooked. The CDC says honey can contain the bacteria that cause botulism and that honey or products made with it should not be given to children younger than 1 year; no source we read shows that fermenting jun removes this risk. Kombucha guidance (an acid start at pH 4.6 or lower from starter liquid, pH 4.2 or lower within 7 days, and discarding mouldy cultures) is the nearest comparison, but it was not written for jun; see the kombucha entry. Bottled jun also makes gas, and CSU Extension warns that capped kombucha left too long at room temperature can explode.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Western sellers claim jun began among Tibetan monks long ago. The food writer Sandor Katz found no mention of it in books on Tibetan or Himalayan food and thinks it is a recent offshoot of kombucha (quoted on Wikipedia).

  1. [wp-jun] Wikipedia, Jun (drink), read 2026-10 (outline; its process section cites no sources)wiki
  2. [bccdc] BC Centre for Disease Control, Environmental Health Services 2015 (updated 2020), Food safety assessment of kombucha tea recipe and food safety plan (kombucha, not jun)gov
  3. [cdc-botulism] US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Botulism preventiongov
  4. [csu-kombucha] CSU Extension Staff, FoodSmart Colorado (Colorado State University Extension, reviewed October 2025), Understanding and making kombucha (kombucha, not jun)gov