Is Kombucha supposed to taste like Arbor Mist "wine"?

[gabbyraja]

I've just begun my first batch this week, after receiving a scoby by mail. It's 4 days old and I tried it. It smelled like ACV (blech!) and tasted like slightly sparkling wine, like Arbor Mist.  It's really pretty gross, and I'm disappointed. I'd read so much good about it, tasting like sweet tea, being "too sweet", I really thought it would taste good. Did I do something wrong? I used 4 English Teatime tea bags, 3 cups water and about 3/4 cup sugar. Will flavoring it help (I have no juice in the house, so haven't tried)?

[Thystle]

To me most kombuchas tastes like wine coolers, with an occasional very "sour" wine cooler.

[gabbyraja]

Yes! Wine coolers. Bummer. :(

[dogmom327]

I would first give it a bit more time--kombucha isn't really kombucha until day 5-7 and even then the taste will change over the next few week.  Second, I'd wait until your second batch before panicking :)  Particularly since you had to use ACV instead of starter tea for the first batch (which is perfectly fine!), the taste can be a little different.  Third, try a milder tea.  Maybe something like Oolong instead of English Breakfast.  EB makes a really strong tasting kombucha.  So I'd give it maybe another 4-5 days to culture and then make a new batch using some of your current batch (instead of ACV) as the starter tea and maybe a milder tea.  Start tasting sometime between day 5 and 7.  And juice does help.

The good thing about kombucha is that it's possible to get drastically different tasting brews depending on a number of factors you can play with :)