More Kombucha

More about kombucha...

A little more about the SCOBY, and how to make your own. The SCOBY is a gelatinous mass of yeast and bacteria that forms when conditions are right. While many people obtain their first SCOBY from online/mail order options or from friends who may be brewing their own kombucha, it is quite possible to grow your own - and not difficult. It's just a little time-consuming.

You can read the article that I read here (this is a great website with lots of info on natural foods in general, by the way). But I will also share my experience in growing my own SCOBY.

First, I bought some G.T.'s Original Raw Organic Kombucha at Hannaford. You should be able to get by with one bottle, but I was drinking it then, and had more on hand.

Next, I made sweet tea as described in the article at the website, but I made 2 cups of tea, sweetened with 2 tablespoons of white cane sugar.

I had an empty G.T.'s bottle, so once both the newly made tea and the G.T.'s Original Kombucha were at room temperature, I combined them in my 4 cup Pyrex measuring cup and then poured the combined liquid into each of two empty G.T.'s bottles about 3/4 of the way full - so that there was the maximum amount of surface space I could get.

Then I covered each with a square of paper towel and fastened them with rubberbands. Now, it would have been better - possibly even faster - if I had put the liquid into a container with a larger diameter, but I worked with what I had at the time, having read that the starter SCOBY needed to be thick, but the diameter didn't really matter that much.

Finally, I put them into the cupboard above my pilot lit gas wall oven, where it was much warmer than anywhere else, and I waited.

A new SCOBY forming rather resembles an oil slick when it starts. There is nothing to indicate that it is anything more than a slime coating on the top of the liquid... you just have to wait. Time is the last ingredient in this recipe.

At first, I was convinced that I had a moldy SCOBY forming on one of the containers, because it looked like there was something dark forming on part of my slime. But everything I read stated that mold looks like dry greenish black mold and this didn't look like that. Since I had two of them going, I figured I would just wait and see, and if it turned out to be mold, I had the other one.  It took well over a week for one of the SCOBYs to resemble the SCOBYs that I'd seen in pictures, but once it did, it was just a matter of waiting for it to thicken up. What had appeared to be mold turned out to be a brown clump of yeast waste - yucky looking but perfectly normal in this kind of culture. After a bit over two weeks, it seemed almost done - but I waited a little longer for it to thicken a little more. When that first one got to be over 1/4 inch thick, I gathered the stuff I had to try to make a batch of kombucha with my new SCOBY.  I left the second one, which seemed much thinner, in the jar and ignored it for another few days.

That one came out even thicker, in the end.  I can't really remember how I managed to get three, as I really do only remember starting two - but I did get three by the time all was said and done. I now have three healthy SCOBYS that I rotate by the length of time since they've been used - the older ones being first used. I keep them in ceramic bowls, covered with the tea they were cultured in, with the bowl covered with plastic and stored in the fridge.  The refrigeration slows the activity of the SCOBY so they will last. They can be kept in the fridge for a couple of weeks, but much longer than that and you risk them starting to die off.

Next up, how I made kombucha with those thick, gelatinous masses!