Fascinated by scobies

[Guest guest]

Hi everyone,

My second batch of KT turned out perfect. After I took my scobies

out, I separated the brew into two jars, one for the fridge and one

for the counter, sealed, to do a 2nd fermentation, as I had never

done one before. Here is the coolest part. I left the one in the

fridge for a couple of weeks as I was going on holidays to the

cottage. I brought my second jar with me to drink while I was

there. I left it at room temp. the whole time and drank about four

oz. from the jar every day, all while going through the 2nd

fermentation. Now, b/c I was opening and rocking the jar everyday,

it probably wasn't a true 2nd ferment, but it did get more fizzing

as the days passed, and more dry. This is the most fascinating

thing, after a few days I noticed a thin bubbly film growing on top

of the liquid. I thought, my God, it must be a scoby growing! As

the jar is narrow at the top, and gets wider at the bottom, as the

days went on, the scoby got bigger in diameter as the liquid moved

down the jar. Before I bottled, I even filtered out the yeasties,

so to me, as a newbie, I thought this was truly amazing.

The other interesting thing I noticed when I got home was that the

jar that I had been storing my other scobies in the cupboard, had

also grown another baby along top of the jar. A very nice, thick

creamy one. This does go to show that if you leave your brew

undisturbed, no rocking, your scoby will be more likely to be thick,

beige and not bubbly in texture. If you move your bottle around a

lot, it will be thin and bubbly in texture.

I just thought I'd share my findings, as it was so exciting to me!