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[Guest guest]

I'm a new member of the group. I have read very widely. I've killed my K. Tea

starter

twice. I don't know why.

Here is my complete, exhaustive write up of my work. Please give constructive

comment.

Thanks,

Olmstead

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For the record:

I'm using black tea, white sugar, distilled vinegar and commercial GT Kombucha,

unflavored. For my medium: I brewed 3 liters of water, 1 c. white sugar, and 5

bags of

lipton tea. After steeping I boiled it to sterilize it, cooled it to room

temperature and

poured in 10% (300ml) of commercial raw K. Tea which had a small scoby floating

in the

bottle when I first brought it home.

I'm finding a lot of contradictions to the " conventional wisdom " available on

the internet

and in this group, and I hardly know what to think of them.  

Contradiction:   " Everybody " says that one wants a fairly wide-mouthed container

(1-gal

pickle jar, sun-tea jar) filled to only about 3 liters capacity, to encourage a

wide surface

area.  The bacteria need air.  The yeast don't particularly care, and are

equally happy

when the growing bacterial " scoby " covers the top and creates a casually

air-tight lid.

 Apparently, the success of this seal is part of what determines whether or not

your batch

will carbonate this time, or not.  

Well, erm... That's the lore.  Now in practice I've found that my glass cookie

jar from the

Goodwill just doesn't grow things as successfully as my two tiny experimental

batches

held in tall, very narrow ex- K. Tea bottles from the health food store.  

Basically, after I poured the commercial k. tea into my cooled sterile sugar &

tea mix in

the cookie jar to inoculate it (at 10%--just like the recipe says), I had some

spare sugar-

tea medium left over.  I casually dumped that excess into the newly emptied

kombucha

bottle, then capped it and left it, uncaring what became of it one way or

another.  There

were at least 3 " ill-advised " behaviors there, so I pretty much expected nothing

to

happen to that tea.  It had no scoby, it had no air space above the tea.  I

filled it to the

top (wrong) I capped it (wrong) and I gave it no help at all.  I expected it to

just stay

" tea. " No--I'm not completely dim.  I knew very well that there were

" theoretically " going

to be K-tea culture bugs left in the few drops I hadn't drained, but I didn't

think the

small trace would get a foot-hold. I was prepared to check it now and then by

uncapping

it to see if any pressure built up in the vessel.

Here it is 10 days later, and the primary vessel--the cookie jar that received

all the right

steps--is without evidence of fermentation except that it has grown murky.  The

bacterial components (the mat-makers that float) never gained their foot-hold.

 There's

no scoby.  The yeast got a small foot-hold but didn't really " do " anything--no

vinegar,

no alcohol, no CO2... just a deepening layer of yeasty debris settling to the

floor of the

vessel and a faint fragrance of K tea...which could entirely be the 10% I poured

into it to

inoculate it.

In the meantime, that neglected cup of tea in the wrong shaped jar, without

enough air

and all --the one for which I did all the wrong things and did not care-- THAT

one grew

the most astonishingly beautiful scoby.  It's small, but it's doing fine.  It

carbonated

itself.  That means there is yeast. The bacterial scoby floats.  It's healthy.

 I gave in on

day 4 and replaced the metal cap with a filter-paper and rubber-band lid.  It is

quickly

becoming my " parent " culture.  

New experiment:  I took out a second clean, empty, dry, sterilized 16 oz K.

store-bought

tea bottle.  I boiled up fresh tea--green, this time, because everyone says the

cultures

really prefer it--and I aerated the crap out of that tea by shaking it hard.  (I

suspect my

cookie jar full of do-nothings may be O2 starved.) then I poured in a teaspoon

of the

commercial tea in my fridge that I suspect was the " winner " ... and another

teaspoon of

my growing " parent " living in the first small jar. "  Boom.  The very next day

the bacterial

components clearly had a foot-hold in the floating foam I left from agitation.

 It looks as

though the yeast are not too far behind.

So I've got two different K Tea bottles, each holding a different tea (one black

tea, one

green tea) and they received the least amount of kombucha I could bother to give

them.

They're fine.

OTOH I've been giving the big cookie jar vat all sorts of " corrective "

behaviors--

everything but CPR and mouth to mouth recuscitation.   I balanced the pH... I

whisked air

into it .... I poured in some more of my successful parent culture.... it's

still just sitting

there.  Dead.  Mostly.  The prevailing sentiment on the internet is that slow

fermentation

is good and one should not pass judgement before 30 days elapses, but most folks

are

able to tell a great deal by day 7, and are often starting to consume it by day

14.  This is

day 12.  It's dead, Jim.  I ain't drinking this one--As of today I'm mostly just

poking at it

with sharp sticks to see what it will take to make it kick.  In two more days it

will go

down the drain and I'll contemplate getting a different jar.

I suspect I either " smothered " the culture by adding too much kombucha to start,

(10%)

or didn't aerate the medium enough, or else I gave it too much sugar (1 cup in 3

liters of

water, with 2 Tablespoons of white distilled vinegar) and the sugar is

inhibiting bacterial

growth just as if this were a jelly or a jam.   I gave it all the things the

recipe wants, but

this particular vessel seems cursed.

So--all the careful things I've studied--air, sugar, 10% mature tea plus a

scoby...  ALL

CRAP.

" Everybody " says you want 10-20% mature tea and a scoby for your starter.  THAT

doesn't work.  I've killed it twice trying to follow directions.

OTOH--Tossing by in a small amount--treating it just as I'd treat a yogurt

culture (the

barest amount of inoculum)  That worked twice.

Grr.

So now I'm completely at-sea about what this thingie wants.  If I break the

common rules

I get success.  

Do you have any opinion about this comedy of errors?