Re: Questions about scoby separation and successful brews afterwards....

[Guest guest]

Hi Gloria:

Quick answer to your question is that it doesn't really matter where

in your jar your starter SCOBY lies or what size it is. In fact, if

you read some recent posts, it's even a matter of debate whether you

need a SCOBY to start a new batch at all, since you can also start

brews using only a generous amount of finished kombucha and no

SCOBY. (However, many of us throw in a SCOBY anyway.) So as long as

you did include enough finished kombucha as starter (at least 15%),

you should be just fine, and any size/shape/portion of SCOBY you want

to include is icing on the cake.

I think the more important matter is that some flavored or herbal

teas may not sustain the kombucha culture as well as would regular

tea, which is kombucha's natural medium. You may not see " normal "

SCOBY formation on top of your batches that are flavored or herbal

(the Earl Grey/regular tea batch will proably be OK, though). While

it may not be important to throw a SCOBY into a new brew, the

formation of a new SCOBY on top of a brew IS one indicator that you

have a live and active culture and that it's doing its thing. Since

most of your new brews appear to be flavored, I'd make sure to start

your next brew with finished tea from your first batch, which sounds

like it was all made w/ unflavored regular tea (unflavored white,

green, ooling, and/or black teas, which all come from the tea plant,

Camellia sinensis), or with the Earl Grey batch, since many people

have used Early Grey successfully and exclusively even though it's

black tea flavored w/ bergamot. I'd keep kombucha made w/ plain or

Early Grey tea as a backup at all times, just to be safe.

I guess that didn't turn out to be a " quick " answer, but I hope it

helps!

Nori

[Guest guest]

Hi Gloria

You've nothing to worry about. Simply leave the jars alone, and in a few days,

new scoby's will form on-top. Leave them alone till the new floating babies are

strong enough to lift before decanting.

remember, you can make an antire new scoby w/ only a splash of finished KT in a

jar of sugar-tea solution. ....a scoby only tells you you have an active

culture. It is not the culture, just a by-product of it. the culture is the

actual fermenting brew.

Blessings

mark

Questions about scoby separation and successful brews

afterwards....

Good morning...just some quick questions. Early yesterday morning I took my

one batch of KT that had the original mother, the baby from the first

succesful batch as well as the baby from this successful batch in the same

jar as the current KT brew I was harvesting. I decided to divide them

because I thought it was time.I divided them into three jars...they were

mostly, but not completely, detached from each other...original mother was

detached from the first baby except for two small spots on the very edge on

one side....the second baby (from the current batch I harvested yesterday)

was attached a bit more along the edges to the first baby in small spots

here and there and then in one area in the very center...In one instance

there was a small but very tough spot on the edge and I tore it apart as

best as I could but it made a tear in the scoby on that part of the edge.

The babies and the mother were floating at near the tops of their brews, but

not a one of them floated at the top at all yesterday morning. The scoby

floated at the top of both of me previous two successful brews. All of these

are flavored brews and not straight black tea as the previous two brews have

been. Each brew contains three bags of black tea and the three bags of the

respective flavor (Bigelow's Earl Grey, Celestial Seasonings' Peach Apricot

Honeybush, Kalahari Reserve Rooibus) in 3 quarts distilled water for liquid

with one cup of sugar as well as two cups of starter). I don't KNOW that it

really matters where they all are in their brew jars, it could be the

weather as they are all about an inch below the surface of the liquid

instead, for all I know....that is what I thought with my first batch when

the scoby was all over the place in the brewing jar. Yesterday afternoon, I

came home I see that the scobies are at different levels in their

perspective batches...and in one batch it is on it's edge like a quarter. I

am concerned that I am a repeating my very first batch experience (times

three) with the ugly deformed baby scoby, etc...DID I MAKE A MISTAKE when I

pulled the edges apart in the areas they were still attached to each other?

The only other similarity I can think of is that when using strictly black

tea the scobies always floated at the top...it is that the flavored tea

mixed with the black teas don't float at the top the whole time, and the

batch I tried the very first time was a flavored tea batch and it was not a

good experience. What do I do, if anything even needs to be done?...I am

more than a day into this brew cycle with these three batches.

Then this morning...my original kombucha mother that I bought from you is

floating at the top of the " Earl Grey " brew...the " Rooibus " brew's kombucha

is till on it's edge like a coin on the bottom in the middle...and the

Peach Apricot Honeybush " brew's kombucha is still floating about 2 inches

off of the bottom of the brew jar. I am wondering if the two brews where

the scoby is not at the top are going to brew ok and be right...should I

stop the brew process and restart it with plain black tea and vinegar as the

starter? Do I need to wait it out? I don't really know what to do...

(((HUGS))) and Blessings~Gloria in Tennessee, happy grandmother-to-be:)

" Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family:

Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one. " ~Jane