Anyone Growing a Scoby from GT's Please read!

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Vance71975

Vance71975

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Hey all, Just wanted to share a lil info on culturing a Scoby from GT's, i am in no way an expert, But i did a little test run with 3 different sugars. I used Honey,Molasses and White table sugar, with one great value iced tea bag and 4 Herbal tea bags per quart jar. I split a bottle of GT's Synergy Trilogy between the 3 quart jars, Each had 3 table spoons of one of the three sugars above. Here are the 10 day results.

White Sugar- thin Scoby not thick enough to transfer

Honey- A bit thicker than the white Sugar but still to thin to transfer

Molasses- Nice firm Scoby that is about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick not flimsy and easy to transfer.

My conclusion is that if you want to culture from a bottle of GT's it is best to use Black Strap Molasses for your first culture then move your nice thick Scoby to whatever your preferred sugar source and tea blend is.

The Herbal teas i used were all from Yogi, The Molasses was used with their Woman's Moon Cycle tea.

The white Sugar was used with their Healthy Fasting Tea.

The honey was used with their Skin Detox tea.

It was a blend of 4 herbal tea bags and one Great value Iced Tea bag that is a blend of black tea and Orange Pekoe tea.

Just the results i had. But from now on if i culture any more Scoby's it will be using Black Strap Molasses! The moving they scoby to a 5-1 blend of Dextrose and Sugar in the raw. 5 parts Dextrose 1 part Sugar in the raw.
 
Good find. I've not done thus yet but have been reading a bit about it and am intrigued, so thanks for the tip.
 
Hanso said:
Good find. I've not done thus yet but have been reading a bit about it and am intrigued, so thanks for the tip.
Click to expand...

No prob, i personally cant afford 20+ dollars to order a Scoby so i researched how to culture my own lol.
 
FWIW I used table sugar just fine to culture from GT's. Nice firm scoby, already transfered a couple of times.
 
I am new to Kombucha and wanted to brew my own. I used
2 cups spring water
1/3 cup white sugar
3 green tea bags
1 bottle GT Botanical no. 9 Kombucha

Boiled the water and sugar for 5 min added tea bags And steeped 10 min. Coed and added Kombucha and sweet tea to a sanitized 1 gal jar, swirled together and covered with a cloth and band. Gonna let it sit for about a month. Will post results then:) I have heard this works well tho.
 
spenghali said:
FWIW I used table sugar just fine to culture from GT's. Nice firm scoby, already transfered a couple of times.
Click to expand...

How long did you have to wait to get a Scoby? The one i made with white sugar is so thin its like a "film" on the liquid, not even a scoby and it has sat for 12 days.

I wasn't saying that you cant grow one with white sugar btw just that in 10 days with Molasses i had a 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick Scoby. I am sure the other two will provide a Scoby as well sooner or later, but molasses is MUCH faster lol.
 
Jayblefty said:
I am new to Kombucha and wanted to brew my own. I used
2 cups spring water
1/3 cup white sugar
3 green tea bags
1 bottle GT Botanical no. 9 Kombucha

Boiled the water and sugar for 5 min added tea bags And steeped 10 min. Coed and added Kombucha and sweet tea to a sanitized 1 gal jar, swirled together and covered with a cloth and band. Gonna let it sit for about a month. Will post results then:) I have heard this works well tho.
Click to expand...


Oh i am sure it will work and if you are patient and can wait 30 days that is great, i cant do that lol. Molasses worked faster i had a nice Scoby in 10 days as apposed to 30. But like i said i am sure any sugar source will work, i was just sharing what worked that fastest in my lil test lol.
:rockin:
 
CHERYLinND said:
Do you notice a dramatic difference in taste when you use molasses for the sugar source?
Click to expand...

Oh ya, i dont recommend drinking it with molasses as the sugar source unless you REALLY like molasses. I personally would just use the molasses to grow your scoby and then use a better tasting sugar source for drinking. I personally am using 5oz dextrose and 3 oz raw sugar for my drinking culture. The reason being that Glucose / Dextrose (corn syrup) produce almost all gluconic acids with very little acetic acid. I personally am more interested in the gluconic acid than i am in acetic acid. acetic acid is what creates that vinegar like flavor, and i do love vinegar on my salads and stuff i am not really interested in drinking it lol. Plus gluconic acid helps the liver in many ways and helps with detoxifying the body.
 
I will keep that in mind. My class will be starting their batches of Kombucha next week, so I will just supplement with molasses today to bulk them up. Thank you for the pointers!
 
So I started on 2-19 and today 3-15 I have a SCOBY ready to go. Probably going to start a gallon tonight. So under a month and I grew a mother from a bottle of GTs. Recipe and procedure is in an above post:)
 
Jayblefty said:
So I started on 2-19 and today 3-15 I have a SCOBY ready to go. Probably going to start a gallon tonight. So under a month and I grew a mother from a bottle of GTs. Recipe and procedure is in an above post:)
Click to expand...

Awesome congrats man!
 
Just to summarize to make sure I've got it right from this and other threads. You are suggesting to grow your own Scoby, something like the following ratios and process:

FOR ½ Gallon Scoby
(1) bottle Kombucha
(3) Cups boiled & cooled tap water
(1.5) Cups brewed tea
(1/2) Cup sugar/molasses (molasses for superior speed!)

Don’t add Kombucha until everything cooled to room temp
pitch into sanitized jug
swirl gently
cover with rubberbanded cloth & let sit for 10 days+

You can then move the Scoby to your drinking culture process and use the liquid for salad dressing or something.

Does growing a bigger Scoby batch have advantages?
 
Hey, just researching this stuff myself, and wanted to inform that public radio org had a good piece on making Kombucha. Also, stated that using teas with heavy oils hinder the fermentation. Not sure if that was the case with the teas you used, but since you were using skin detox and some other than plain, could have had a hand in it:
http://www.publicradio.org/columns/splendid-table/features/making_kombucha.html
 
Vance71975 said:
Hey all, Just wanted to share a lil info on culturing a Scoby from GT's, i am in no way an expert, But i did a little test run with 3 different sugars. I used Honey,Molasses and White table sugar, with one great value iced tea bag and 4 Herbal tea bags per quart jar. I split a bottle of GT's Synergy Trilogy between the 3 quart jars, Each had 3 table spoons of one of the three sugars above. Here are the 10 day results.

White Sugar- thin Scoby not thick enough to transfer

Honey- A bit thicker than the white Sugar but still to thin to transfer

Molasses- Nice firm Scoby that is about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick not flimsy and easy to transfer.

My conclusion is that if you want to culture from a bottle of GT's it is best to use Black Strap Molasses for your first culture then move your nice thick Scoby to whatever your preferred sugar source and tea blend is.

The Herbal teas i used were all from Yogi, The Molasses was used with their Woman's Moon Cycle tea.

The white Sugar was used with their Healthy Fasting Tea.

The honey was used with their Skin Detox tea.

It was a blend of 4 herbal tea bags and one Great value Iced Tea bag that is a blend of black tea and Orange Pekoe tea.

Just the results i had. But from now on if i culture any more Scoby's it will be using Black Strap Molasses! The moving they scoby to a 5-1 blend of Dextrose and Sugar in the raw. 5 parts Dextrose 1 part Sugar in the raw.
Click to expand...
It is hard to draw any conclusions in your experiment because you did not use the same tea base for the 3 different sugars. I would be interested to see how the three different SCOBYs turned out had you used the same tea base for the white sugar and honey that you used for the molasses.
 
Vance71975 said:
The reason being that Glucose / Dextrose (corn syrup) produce almost all gluconic acids with very little acetic acid. I personally am more interested in the gluconic acid than i am in acetic acid. acetic acid is what creates that vinegar like flavor, and i do love vinegar on my salads and stuff i am not really interested in drinking it lol. Plus gluconic acid helps the liver in many ways and helps with detoxifying the body.
Click to expand...

According to this article at PublicRadio.org, the compound produced in our livers is glucuronic acid, not the byproduct of glucose that has a similar name, gluconic acid.

An excerpt from the article:
Unfortunately, repeated laboratory analysis has found that glucuronic acid is not actually present in kombucha. Possibly it has been confused with a related compound that is a metabolic by-product of glucose, gluconic acid, which is commonly found in ferments and other foods.
 
Some people will send out free scobies for cost of a priority mail box.

The problem with the new GT's or most any storebought kombucha is that they changed the formulation back around 2007 to minimize the possibility of alcohol production. So that tells me they probably either removed one or more strains of yeast or substituted them with some other yeast. I did not have very good luck trying to form a scoby from GT's. And even when it did, the brew was always slow to ferment, and didn't seem to have the robust flavor. A friend sent me a scoby from KT she had been brewing for many years made from GT's before the formulation change and that is the one I stuck with.
 
porcupine73 said:
Some people will send out free scobies for cost of a priority mail box.

The problem with the new GT's or most any storebought kombucha is that they changed the formulation back around 2007 to minimize the possibility of alcohol production. So that tells me they probably either removed one or more strains of yeast or substituted them with some other yeast. I did not have very good luck trying to form a scoby from GT's. And even when it did, the brew was always slow to ferment, and didn't seem to have the robust flavor. A friend sent me a scoby from KT she had been brewing for many years made from GT's before the formulation change and that is the one I stuck with.
Click to expand...

I recently grew my own scoby from a 2 bottle starter of plain GT's, and once I had developed a large enough (typical size) scoby, it ferments wonderfully, with complex brett/lacto/pedio/aceto qualities to the flavor. With respect to fermentation time, I've found that's more of a function of temperature, scoby size, sugar, what type of tea you're using, etc.

If I let it ferment at ambient summer temps in my house (low to mid 80's), it ferments lightning fast. I'm not a fan of the super acedic (vinegar) flavors and aromas that develop at high temps, so I usually temperature control it in the mid 70's and get a more lactic sour along with the acedic sour. You can't keep the acetobater at bay, so you'll still get the acedic acid, but I try to increase the lactic aspects as much as possible to balance out the sour complexities.
 
That's good, I'm glad it is working. I have heard some people say they do prefer the taste of the new GT's formulation. So I imagine it's like all other beverages where some people like one thing and others like something different. I forget for sure what year GT's revised their formulation, I thought it was around 2007.
 
porcupine73 said:
That's good, I'm glad it is working. I have heard some people say they do prefer the taste of the new GT's formulation. So I imagine it's like all other beverages where some people like one thing and others like something different. I forget for sure what year GT's revised their formulation, I thought it was around 2007.
Click to expand...

I have no idea. If they made revisions to reduce alcohol production, I'm a fan of the change. I brew beer for that :mug: I like my kombucha with as little alcohol as possible, so I can see how they would want to reduce anaerobic fermentation in favor of aerobic fermentation, and homofermentative lactobacilli in favor of heterofermentative lactobacilli. If the ABV was above 0.5% it would have to be sold as kombucha wine, not tea.
 
I think that's what happened, some inspector saw bulging bottles, then when analyzed it was above .5%. So GT's made the 'enlightened' version, to prevent that from happening. Though I was looking around and it looks like GT's has an AP5 version 'above .5%' maybe marketed in Socal, that would likely still be the traditional formula.
 
Vance71975 said:
Hey all, Just wanted to share a lil info on culturing a Scoby from GT's, i am in no way an expert, But i did a little test run with 3 different sugars. I used Honey,Molasses and White table sugar, with one great value iced tea bag and 4 Herbal tea bags per quart jar. I split a bottle of GT's Synergy Trilogy between the 3 quart jars, Each had 3 table spoons of one of the three sugars above. Here are the 10 day results.

White Sugar- thin Scoby not thick enough to transfer

Honey- A bit thicker than the white Sugar but still to thin to transfer

Molasses- Nice firm Scoby that is about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick not flimsy and easy to transfer.

My conclusion is that if you want to culture from a bottle of GT's it is best to use Black Strap Molasses for your first culture then move your nice thick Scoby to whatever your preferred sugar source and tea blend is.

The Herbal teas i used were all from Yogi, The Molasses was used with their Woman's Moon Cycle tea.

The white Sugar was used with their Healthy Fasting Tea.

The honey was used with their Skin Detox tea.

It was a blend of 4 herbal tea bags and one Great value Iced Tea bag that is a blend of black tea and Orange Pekoe tea.

Just the results i had. But from now on if i culture any more Scoby's it will be using Black Strap Molasses! The moving they scoby to a 5-1 blend of Dextrose and Sugar in the raw. 5 parts Dextrose 1 part Sugar in the raw.
Click to expand...

Im noticing a pattern and im not sure if it's just me or not...

The white sugar/fasting tea suggests a conflict of biological processes- refined sugar combined with a tea designed for fighting the effects of consuming refined junk sugar.

But the molasses and womens cycle thing has me totally confused, anyone see a reason the two would be a great biological combination?

The honey/skin detox combo seems a bit better since honey is used in skin treatments and the two seem to go together.
 
Well I don't think you can infer too much about the combinations for several reason. First, if the difference is related to the combination, you can't really be sure which of the items in the combination had that effect. Second, you'd really need more than one sample to say conclusively that it had an effect on the scoby. Basically it would need a design of experiments.
 
Makes sense. Im just about to brew another batch and slide my little scoby into it.
 
A SCOBY is not necessary for brewing KT and SCOBY thickness has little to do with the health of the brew; it's mostly dead yeast and bacteria cells.

The differences you cite in the products would be one of taste and aesthetic perception (i.e. honey is more than likely used for the skin product because the amino acids and antiseptic properties of honey are topically good for skin cells. Of course, it's exactly many of those qualities that are either pasteurized out when the honey is used in KT so that it doesn't kill the yeast or else don't survive the biological process of becoming KT. That said, there is gluconic acid in honey as well as KT.)
 
Just had a bottle of GT kombucha the other day and it was good! I sure would like to start making some of this. Can it (the GT scoby) ferment in cooler temps between 55-65?
 
I would say probably not. I find if the temp is below about 75F the brew goes flat from the yeasts going too dormant. Then it tastes funny from overdominance of the bacteria. Maybe the GT's can still be successful at that low of a temp but I doubt it.
 
You risk too many things at low temperatures, such as molds. The yeast and bacteria in GT are of a type that loves higher heat (70-85 degrees). I've found it does well at around 80 with overhead heat that encourages bacteria growth rather than a heating pad that encourages yeast growth.
 
GT enlightened will grow a scoby. Personally I didn't have the best of luck with it; it grew slowly for me and was slow to ferment in comparison to a scoby that had been created from the 'pre change' formula. However I have heard others say they are successfully using a scoby from GT's enlightened and it is working well for them. Since the main reason for the 'enlightened' formula was to alter the culture to be less likely to produce alcohol after bottling, I prefer the 'old school' formula.
 
If the stuff on the shelves now is the enlightened then yes it does work, that's how I grew mine, and its 4 gal batches at a time now :)

Edit: just wanted to add (forgive me its morning lol) I looked for the ones with the most culture grown in the bottle. Then i brought it home and simply took the caps off and coffee filtered the top with an elastic band. I let them grow in the bottle til the co2 was pushing them up into the bottle neck and by that time it was pretty vinegary. I plopped both scobies into a 2L juice jug and gave them a new batch of tea, with a bit less than the usual 1 cup to 1 gal sugar ratio (meaning just under half a cup for 2L) and let them go for about a week. The KT wasnt very good quality at first while they grew, but once I had a solid scoby formed, it just got better with each batch.

So in short, yes it works with the enlightened if thats the only thing on the shelves now lol
 
this is 10 days with GT "enlightened" the low alcohol version under 21.

I dumped the bottle in the mason jar, then top it off with some super *super sweet green tea.
since its winter, placed the jar on my furnace ,
temperature is about 69/70 degrees.

about 6 days in a put half a teaspoon of sugar in the jar to "energize" the yeast

*this is my first attempt at growing a scoby

jat02ksun
 
Interesting. Will have to try molasses.
I'm just starting out. 2 weeks I started my first SCOBY from a bottle of GT's. I made it in a quart mason jar and had about 1 cup of sugar in the mix. In 14 day it looked like this. It's in a gallon container now with 2 cups sugar. The scoby sank the first day and then floated to the top over the next 2 days. 5 days now and the biofilm has extended to cover the whole top. Here are pics from before I transfered the SCOBY.

received_1183885605036236.jpg


received_1183885991702864.jpg


received_1183885775036219.jpeg
 

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