Personally I think people freak waaaaaaaay too much over mold. Mold is EVERYWHERE and is responsible for creating many foods. It was a very small amount of mold on the top of the Scoby that provided a protective barrier. Mold simply can't grow in something as acidic as kombucha. I played it safe and heat pasteurized it anyway. I'm sure its safe to drink, been chuggin' on it with no ill effects.
All I want to say is that if somebody KNOWINGLY had mold on a beer, tea, bread, or whatever... and brought it to a large event, WITHOUT EVER IDENTIFYING THE MOLD, I would sue the pants off of them. That sh*t is dangerous. You do NOT serve food with mold on it to people without identifying the mold or telling the people.
Yes, there are many molds responsible for delicious foods. There are many MORE molds responsible for making people sick. Just because you haven't gotten sick doesn't mean that somebody with a compromised immune system (The elderly, those with HIV or AIDS) won't get sick.
Furthermore, pasteurization kills off many molds and pathogens... but it does NOT necessarily denature the toxins created by those molds.
Yes, there are safe molds. But many of those have been cultured over the course of hundreds of years. You can't usually safely make cheese or antibiotics out of basement mold. The number of bad molds outnumbers the good molds in the world... and again... you're healthy. Others are not blessed with wonderful immune systems. You cannot use your person experience to judge another person's susceptibility.
Also, I don't know what you're talking about regarding lemons and limes. I worked produce for a long time, and I've stuck my hands through more moldy lemons than you could ever imagine. Boxes on boxes of moldy lemons. Probably enough to fill an entire truck. Lemons and limes mold.
If you can identify the mold, and it is not harmful to people, then by all means... take it with you. But if there are certain people allergic to that mold, you need to keep a record of it. If that mold makes 5% of the population sick, you need to keep a record. If that mold cannot be identified, you need to keep it home and drink it yourself. It should be noted that indoor mold is SIGNIFICANTLY more likely to be bad than outdoor mold. There is a reason that people do yeast collection in fruit tree fields, but NEVER in dark basements.
Oh yeah... and that super low Ph you were talking about earlier? Most molds are able to handle super low Ph. Bacteria has a problem with it... but there's a reason your yeast can still survive. Mold isn't terribly Ph sensitive. By the time you have a Ph that kills all bad molds, you have a drink so acidic that people can't drink it comfortably. But even if you DID have a super-low Ph, sufficient to kill all bad molds... Ph rarely denatures mold toxins... and, back to a previous point, those mold toxins affect people very differently based on allergies, immune-system strength, and family history.
You're asking for a lawsuit. And you would not win this one. Identify the mold or keep your product at home. If you take this tea without doing any extra investigation, you are a horrible person.
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To those reading my response (Other than OP), I apologise for being confrontational. I've been in the food industry for years and am now a professional winemaker. MY BIGGEST PET PEEVE is people using the whole "Eh, mold makes cheese. It's fine" argument before feeding somebody a mold they cannot identify. It's dangerous, and I've seen MANY people get sick over this uneducated, childish, and moronic level of purposeful ignorance. It's not legal, it's not moral, and it's not even intellectually sound. I have no tolerance for it, and neither should anybody on this forum. It only makes people distrust home brewers more.
