3rd attempt at a starter

[Harleybrew32]

is this a scoby starting or mold?
This was dregs from a bottle of kombucha.

 

[stringwise]

I'm relatively new to the game but that does not look good to me. On every batch I've made thus far there is a very thin layer across the entire top after a few days. That layer gets thicker over time and that becomes what is known as the scoby (pellicle). What I'm seeing there is no thin layer forming, just a chunk in the middle that looks covered in spores? Hard to say from the picture but I have not had any growth like that. Even when I used a small pellicle chunk, the new layer formed on top of it and looking down into the pitcher the chunk was under the new layer so you couldn't really even see it.

Here is one that has formed in 7 days on a 5 gallon batch I made. The pellicle started about the size of a lid of a 1 gallon jar and about 1/4" thick. Now it's about 12" in diameter and is spread out across the top not located in one spot.

I think I would scrap that and start over, personally.

 

[stringwise]

Just to add, when you say "dregs from a bottle" I presume you mean sediment but more importantly, not very much of it, correct? You want enough starter to bring the PH low enough to kill things like mold from ever forming. So if you had let's say a tablespoon of starter dregs in a gallon of tea, that's not enough to beat down the bad things that might be in there. If you have 1/4 a bottle of booch left, I would add that to 3/4 a bottle off tea. When that becomes an entire bottle of fully fermented tea, you could do 3 bottles tea and that bottle to make another batch, and so on.

 

[Harleybrew32]

thanks, i tried with my old scobys, but they must of died off.
its been 8 months since i brewed some boocha.
I think your right i dumped half my bottle of sediment and kombucha into about 1/2 gallon of tea.
forgot when i started that i started alot smaller.
back to starting a small small batch to get a little scoby going.
cheers