Does my scoby look right?

[Suri]

Hey everyone, I just joined this community and I am a beginner kombucha brewer. This is my second batch and my first came out great. However, I'm not sure how the scoby is supposed to look really and this struck me as a little odd.

There's a big dark spot beneath a bubble to the right. My last scoby was pretty much completely white after about 10 days. This doesn't appear to have any mold on it or anything like that and the scoby generally looks good, but I'm concerned about the dark area. It looks like a big bubble, but I'm not sure why it would be dark.

Any ideas on what this could be and if my kombucha is safe to drink or not? It's currently been brewing for a little over a week.

 

[snarf]

Looks fine to me. My guess would be that that area is darker, because the SCOBY is simply a bit thinner there...

 

[Suri]

It seems like the dark spot was just a bunch of brown yeast beneath the scoby. I tasted the mixture and it was very sweet. Likely because I used about half a cup of honey in the brew (probably too much)

 

[kyt]

It seems like the dark spot was just a bunch of brown yeast beneath the scoby. I tasted the mixture and it was very sweet. Likely because I used about half a cup of honey in the brew (probably too much)

Yup that's exactly what it looks like. You'll collect more of these brown ooglies as time goes on. They are just yeast chains. Some people filter them, some people drink them. They won't hurt you or the brew, and I don't think they taste like anything, unless you have a whole lot of them.

Honey takes longer to ferment than plain white sugar.
You certainly can use honey in primary, but subsequent batches will have a honey-ish flavor even if you don't want it. It is always best to use only white sugar in primary, and flavor with whatever you want as a secondary process. Unless you use multiple cultures and fermentation vessels for plain and flavored batches.