My scoby from scratch

[dye4me]

about three months ago i left a litre of sweet tea out on the counter in my brew shed. Its usually around 4ºc this time of year unless I'm brewing or have a fire going. it did not have a lid on it, and about 6 weeks after i left it there i noticed a thickening of the surface layer of tea similar to what happens before my oolong has a scoby form. So i put a coffee filter over the top and put it into the fermentation room @75ºf for the last 6 weeks. And now a thin very healthy looking scoby is now completely covering the surface. This jar has been 2' away from any other hotels or starters. All other hotels and starters are covered with clean tee shirt material, except when refilling and transferring.what i am wondering is, is this a scoby from scratch or do you think this was infected from the adjacent hotels and starters?

 

[snarf]

I vote for "infected".

 

[ffmurray]

maybe infected... maybe scratch... regardless it seems like it would have the complete range of yeast and bacteria that form a good healthy SCOBY, but maybe it does... could be the new super scoby

 

[AK7007]

This guy was kind of from "scratch" in the sense that I've never made kombucha before and didn't use any commercial kombucha to grow up from. It took 17 days. I made 250ml of 1.025 tea with molasses (not white sugar), and dumped in some oak cubes that I had in a flanders red, a teaspoon of my house lactic culture (which is infected with god only knows what kind of yeast), several colonies each of WLP 644, 648, 650, and a teaspoon of bragg's raw apple cider vinegar. Waited a week (started on a Sunday) for it to start to get a film, and transferred everything to a gallon of tea with a cup of light brown sugar.

It's def got some great acetic character and tastes good enough to bottle. (I had originally planned on dumping this gallon and was only intending it to grow up a decent scoby) It's day ten after starting the gallon today. I'm brewing up some white sugar tea to move it into right now.

SCOBY from scratch so far is a pleasant success. But it's got months to go before I declare it fully functional. The main thing that I wonder about is the long term mat structure without introducing kombucha specific acetobacter. Only time will tell.