Need To Source A New SCOBY

[rlynge]

Hello all. It's been awhile since I have posted here. Awhile back a nice member on this forum gifted me a scoby to get started. That was roughly a year or two ago. Since then that scoby has produced countless gallons of bucha but alas it has finally gotten an infection and I never saved any other scobys as the have multiple uses.

I was wondering if anyone on this forum might have a spare scoby that they could share? I would be happy to cover shipping? Online vendors are charging an arm and a leg for cultures and I'm not sure if I can trust private sellers on eBay or amazon to provide healthy cultures.

Any other suggestions would be welcome as well. Thanks.

 

[boocha]

Hi rlynge. I got my first Kombucha SCOBY from getkombucha dot com. Until now I'm still getting supplies from them. I like them because they have awesome customer service and lots of free stuff.

 

[rlynge]

Thanks. I appreciate the suggestion!!!

 

[jaeshoes1]

Here are some links to a couple of my post showing you how to grow your own + easy to build incubators.



https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f167/step-step-481710/#post6239703
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f167/step-step-481710/#post6239713

 

[Draagro]

go buy a unflavored GT kombucha or equivalent and pout it into a clean mason jar and cover with a coffee filter. I made a number of really strong scoby's like this.

 

[jaeshoes1]

i used a cosmic cranberry and it worked great. I love the faint cranberry ghost flavor after 5 subsequent batches. The left is black tea and cosmic cranberry, the right is an original gt with white tea. The white tea brewed quicker and became very sour.

 

[jaeshoes1]

Here is a step-by-step that I created to start my SCOBYs.

 

[jaeshoes1]

here ya go!

 

[Setesh]

here ya go!

This is exactly what I did, except I added one GT bottle worth of black sweet tea for food and used the dregs (bottom 25%) from a total of 6 bottles over a week (just kept adding dregs). It worked great. It has been going for a week and a half and this is what it looks like now

 

[jaeshoes1]

This is exactly what I did, except I added one GT bottle worth of black sweet tea for food and used the dregs (bottom 25%) from a total of 6 bottles over a week (just kept adding dregs). It worked great. It has been going for a week and a half and this is what it looks like now

Looks great. What are your plans for the first brew with this SCOBY? Any flavors or infusions? Bottling? Carbonating?

 

[jaeshoes1]

Hello all. It's been awhile since I have posted here. Awhile back a nice member on this forum gifted me a scoby to get started. That was roughly a year or two ago. Since then that scoby has produced countless gallons of bucha but alas it has finally gotten an infection and I never saved any other scobys as the have multiple uses.

I was wondering if anyone on this forum might have a spare scoby that they could share? I would be happy to cover shipping? Online vendors are charging an arm and a leg for cultures and I'm not sure if I can trust private sellers on eBay or amazon to provide healthy cultures.

Any other suggestions would be welcome as well. Thanks.

I would be willing. Im in the greater Portland Metro area here in Oregon. I'll do some research on shipping methods. Any source type?green tea? Flavor. Let me know and I'll get going on it.

 

[jaeshoes1]

Or if you are somewhere on the I-5 corridor, I travel often between here and Corvallis.

 

[Setesh]

Looks great. What are your plans for the first brew with this SCOBY? Any flavors or infusions? Bottling? Carbonating?

I topped off the jar with a 50/50 mix of orange pekoe and green tea. Should be ready to bottle in another week or so. I am bottling in plastic root beer bottles which work great. I will add some sweet tea made with blackberry Celestial Seasonings tea to that particular batch in the bottling jar. I've got three others going now, which I will do other flavors of tea with.


Second from the right is the same GT scoby as before. It really filled in now and has thickened up quite a lot. The first on the left is from the GT batch. That pic was taken yesterday evening, and it has already started forming a scoby.

I've gone a bit off the deep end with this Kombucha thing, but I like having at least one bottle a day, so I feel justified.

 

[Bitrate]

I topped off the jar with a 50/50 mix of orange pekoe and green tea. Should be ready to bottle in another week or so. I am bottling in plastic root beer bottles which work great. I will add some sweet tea made with blackberry Celestial Seasonings tea to that particular batch in the bottling jar. I've got three others going now, which I will do other flavors of tea with.
View attachment 211771

Second from the right is the same GT scoby as before. It really filled in now and has thickened up quite a lot. The first on the left is from the GT batch. That pic was taken yesterday evening, and it has already started forming a scoby.

I've gone a bit off the deep end with this Kombucha thing, but I like having at least one bottle a day, so I feel justified.

I really like the uniformity of the jars. I was wondering if you went with plastic jars because you had them available and wanted to be thrifty, or because they brew to your liking better than glass jars. Before starting our first brew, we read from various sources that it was highly discouraged to use plastic during fermentation.

Your brews look very good and I wish I could try a sample all four. Our batch of around 3 gallons will be done with first stage fermentation in a little more than a week once we verify the pH is where we like it.

You are not the only one going off the deep end with kombucha. I have been absolutely hooked from the first drink! I've noticed it's difficult to find people willing to try it, let alone brew it, and those who do drink it are nothing but enthusiastic about it.

 

[Setesh]

I was wondering if you went with plastic jars because you had them available and wanted to be thrifty, or because they brew to your liking better than glass jars.

Those are actually all glass jars, although they do have plastic spigots. I'm hoping they hold up, but I don't see any reason they shouldn't. As long as you don't scratch plastic it is fine. Scratched plastic can harbor bacteria that can't be cleaned out. I'll use a PBW soak and warm water rinse to clean them, then starsan to sanitize, so I'm not worried at all about the plastic getting scratched. And each of those jars was $7, so if I have to throw them away in 6 months I won't cry.

Our batch of around 3 gallons will be done with first stage fermentation in a little more than a week once we verify the pH is where we like it.

Nice! I thought about going with one big batch and flavoring afterwards, but as odd as it sounds I have more room for small containers than big, so that is what I went with.

You are not the only one going off the deep end with kombucha. I have been absolutely hooked from the first drink! I've noticed it's difficult to find people willing to try it, let alone brew it, and those who do drink it are nothing but enthusiastic about it.

I couldn't get my wife to try it, and she won't even look at that shelf! She likes sour stuff so I think she might like it, but the scoby grosses her out.