Scoby hotel and scoby lifespan

[mevla]

Hello,

Thanks for the help so far. I'm now trying to pause the 'production' to try out the scoby hotel function. I've taken two cups of the latest batch and put the scoby in it, in a smallish jar closed by a lid. I thought it can't go wrong doing it that way. I did not add any sugar, any tea.

How long can it be kept that way ?

When restarting, can I simply take the liquid kombucha in the jar plus the scoby to add to a new batch of tea and sugar ?

Speaking of time, do scoby live forever ? Can they become in such a state that they need replacing ?

Thanks again,

Cheers.

 

[z-bob]

Add some tea and sugar like you were making a small batch of kombucha. Then just leave it alone. The scoby will slowly get thicker and thicker. (at least mine did; it's been in there almost a year, I should do something with it)

 

[hottpeper13]

I took 8 oz of booch and 8 oz of sweet tea, put the plastic cap(ball jar) covered it to keep out light and set it next to my main 2.5 gal fermenter.
Note I did not use a scoby just the starter tea. The scoby got to about 3 inches thick in 3 YEARS. At that time I busted the full fermenter and there was booch all over. Took 2 days (kept smelling and finding more crevasses to clean) to clean up. I finally needed it and pitched the whole jar into 1 gal, and was able to get to my 2 gal batches with the next ferment. So , to answer your question, 3 years was my longest kept scoby.