First try at a SCOBY. How does it look?

[NickW802]

This is my first try at a SCOBY. this is after 6 days, how does it look? i'm guessing something went wrong..

 

[hunter_le five]

Why do you think something went wrong?

 

[NickW802]

It doesn't look anything like the other SCOBYs i've seen on here.

 

[NickW802]

Why do you think something went wrong?

does it look good to you?

 

[hunter_le five]

It doesn't look like mine, but that's not necessarily abnormal. I don't see anything that looks "wrong" either.

Can you describe your process?

 

[NickW802]

It doesn't look like mine, but that's not necessarily abnormal. I don't see anything that looks "wrong" either.

Can you describe your process?

As i stated i'm brand new to this so i don't really know what i'm doing but this is how i made it

i bought a bottle of kombucha from a local grocery store, took loose black tea leaves and brewed tea, let the tea cool to room temperature then added the kombucha to it in a mason jar. Added a pure cane sugar to it and placed a coffee filter over the jar and screwed the ring on tight. I made a mistake at the store and bought K-cups of black tea so it was finely ground and i was unable to strain it out of the tea, but since i didn't have any other options i tried to grow the scoby anyway. The tea leaves are all in the bottom of the jar still so i don't know if that will effect the growth or not, however most of the leaves stayed in the pot i brewed the tea in. Today would be day 7 of the process. How long do you typically let a scoby grow if making it from scratch?

 

[hunter_le five]

In the future I would recommend dissolving the sugar in the tea while it's still hot, and not using k-cup tea, but other than that, your process does not sound bad. How much tea and how much sugar and how much water?

I typically let the first batch go 2-3 weeks to grow the SCOBY, and then each subsequent batch gets 1 week.

 

[NickW802]

In the future I would recommend dissolving the sugar in the tea while it's still hot, and not using k-cup tea, but other than that, your process does not sound bad. How much tea and how much sugar and how much water?

I typically let the first batch go 2-3 weeks to grow the SCOBY, and then each subsequent batch gets 1 week.

now that you mention it, i believe i did dissolve the sugar in the tea, though i can't quite remember how much sugar i used. i think i used two cups of water, the mason jar ended up being about 50% tea and 50% kombucha. it's a pretty small batch. i used 3 k-cups of black tea so i guess that's about the equivalent of 3 teabags?

 

[eddiewould]

It looks fine to me. I did basically exactly the same thing as you. You will probably the SCOBY looks more normal in subsequent batches.

 

[NickW802]

awesome. thank you guys for the info. i was honestly about to dump it out and start over because it didn't look right. But i'll keep going and see how it turns out

 

[snarf]

The SCOBY looks fine for its age. It's still a bit thin and quite bubbly, but that should change over time.

 

[jmadway]

It looks nasty, but that's nothing new.