The Ugly Truth about the Amazing Drinks - Kombucha

If you've tried homemade kombucha and fell in love with it, or read/heard about all the health benefits, you might be ready to start your own brew.  

It is a wonderful thing: much cheaper than almost any store-bought drink, be it soda, flavored water, juice, or pre-made kombucha and more health benefits that any other drink that I know of.

But as we know, sometimes the magic behind the curtain is not nearly as attractive as the finished product.  This is certainly one of those cases.

I mentioned in a previous post my difficulty in dealing with the wonderful SCOBY that makes the delicious and healthy drink possible.

I'm going to share with you some of photos of my healthy SCOBY in order to prepare you.  Again, this is a healthy SCOBY.  Remind yourself that it is similar to making beer and just jump into making it.  The squeamishness about it goes away very quickly.

The first photo is of a SCOBY sitting in starter liquid while I prepare a fresh batch of tea.

Healthy SCOBY

The photo below is of the bottom of a SCOBY.  Notice the darker brown areas; those are yeast growths.  They are completely natural and are even a good sign of a healthy SCOBY!  You do not want to see black, as that could be a sign of mold.  If an area looks black tear a hole in the SCOBY and see what is under that layer.  More than likely, it is some yeast caught between layers of baby SCOBY.  If you check it and it is brown, it is yeast.  If it actually is black, throw that whole batch and your SCOBY away and start all over.  There is no fixing a mold outbreak.

Healthy SCOBY from the bottom.

Here you can see the layers of a healthy SCOBY.  Every batch of kombucha that you make produces a baby SCOBY.  They layer upon themselves like a stack of pancakes or puff pastry.  Some people also refer to them as mushrooms.  You can remove some of these layers and create a SCOBY hotel.  I highly recommend doing this so that you have back-up in the case of mold.

Healthy SCOBY with layers of baby SCOBY's

Yeast will also string down from the SCOBY sometimes and almost always float in the bottom of the gallon jar.  This, too, is normal.  You want this yeast in your brew.  The yeast feeds on the sugar, producing healthy benefits and decreasing the amount of sugar in the drink. 

Healthy Brew with Yeast Floating in Bottom

It is slimy and I don't even know how to describe the yeast strings and floaters, except not appetizing.  My daughters and I have embraced the grossness of it and now have fun getting people to sample our beverages.  Once they say they like it, we show them our "pets".  We never show people the fermenting jars first, because it is really hard to get people to try it after the fact.

When I say that they are our pets, I am serious.  Our rotating kombucha brew is named Scooby (yes, I know, bad pun), our conitnuous brew is named Shaggy, our milk kefirs are named Fred and Daphne, and the water kefir is named Scrappy because the grains are active and bubbly when it is happy and well fed.  The girls love showing them off and sometimes we even let people pet them after washing their hands thoroughly and rinsing with vinegar.