Just my trusty Grolsch bottle keeping me company.

This is my first batch? Should I leave the sediment on the bottom of the jar for the next batch? What about that floating stuff on top? It smells like kombucha. Just curious about next steps.

It's been about three and a half weeks since I started, using this recipe https://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-your-own-kombucha-scoby-cooking-lessons-from-the-kitchn-202596

I divided the mixture into two jars and got a pellicle on one after two and a half weeks. I transferred that to a bigger container, but this jar looks very different. No pellicle on top, just some oily spots. There are some wispy masses on the bottom. It doesn't smell bad, slightly vinegary, but I'm afraid to taste it. Should I just dump this one?

it probably has become kombucha vinegar atp but what if i diluted 500ml f1 kombucha with 250ml sweet water (just sugar dissolved in water) with 250ml fruit juice in a 1L flip top bottle?

last week post

This was last week

This is this week update

I kept it at 27°c

And undisputed

It is full of bubbles

I feel so happy about the progress (unless someone will notice anything wrong i would really appreciate it)

Can't wait untill it is ready

When can i tell ?

One of them with the large pulp it smells like kombucha

The other one i can't describe it

So, this is my second batch. The first one was small because I'd only gotten a small amount of starter liquid from someone. I think it was about 100mL, and I added maybe 600mL sweet tea to be safe. Left it for 10 days, bottled some, and left about 300mL to ferment a bit further before adding 3L sweet tea for the second batch.

When making the tea, I forgot to take out the bags (green tea) in time, so it was a bit on the stronger side. Now I went to check on day 8, and there are little tiny greenish specks visible on the new SCOBY (which has otherwise formed beautifully). I'm afraid I'm going to have to start over. And I've been really mindful of hygiene, I cleaned everything that touched the kombucha thoroughly. So I am still hoping the green spots are tea residue or yeast 🤞🏻 I'll check it again in 2 days and take out the SCOBY for close inspection.

Here are the pictures. I don't have a picture from what it looked like in the beginning but I can say with certainty that it definetily looked a shade darker before. It's also gotten a bit more...opaque? Like, I can't see my hand if I put it behind the jar. It also seems like the slightest bit thicker, more syruppy (well, what with the sugar I guess kombucha kind of is a syrup lol)

Anyway, here's what I did:

- Boil 1 L of water with 100 grams of sugar and 3 bags of decaf green tea (I'm sensitive to caffeine).

- Let it cool down completely to room temperature.

- Add 200 grams of storebought raw kombucha. I made sure to check the label to see if it was unpasteurised and had a live culture.

- Let it sit. I stirred with a clean bamboo stick everyday to make sure the culture could easily access and eat the sugar.

It kinda smells like my Sourdough starter on a good day. It's been steadily 20 to 20,5 degrees celsius inside the house.

I'm a bit scared to do a taste test though, and I don't have a PH-meter yet. What do you guys think, can I taste test or should I wait some more days? Any thoughts on the pellicle forming on the second picture?

UPDATE: Sadly, I think I'm going to have to kill Henk. Not because I think he's doing badly, but because I want to monitor better what I'm doing. I'll definetily stop stirring in my next try, and will take pictures and measure PH from beginning. Coming saturday my foodgrade PH-meter will come by mail 😊👍 I will still try to kickstart things using decaf green tea. And I think I'll call the thing "Gerda", next.

My favorite fruits so far are apples, particularly banana flavored apples.

I have a large dispenser that I use to make 4 gallons at a time, and it's textured, so one of those thermometer strips won't attached well to the vessel. Any other suggestions to help me keep track of the temp accurately?

Has anyone ever found any non carbonated kombucha. The carbonation messes with my heartburn sometimes. Thanks!

This is my first time attempting to make kombucha and this is my scoby. Is it okay that there are holes in the scoby? Also, is it okay that I peeled one of the layers off?? (The brown stuff is cinnamon, not mold)

i was recently in Sardinia and loved the liquor Mirto they make. i found some dried myrtle berries in a store and bought them and want to flavor my 2F with them. how would you suggest using them and should i add another flavor to it?

Check out the video to see what happens when you use simple sugars like honey (which has minimal sucrose).

The fermentation is extremely fast and hyperactive. This is using 180 grams of raw sunflower honey added after the "tea" is cooled for about 7 Liters of water. After 6-7 days at 26.5-28C all of the sugar is completely fermented out leaving a nice acidic taste similar to acidity of GT's kombucha. Imperceptible taste of vinegar since sunflower honey is 70% glucose.

This is about 10 hours after poring, I had about 700ml of starter in there.

What's also interesting is that its VERY LOUD. It sounds like something is being fried on a frying pan. I can hear it buzz from 30 feet away across the living room. Unfortunately you cant hear it in the video due to noise cancellation on the phone.

The particles you see floating around and the cake at the top is fermenting bee pollen. Fermenting it with kombucha makes the bioactives in it about 10 times more bio-available. It does end up being mixed into the pellice, however you can just pour before the pellice forms. The pellice does not form right away due to all the CO2 and the activity, it only starts forming near the end of the fermentation when there isn't much disturbance at the top layer. The downside of the pellicle mixing with the pollen is that you either need to clean the pollen off to eat it or to eat the whole pellicle.

Also it makes absolutely no difference in anything when you switch your culture to something else. Previous brew was rooibos using pure dextrose as a sugar source. The one before that was tarragon with dextrose. Now its sunflower honey, USDA organic bee pollen, butterfly pea flower, lemongrass, jiaogulan, cinnamon, green cardamon, start anise mixed together. I've done other variants of different herbs and spices in different containers and there is also 0 difference when switching either the carbon source to any fermentable sugar or even fiber, nor is there any noticeable difference with whatever was used to make the tea.

I've done a couple brews with just inulin, however the taste was not that great as inulin is mostly fructose so there was next to no glucose derived acids which produce good taste and too much vinegar. Carbonation was also impossible due to there being no yeast activity since yeast cannot metabolise inulin.

Hey all, third batch here and first time going big.
My first two small batches were great. About 90 g sugar per liter, green tea, sweet and sour by day 7 or so. Loved them.
Then I moved to a 10 L jar and went with the wiki ratio instead, so roughly 60 g/L (cane sugar this time). Day 6 now and it's really sour with zero sweetness, a bit bitter, and the new pellicle is super thin. No mold, smells fine.
I'm guessing it's just the lower sugar? Should I add sugar to the jar now, or just bottle it today and sweeten the bottles? And is a thin pellicle in a wide jar normal?
Next batch I'm going back to 90 g/L. Thanks!

I let my original batch of F1 go for too long and the pH was at about 2.5 and tasted quite vinegary. So I used 1 cup as a strong starter for the next batch with 5 cups of sweet black tea, and the starting pH was about 3.5 or a little lower. I know the recommended starting pH is 4.0-4.2, but is there any issue with a low starting pH? Does the fermentation slow down if it’s already at what a typical finished F1 pH would be? I plan to shorten F1 to about 5-6 days at a temp of 78F. Thanks!

I’m sure newbies asked this all the time but I’m genuinely concerned by the look of this…

Hi! This is our first time home brewing kombucha and I’m trying to be chill about it lol. Does this look right? Today is day 6 so we are planning on doing the taste test tomorrow as long as others think it looks correct and safe. I know the top is supposed to form a growth but I want to make sure it doesn’t look like any mold or anything to be concerned about. I also feel like there is a lot more growth within the brew from the scoby than what I see in other pictures in this subreddit…. Any feedback welcome and if you think something looks off please let me know!!!

Hello I am trying to diagnose an issue with my 2F. Specifically my 2F failed to carbonate at all.

These have been sitting out since 10/7 which should be plenty of time for a live culture with enough sugar to carbonate sufficiently in sealed bottles. I haven't done any burping, and today upon inspection there appears to be zero carbonation or gas build up whatsoever in this batch.

Seal problem?

These are swing top bottles from Amazon, I've ran a couple successful batches through these already with no sealing issues however I went back and read a couple negative reviews that reported poor seals. With that said those two on the end are totally random swing top's that I already had when I started brewing and they've also worked in the past w/o issue, so I'm using them as a soft control to say that it's not a seal issue. Also turning these bottles over they don't leak at all.

Temperature problem?

It's colder in my garage as fall comes and could have slowed down the fermentation process, however with absolutely no carbonation or gas build up, it feels like there aren't any reactions happening in the bottle. Could affect it though I guess.

Sugar problem?

I use 1.5 cups of sugar in my initial batch of 1F and only allow two weeks of fermentation, there should be plenty of sugar for 2F on top of the juices I already add for flavor.

Culture problem?

My last thought, and most likely based on the fact that to my observation it doesn't appear there is any reaction taking place (if one or more other issues were happening, it would slow down fermentation or reduce gas build up, but you'd see some gas or a little right?) because there seems to be no gas built up at all, no carbonation, no fizz when I open the bottles up for the first time in almost a week... the culture must have died somehow.

The four flavors shown are pineapple ginger, cran-razz ginger, hibiscus rose ginger, and apple cider. Two of those flavors I had to heat the tea/cider before mixing, though I allowed ample time for cooling the heated fluids and even left them in the fridge to do so. So I don't think I killed the culture from mixing something too hot...

Consensus?

What do you guys think happened? Is there a factor I'm not considering, some other unknown?

To me it seems like a dead culture causing the lack of carbonation.

TLDR

Trying to diagnose why my 2F is not carbonating. I think maybe dead culture, although not certain.

My kombucha looks all sorts of weird. Can someone help me identify these different parts of my scoby? I have two currently brewing. Unsure if it is moldy or kahm yeast. Any advice on how to avoid this in the future? Where do you put your kombucha to ferment? Mine was on top of my kitchen fridge. None of it is fuzzy

Could this be kahm? First time making kombucha from scratch and been searching here and online for how to distinguish kahm from just baby scoby doing its thing and still in doubt
Any advice welcome!

This is scoby hotel, ~6 months old. Black tea and sugar only.

I read through Is it mold? Is it normal? What's growing in your kombucha? Start here! but there is such a wide variety images.

Hi, a thrift store near me is selling a glass jar that has a metal spout built into it. Not very uncommon, I've seen them on here from time to time.

The jar has been there for a while (no surprise, they have it priced at a whopping $25) but its a nice looking jar and it would be very handy. I'm not sure if the spout is metal (or what type) or if it's plastic with a metal "leaf" over it. If it's plastic I probably wouldnt get it, or I'd replace it. I'll probably need to replace the seal, regardless.

The metal being in contact with the brew constantly, could this affect the brew at all?

Hi everyone, this is my very first time brewing Kombucha, and this is what my first fermentation looks like right now. After going down a google rabbit hole, I think it might be Kahm yeast due to the texture, but it moves like a scoby?

Also if this is Kahm can I just scoop it out?