The Scoby Delivers

Man, last night was crazy.  I drank, like, three bottles of kombucha.

Voila, three utterly perfect bottles of kombucha. If I was disease ridden before and did not know it, I certainly must be healthy now, for we have emptied every one.

The original scoby became a mother and produced a baby, which we put to work when we began to brew two jars at once. Our refrigerator currently contains six bottles of kombucha. Two are fermented with pomegranate lime juice, two have some grated ginger stewing at the bottom, and two are original scoby-flavored. The juiced-up kombucha doesn’t taste any different from the unflavored version. This makes me sad. The ginger flavored kombucha is epic, like what ginger ale would taste like if it was actually made of ginger.

Two new jars are brewing in the corner and should be fully fermented this weekend, which means we are going to have to chug an enormous amount of kombucha or make new friends with indigestion. Dave now has a great deal of confidence in making things in jars and took up pickling. I'm still not quite sure how he did it and believe that some wizardry was indubitably involved. It's much prettier than a jar of bacteria pancakes.

Scoby City

The bacterial city within our gallon-sized glass jar continued to multiply over a three week period.

Conception.

Age: 2 weeks.

A scoby is born.

What began as a rural community of God-fearing microbes in uncharted beverage territory became increasingly more populated, enjoyed the cerebral stimulation of the Enlightenment, experienced rapid industrialization, endured a bloody revolution, and became a full-fledged scoby ready for fermenting a gallon of white tea into kombucha.

We brewed a large sauce pot full of white tea for our first batch of kombucha. Dave courageously reached into the jar, extracted the slimy disc with his bare hands and relocated it to a large glass bowl with a quarter of the jar’s contents. The rest of the jar was emptied into the sink and carefully cleaned. The slightest smear of soap can annihilate a bacterial civilization.

By the time the pot of tea cooled, Dave realized that we didn't add a cup of sugar to the tea, a blunder that would have spurred the slow starvation of our sweet-toothed scoby. Dave reheated the saucepot of tea as the clock struck 11:00 pm and the scoby dozed under a fresh white towel.

Once the second pot of tea came to room temperature – with ample assistance from the freezer – we poured the tea into the jar and released the scoby into the depths of the tea. Then we covered it with a towel secured with a rubber band.

Now we wait.

Many questions occur to me. Did we grow the scoby correctly? Does the scoby know that I'm thinking about it? Can it feel human emotions like love and anguish? Will the resulting kombucha make us blind like bathtub gin?  These questions and more will be answered when the kombucha is unveiled.