Rinsing Your SCOBY Novice brewers will sometimes rinse their SCOBY before adding it to sweet tea to brew kombucha, much as you might rinse a handful of cherry tomatoes before tossing them into a salad. A SCOBY, by contrast, doesn't need rinsing.
Always keep your brew jar covered with a breathable, but tightly-woven cloth. Do not use cheese cloth. When working with your scoby, make sure you have thoroughly washed your hands prior to touching the scoby.
That is why it is NEVER RECOMMENDED to simply wash off the culture in water or vinegar. Once again: if you do end up with mold, get rid of your culture along with all other cultures and liquid from that batch and start over fresh from your SCOBY Hotel.
If both the baby and mother SCOBYs were at the top of the vessel and they are now attached, you can either keep them together or gently separate the two. Place them in a clean glass container (large mason jar or mug) and add 1-2 cups of your fermented Kombucha (starter tea) into the container with them.
The easiest way to store your kombucha scoby is in a sealed container in the fridge. Always label the jar so that no one in the household gets rid of it by mistake! The scoby then goes dormant and can be stored for up to 6 months.
If a SCOBY turns black or has black patches, that means it's died. You should toss that too.
Bacteria and yeast do not survive at too high temperatures. If the tea is too hot for you to dip your finger in, then it is too hot for the kombucha scoby! If the kombucha scoby was added to tea that was too hot, it's probably what killed it. Ouch!
However, if the kombucha brew is left for several weeks or even months beyond that target time, the SCOBY continues to feed off the liquid in the fermentation vessel. Meaning, it will eat up every bit of available sugar and tea that it can, converting it into acetic acid instead – aka, vinegar.
A moldy or dead scoby is quite distinctive, and there is no mistaking it when you see it. The mold will be white or colorful, fuzzy and dry. It can appear as spots on the scoby, or cover the scoby altogether. A dead scoby will be black.
Every scoby can be used four times before it gets too old and needs to be discarded.
The direct answer is that you never need to replace your SCOBY if well taken care of, but when it comes to the pellicles (or “mothers” as they are so lovingly referred to), those can be thinned out with each brew.
Discard SCOBYs that rip or tear easily. Thick cultures can still be weak. To test it, pinch the SCOBY between the thumb and forefinger; if it easily presses through, the culture can be let go. Sometimes weak culture can be attached to strong culture.
Put simply, kombucha SCOBYs can be reused for many years. Realistically, however, you simply won't need it to last that long. Your SCOBY grows and divides with each batch of kombucha, so you will constantly be growing new SCOBYs. Simply remove the older layers and transfer the new layers to your next batch.
A SCOBY may be safely split in half. Make sure your scissors or knife are clean before handling it to avoid contamination. Once you've completed this, you'll notice that your SCOBY grows to match the container's form, which usually means a circular disc since Kombucha is most often brewed in round glass jars.
This is the simplest option – you can brew a normal batch of kombucha with multiple SCOBYs in the one jar. Normally they will fuse together into a mega SCOBY over time. Depending on what sort of jar you are using, this can make them difficult to get in and out when harvesting your fresh kombucha brew.
A healthy scoby will continuously generate 'babies', which are essentially layers that grow on top of if it that can be peeled off to create brand new scobies, that can be used to brew more batches of 'booch. These 'babies' can be separated when they are about 1/8 to 1/4 of an inch thick.
As a result, the SCOBY can produce harmful bacteria and aspergillus (a toxin-producing fungus), which can cause illness. I loved brewing kombucha, but I didn't want to make myself ill from it. I decided to stop brewing.
The general consensus is that SCOBY needs air to ferment as air and sugar are what keep yeast and bacteria alive. In many fermentation tanks, a tube to release carbon dioxide pressure is attached while the tank is kept airtight to prevent unwanted bacteria and yeast from getting into the brew.
For now, you should know that your mother SCOBY can sink, float at the top, float sideways in the middle—it doesn't matter what position they are in. In fact, they will likely move throughout the brew!
The scoby will continue to grow to 1/4 inch thick.
You want the scoby to be 1/4 inch thick. At day 20, it had reached that thickness, but I let it hang out until day 25 until I had enough time to make the next batch of sweet tea to brew the actual kombucha.
If you check on your scoby and see that it's turned black, then the scoby has died. The best practice is to throw it away and any batch of tea that was made using it.
Storing a SCOBY between brews (1 week)
Fortunately, this is super easy – just leave it. Leave your SCOBY and some first fermentation kombucha (i.e. your starter for the next batch) in the jar at room temperature for up to a week. (Learn the best places to store kombucha).
Looking to make your own wine or malt vinegar? Or perhaps starting your own fruit vinegar? A vinegar mother can help you with that! A vinegar mother is a cellulose composed of various bacteria a yeast – also known as a SCOBY.
Each individual scoby can brew for around 6-9 months depending on how it is used but in reality you generally use the newest scoby you have so you will have switched to a new baby well before then.
you can also chop up pieces of your SCOBY and bury. them in the soil to add a boost of nutrients. A SCOBY is. also great for your compost.