Hey, everyone! My family and I made Mango-Pineapple Kombucha (7 days 1F, 4 days 2F). Really happy about the outcome! The fruit combination and the fizz was amazing. Happy brewing!

I was researching on kombucha and found this really helpful diagram - https://thekombu.com/blogs/journal/anatomy-of-kombucha

I love the flavor of tamarind and I think it could pair really well with kombucha!
Do you have any recipes? Especially using tamarind pulp (paste is harder to find)

PS: Generally, I like my kombucha to be quite sour and not too fizzy :)

This is my first ever time brewing kombucha. I fermented it on March 21st and this is what it looks like today. I will add that up until last night/this morning my original scoby was at the bottom of the container. It just recently floated up top. Did I do something wrong? Why does the scoby look like that?

What are the best kombucha flavors you have done. I want to do hibiscus cinnamon, lavender with something, raspberry, chai, coffee kombucha. Any advice on this?

How can i add to my kombucha ginger like i need to blend it add sugar and something more or am i wrong ?

And secod question can i add achohol to my 2f or will it just kill the bacteria ?

I don’t see any white spores or patches , everything looks shiny but I see bubbles trapped inside white spots

I let this sit for too long while I was away, allready expected it to go bad. PS: always be carefull if you have this, inhaling the spores can be really harmfull. Also still having mold remnants in your container can ruin your next batch, always clean with hot (boiling water). Goodluck everyone.

Hi! I brewed kombucha back in 2020/2021 and loved it. Unfortunately, I lost custody of my SCOBY during a breakup. I had gotten it from a friend, so I've never actually bought one. I live in the middle of nowhere, so probably ~200 miles from anywhere that might sell them. I've looked around online a bit and there seems to be a lot of options, so I'm wondering where the best place would be. I'd prefer buying from a female or POC owned small business if at all possible. TIA!

I go back and forth. This batch seems way more yeasty than normal so just for texture I’d probably filter this one when bottling. Just wanted to see what everyone else normally does.

Hi folks, I was wondering if it is a good idea to use honey as a sugar substitute for the first fermentation or if it is better to add it as a flavour during the second fermentation.

Since it has a high sugar content, I don't know which option would be best.

Thanks!

Anyone in the Austin area need some f2 bottles? I have way more of these than I’ll ever use. They’ll need seals. Free to a good home!

Hello all

EDIT Apparently I can't upload pic when editing, so it's in the comment section.

I've looked through the Community Guidelines but haven't found a picture that resembles what I have in my glass vessel.

So, first time kombucha fermentator (?) here, and I got a small, flat piece of SCOBY from a friend with starter fluid. I steeped tea, sugar and into a glass jar along with this scoby. I did it Saturday evening last week and a week later today I opened it up and saw this. I have had it in the living room with a towel over and rubber band around the mouth of the jar.

Is this normal? I can't spot any mold on top - the black things are from loose tea; learned my lesson and will use tea bag for the loose tea - AND not using Earl Grey with bergamotte. You live you learn.

But should I start over again? Don't want to bottle mold and ruin a batch.

The smell is very vinegary with some sweetness to it - smell wise I would wait a few more days until it's more in balance. I have not tasted it yet so can't say anything about that balance

What do you say? Is this the SCOBY adjusting? Should I be patient and wait a few more days to see if mold or kahm will form?

Recipe: 1 liter water, 20 gr. black tea, 100 gr white cane sugar

Greetings, all. Would any experts be kind enough to tell me if my scoby has become corrupted? No fuzz, or blue/green coloring. Just a kind of brownish, gray blob. Thank you for your time

I’ve tried to make kombucha for the first time in my live with violet and yellow oolong teas. I also decided that I love the flavour too much to make only a few bottles, so I made around 20 literes. (didn’t had enough bottles for the project so the rest I couldn’t get into them I just drink straight out of my fermentation jar, thank God for jars with the tap!!)

I've got a perplexing kombucha situation and desperately need some experienced advice.

About a month ago, I bought a SCOBY online (Amazon). I followed the instructions and brewed my sweet tea, adding the starter liquid and the pellicle. After two weeks, I was expecting some tang, but the tea was still overwhelmingly sweet. I also noticed the pellicle had sunk to the bottom, which seemed odd based on my previous brewing experience.

Then came the concerning part: when I fished out the original Amazon SCOBY, it was really dark in color. It didn't look healthy at all, and frankly, I was worried it had died or something was wrong, so I ended up throwing it away.

Thinking the batch might still be salvageable, I took a healthy-looking pellicle layer from another batch that was fermenting perfectly and dropped it into the questionable (still very sweet) tea.

Now, it's been about two weeks since I added the new pellicle. I'm seeing the pellicle floating on top and even forming new layers, which is what I'd expect from a healthy fermentation.

However, I'm really worried about the initial two weeks where the original (dark, sunken) SCOBY was in the sweet tea. Could there have been any undesirable bacteria or mold growth that I didn't see? Is this batch still safe to drink or use as starter liquid, even though the new SCOBY seems to be doing its thing?

My main concerns are:

• Safety: Could the initial period with the potentially dead/bad SCOBY have contaminated the batch in a way that's now masked by the new fermentation?
• Taste: Even if safe, will the flavor be off due to the prolonged sweet period?
• Starter Liquid: If the new fermentation progresses, would you trust this batch to be used as starter liquid for future brews?

Has anyone else experienced a dark, sunken SCOBY from an online purchase? What did you do? Any advice on whether I should proceed with this batch or just cut my losses and start fresh with a known good starter?

Thanks so much for your help! I'm a bit nervous about this one.

Hey! I used to brew kombucha (with success) some years ago. It did however go bad after fermenting with fruit juice...

I recently got a new scoby and tried brewing again. It's been fermenting for 8 days now and a thin film has built up starting a new scoby layer, but I'm a bit sceptical about some dark dots that started showing a few days ago.

It smells fine, but would like some opinions.

16g black tea 240g sugar 1760g water Scoby and ~150 ml backslop

Booch from above and scoby.

If it is, should I just start from scratch?

Hiiii I think my kombucha is getting bad or my Scoby is contaminated! What do you think? Is this normal? Is my second time doing kombucha 🫣 it has brown weird things

Instead of steeping tea in boiled water, i decided to do something different.

I added loose leaf tea to cold water, then brought it to a boil. Turned off the stove and let it sit 15 minutes. Added the sugar and then strained out the tea.

The result was dark and very cloudy. Almost muddy looking.

When I finished F1, the tea was super fizzy and turned out to be some of my best kombucha yet. I was worried it would be bitter, but it wasn't.

Have you tried brewing this way? Any reason why it would be a problem?

Hi, kind of new to the hobby. I tried to search for similar images but founs nothing. What is that? Is that a new scoby? Or mold(like the white one on the left border)?

I posted yesterday about getting courage to start my kombucha over after my depression killed it a couple years ago. Today, I finally did it. My first gallon in forever. Thank you for the suggestions yesterday to get a commercial kombucha to use as my starter. I feel much more confident about this.

I am going to make a simple ginger kombucha from this batch- just to get back into the swing of things. Keeping it simple.

Hey y'all, this is my first batch EVER and it's been 7 weeks since I've put it to fermentate. Named this one "kumquat". Anyway I've been wondering if this gone bad or just not conventionally attractive.