So the kombucha mother actually looks like this. It's also called scoby, which is actually an acronym for 'Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeast'. Apparently we don't really know why they form this gelatinous chunk. It's a classic example of 'we know how subatomic particles work but don't know much about bacterias eating black tea and sugar'. Cultures for Health lists 4 different bacterias and 3 strains of yeast that are living together. Cute.

So usually, one of those things gets dumped into almost a gallon of black tea and two cups of white sugar. But I didn't have a gallon jar and only pint jars. And I wanted to experiment with different ingredients, so I decided to cut the cute scoby above into 4 pieces. Apparently this is okay, because as much as it looks like one motherly entity, it's actually a symbiotic colony with millions of microbes all stuck together for some reason.

I didn't blend it. I just cut in half the leathery pancake on top (that's how Cultures for Health describes it), and also cut in half the chunky root right below it. I stopped calling it a mother and started calling it a scoby, because it felt weird to chop it up.

I brewed about a pint of tea with two cups of brown sugar (Little did I know that most instructions call for white sugar instead of brown.. but I got raw brown sugar, so we'll see what happens). After pouring the tea into each jar, I filled the jar with water to bring down the temp, and did different things to each.

From left to right,

1) I threw in for a few minutes a Yogi Throat Comfort teabag I had into the lukewarm black sugar tea. Mostly roots.

2) I threw in a Yogi Detox teabag. It also has the root part of the scoby.

3) It's plain kombucha. It's the 'control', if you'd like. It has the other root part.

4) I added a small teaspoonful of honey.

Day 3. The two pancake parts (1 & 4) seems to be doing pretty well. Stringy things have been forming, and the scoby is floating on top. The plain one with a root part seems to be doing okay- apparently it doesn't need to float to be doing the right thing. It might just be a weight thing. 2 did float at first but seems to have sunk. Here are more close ups:

1: With Throat Comfort tea.

2: With detox tea. This guy doesn't have strings forming on top, and the brown things are just around the scoby- It makes me think that it might be sick with all the detox root nutrients in it. It's also not as foggy as other jars.. weird symptoms, but we'll see how it does!

3. Plain. Strings formation is pretty visible here.

4. With honey. This one has a lot of darker brown parts, but as long as it's not black, it should be okay. It has some mighty strings growing though.

It takes any where from 8 to 14 days for kombucha to be ready and for the scoby to double it's size- so we'll have to wait and see. In the meantime, update on my fermenteam:

 Ginger bug, sourdough starter, and french press sauerkraut! They're all doing jolly well.

Excellent.

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