I killed the SCOBY, but I did not kill the yeast, it seems.
I have no idea what I did wrong with my kombucha SCOBY, but somehow I killed the bacteria, leaving just the yeast. I ended up making beer, instead of kombucha, on my last several batches.
Since I don’t drink alcohol, the beer was not very useful. As I don’t have any spare SCOBYs, I decided to try something I’ve heard about, using commercial kombucha to raise new SCOBYs.
I bought a Synergy kombucha and poured it into two quart jars with a little raw agave, covered them with cheese cloth secured with rubber bands, and placed them in a cool, dark place. I will report back to you when I see how well it works.
Because I didn’t know whether the bacteria was still alive, I tossed out the two cultures that were in the jars I had started using the last bits of previous batches.
Please share your kombucha dreams or kombucha nightmares!
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Thubten,
How do you know you killed the scoby – what told you that. I’ve been brewing for about 3 years now and some babies have looked really weird but I just assumed that was their personality. Batches were still coming out fizzy so I thought everything was okay. That’s why I’m wondering how you knew for sure that you killed it?
Jan
Jan!
Thanks for asking how I knew. I didn’t kill the whole SCOBY, just the bacteria part of the symbiotic organism.
The way that I knew that was that the batches were turning out very high alcohol content, even though they were being brewed in the presence of oxygen. This means that the yeast were working (putting out alcohol), but there was nothing there to eat the alcohol (what the bacteria do.
What do you think might have caused the die off of the bacteria? Or alternately, what else could have caused the high alcohol level, except the absence of bacteria?
can Kombucha mothers get too cold and die. How do you know? do just have to wait a few weeks to see if a new mother starts. I think I may have froze mine. Oooops
From what I recall from high school biology, bacteria and yeast don’t die if/when frozen, so I would be very surprised if this were the case.
I have a similar problem, my kombucha doesn’t grow and it doesn’t really produce the right kind of cha, first when i got it the Scoby worked fine, then i once accidentally poured too hot water on it, the temperature was probably around 45 but i really don know but since then the poor thing isn’t really working, the brew i get is still kombucha-like; it smells like kombucha so something is happening but it’s not fizzy and it is too sweet so i guess in my case it may be the opposite; that the yeast died but the bacteria is still there? I really don’t know, maybe it isn’t dead but only need time to re-vigor.
I have made several additional wrongs with the poor scoby, once or twice i got mold on it and i rinsed it in quite cold water but that shouldn’t kill it, thing is that some are saying that one should toss the scoby away if you get mold but i haven’t had problem with mold since then, maybe because i had to start over with only new water that the scoby is having hard time to re-vigor?
Anyway, thankful for some advice, i don’t wanna go out in the woods and bury it before i know definitely.
David,
Thank you for your comment. I’m not the Kombucha expert. You’ll want to contact Dave the Kombucha guy at dave@getkombucha.com. Let me know what he says!
Thubten