Creating a SCOBY hotel for your kombucha
- Aunt Plantsy
- Sep 23, 2022
- 2 min read
What do you do after you’ve gotten the hang of making and flavoring kombucha and have multiple SCOBYs (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast) to care for? It is like any fermentation process with the need to feed it to keep it alive.
The liquid that the original SCOBY grew in is known as the “starter tea.” Since you need two cups of starter tea for every gallon of kombucha being made, any remaining tea can be used to store the SCOBYs.
Store the SCOBYs in a glass container. This can even be in the one you are using currently to make your kombucha. Or, depending on how many SCOBYs you want to grow, you can get a new gallon glass container just for them. This is their “hotel.”
Keep two cups of the starter tea in there with them so they can be fed, and make sure they don’t use it all up or they will dry up and die. To prevent this from happening, go ahead and brew yourself some more sweet tea. Follow the same brewing directions as if you are making more kombucha (ie: 1 gallon water, 8 bags of tea, 1 cup of sugar). See previous post for more thorough directions.
With each batch of kombucha you brew, new SCOBYs will grow. They grow on top of the older one and continue to thicken and split into more. As they get thicker, they will need to be pulled apart with clean hands. Wait until they are about two inches thick before doing this.
Keep this hotel covered with a tightly woven cheesecloth or a breathable linen towel to keep bugs out of it.
What happens if you get too many SCOBYs and don’t know what to do with them? This happens to me all the time. I usually give them away to friends with two cups of starter tea to get them going, or feed them to my chickens or my worm farm. You can also compost them. I’ve also seen many blogs on how to cut them up and make them into food products. If I ever get that ambitious, I will write about that too!
I hope this has helped you get started into making your own kombucha!
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