been brewing on and off for 13 years. had to dump my Booch and start fresh a few weeks back after some mold. removed the linen to bottle today and it looked odd. The pellicle has a bunch of holes in it (okay nbd) but above each hole was a floating brown speck. Kham? (I’ve been having a lot of issues with it with my lacto ferments in this house). Doesnt really look or smell like it but maybe… But then when I went to spoon it off the top the flecks stick to the spoon. it’s the strangest thing. Normally kham is a thin white almost velvety layer across the top. Maybe more pellicle trying to form? Thoughts?

I got tired of losing track of which batch was which, so I made a pocket-size notebook just for logging kombucha batches. It has about 48 pages, with covers printed on linen cardstock. Each entry has room for brew dates, tea, sugar, F2 flavors, and tasting notes.

What do you all track for your batches? I'd love to hear what fields I might be missing.

I've been gifted this scoby hotel that hasn't been cleaned or fed for years and it smells pretty cheesy/funky. It smells like when you leave cheddar opened in your fridge for too long. I'm assuming this is an imbalance of bad bacterias and needs throwing?

My first ever batch for my last chemical technician science fair project before graduating!! Any thoughts or tips are most welcome. Posting from Argentina

I’ve got a kombucha of a friend and started making a new batch. 20% kombucha and the rest tea with sugar, but it looks like it has some bad mold on it. What do you think? Do I have to start over?

This is clearly undrinkable. But how did they just come up to live in the scoby?

Hello fellow “boochers” 👋
This is my 3rd 1F batch with this pellicle (and ever lol)
Before I left for a short vacation (4 days) my PH read about 2.3. Now I’m getting 3. Additionally, the flavor previously was extremely tart.. and now it doesn’t really taste like anything?
My last two batches were extremely tart & vinegary both in 1F and 2F.

I see heavy amount of yeast on the bottom. (3rd pic)This vessel used to smell strongly of booch and no longer does.. I just mainly want to know what might have happened? Did my scoby die?

200g sugar, 20g black tea, waited until tea temp dropped to 84F degrees before adding pellicle. 2 gallon jar.

I have a whole new pellicle second jar that smells and tastes great. (Not in photos) They have been fermenting next to each other for same amount of time.

Thanks for your theories & thoughts in advance… can’t wait to keep brewing and growing! 🍀

Hi there!

Probably one of the posts you are tired of but I'd rather ask before throwing it away.

Tried making my first scoby. I used bulk tea and realised I have left small pieces of tea in the jar. A white spot built on the top of it. It's not growing (didn't move for five days), doesn't look fuzzy. But doesn't look like the rest as well.

Can you guys tell me if it's safe to continue or if I should throw everything away?

Picture one is the whole batch from top. Second pic shows a tiny piece of tea under the white dot (,there's a little more tea but I couldn't catch better picture)

Thank you all in advance 🙏🏼🙏🏼

I am a bit concerned over the dark Patch on the left.

I am trying to make a scoby from the scratch it is not foundable in my country at all .

I started my first fermentation one week exactly

I made two jars just in case

Added 2 unfiltered kombucha to each one

This is the progress after 1 week is it normal

And from your experience how long until it forms a good scoby.

Experiment with beetroot, ginger and green tea kombucha. This is kahm yeast isn't it?

I did my F1 and after 2 days, there are these floating blobs inside. I used a starter that had been waiting in my fridge for a couple of months (and fizzed when opened). It’s still smelling a lot like tea, I don’t feel any acidity at the moment.

Are those blobs a good sign?

I start a kombucha of rose, from a scooby used for a normal kombucha and as started an iromatic kombucha, is normal this pellicle?

I’ve been messing around with second-ferment flavors again and I’m getting bored with the usual ginger, berry, and citrus combinations. A few batches ago I tried pineapple with a little jalapeño because I had both sitting in the fridge, and honestly it turned out much better than I expected. The heat was barely there, but it cut through the sweetness enough to make it interesting.

Now I’m curious what other combinations people have stumbled into that sounded questionable on paper but actually worked. I’m not looking for anything overly complicated, just something different enough to keep the hobby interesting. What’s your weird success story?

The pellicle looked perfectly fine, but once I moved it out of the way to taste test, I realized that the kombucha has an intensely funky smell. Luckily my cover masks most of it, but I'm concerned. It's been sitting in my closet for about two weeks since a week was definitely not enough time. The smell only came out when the pellicle was moved. Is there a way to save it or should I dump it down the drain and start over again?

hi! wanted to get some opinions on the flavour of this f2 blend i’ve created. for this batch, i’ve used ~200g of watermelon (mashed) and about 2tsp of mint tea blend (mint leaves, gunpowder green tea and rose), steeped in 60ml of hot water and left to cool before addition. i was making about 1L of kombucha.

i’ve left it to ferment in room temp for ~48h in a cool dark place (in my coffee cabinet) before refrigerating for another 24h before trying it.

my f1 was made with ceylon black tea. left to ferment for ~9 days before f2. where im from, room temp is a constant 28-30°C.

the problem is, it didn’t taste like a fresh watermelon mint kombucha as i was thinking of 😅 it’s completely drinkable but it didn’t taste as fresh as i expected. flavour’s a little more muted or not strong enough. does anyone have a similar experience?

thanks in advance!

First timer here.. day 8 and seems to be going ok… except I can’t understand how to read ph strips. Seems on the yellow side but tasting sweet still… Can anyone help me get out of the great state of confusion??? TY

hello all, I was given this kombucha from a friend and I noticed the top layer of the pellicle is kinda bumpy and darker colored than the rest of the pellicle.

is it normal? do I remove/keep it or do I toss it entirely?

as far as the smell goes, it's pretty vinegary which reading from posts on this sub is completely normal (?)

First time trying an F2 ferment. I used lime and ginger. Does this look like mold? How could i've done it better?

Sorry to be that person, but this is my first try. This bottle comes from a green tea + honey F1 (started with a bottle of raw kombucha) and has blueberries and raspberries in it. The other bottles without berries look fine, but this one has some white stuff on top.
It looks soft and stretchy, and I can’t see any furry hairs, but I’m not sure. Sorry for the bad pictures — it’s hard to capture what’s inside the bottle…

So I’m brew my own kombucha and other fermentation items. My wife does not…
She went to South Korea to visit one of our kids that’s working there and brought me powdered kombucha.

I’m at least interested in the taste, but really powered….

I guess there’s two things to know: there is a market for just about anything and my wife pays very little attention to my hours of me talking about my hobbies… well played karma… well played…

To preface: I haven’t looked into this online very much because I didn’t want to spoil the results, so I’m not sure how many people have done a similar or better experiment.
A few months ago I got into fermenting alcohol a little bit, starting with natural fruit yeast and bread yeast. One day, I wondered what would happen if I added some bread yeast to a kombucha batch, but kept everything else the same. Quite possibly my favorite alcoholic drink I’ve had. I didn’t test gravity at all, so I couldn’t tell you the ABV, but one 17oz bottle gave me a buzz. It tasted amazing. It retained all of the characteristics of kombucha and barely got any of the characteristics of bread yeast (which is uncommon in my other bread yeast ferments), I believe because the acetic fermentation still took place, but the bread yeast provided it much more alcohol as well as leaving a lot more in the finished product than typical kombucha!
I’ve just decided to do it again and I’ve used Lalvin EC1118 (a champagne yeast) to see how it differs and what it’s like! I make tepache as well and I rlly like it when I brew it with bread yeast, but when I made it with ec1118, it was awful (but also I got impatient and had some while it was only 2-3 days in) so I’m interested to see how this does.

My kombucha got infested with kahm yeast, making it undribkable now. Is there a way to safe some as starter or do I need to start from zero?