The Kombucha Chronicles: Part II - How to Grow a SCOBY From the Dregs of a Store-Bought Bottle

There are people who will tell you that it is inadvisable to create Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeast from a store-bought bottle of kombucha. They are wrong. Purchasing a SCOBY mother online could run you upwards of $20, or you could get one for free from a friend. In these tough economic times, free is best, but unless you live in Austin, your acquaintances probably don't have spare SCOBY discs laying around.You might have to resort to obtaining a SCOBY from a stranger on Craigslist.

Not so.

After experiencing the wonders of home-brewed kombucha at Molly's house, I decided I would create my very own SCOBY from the dregs of a store-bought bottle.

If you've ever bought kombucha from the grocery store, you'll notice that every bottle has some slimy-looking crud floating around at the bottom of the bottle. That crud is the primordial soup from which your SCOBY mother will emerge.

Most online guides to SCOBY-growing recommend using unflavored kombucha to start your SCOBY. I happened to have a bottle of GT's Raw Organic ginger-flavored brew, so that's what I used. People will tell you that you have to use x and y amounts of water and sugar, but really it's up to you. It's like any food recipe--there's a general way to do it, and there are some things that need to be done in a specific order, but you can put your own spin on it. It is chemistry, but we're not making pharmaceuticals here. We're just cooking.

1. Clean and dry a large glass jar to incubate your SCOBY
2. Boil approximately 3 cups of water and half a cup of sugar--I used organic sugar.
3. Place 2 bags of tea (black, oolong, green, white--just not herbal tea: I used organic white tea,) in the pot and allow the pot to cool to room temperature. This is very important as you do not want to pour hot water into a non-tempered glass container. It can cause the container to crack or explode! You also want the sweet tea medium to be cool enough for the SCOBY to grow in it.
4. Pour the cruddy dregs form your store bought bottle into the cooled sweet tea and say a little prayer.
5. Cover the top of the jar with a clean, thin cloth and a rubber band so that the SCOBY can breathe, but bad bacteria and yeasts in the air will stay out. Put the jar in a dark, warm cabinet (I put it in the cabinet above my refrigerator) and forget about it for a few days.
6. Check the jar every two or three days to see how things are progressing. In approximately 10 days you should have a little SCOBY boppin' around in the jar. When it's about a quarter of an inch thick, you can transfer it to a new tea bath in a bigger jar and start brewing your first batch of kombucha!

Here's what I got after a week:

My kitchen is very warm--it only took about 6-7 days for a healthy SCOBY to materialize and quickly spawn a baby SCOBY.

I then brewed a giant batch of sweet tea and transferred the mother from the first jar to the larger jar:

And now you never have to buy store-bought kombucha again. You can create flavored versions by adding fruit juices after brewing a batch and moving it into a new container. One of my friends added raspberry puree to a brew, mixed it with vodka and brought it to a party. Some people thought it tasted like vinegar, but with others it was a huge hit. And very dangerous. Kombucha really covers up the taste of liquor.