* Please note that this blog remains up as a resource. However, this blog is currently on hiatus until further notice. For more information, please read this blog post. Thank you and happy kombucha brewing, drinking, and SCOBY trading! Lots of love. ~Annabelle *

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Experiment #1: Grow Your Own Kombucha Mother!












Apparently you can grow your own SCOBY?!?! See the video.

This is helpful if you don't know someone with a kombucha mushroom, or if you don't want to pay $20+ ordering one online.

I never tried this before, but I followed the typical Kombucha recipe, sans the mushroom. If you are trying to grow a mushroom, they recommend using raw, un-pasteurized kombucha, such as GT's, as your starter tea. Hopefully, the little strands of culture in my starter tea will help create a new SCOBY. We'll see in a week or two if the drink ferments, or if a new mushroom forms!

*All posts related to this experiment of growing a SCOBY will be tagged experiment 1.*

5 comments:

Susun said...

So, how is it working? Is your store-bought kombucha growing a Scoby growing yet?

Annabelle Ho said...

hi ada,

i have not tried growing my own kombucha mushroom from store-bought kombucha yet- but as you can see from my more recent posts, growing my own SCOBY turned out very well when I used my own home-brewed kombucha as starter tea!

hopefully in a couple of weeks after the Boston Skillshare i will be able to try growing a mushroom from store-bought tea and can report! :)

Unknown said...

Can you drink the tea you grow your mother in?

Annabelle Ho said...

you can totally drink the tea you grow your mother in!

depending on how long it took to grow your mother, however, you may or may not want to drink it. the longer the ferment, the more acidic the tea will become. if the tea is very acidic, I would recommend using some as strong starter tea, and maybe diluting the acidic tea when you drink it.

Annabelle Ho said...

*PLEASE NOTE* that the easier way to grow your own mushroom is to:

(1) buy a bottle of traditional, unflavored kombucha
(2) dump it in a clean, glass container
(3) cover the container with a breathable cloth to let oxygen in but pathogens out, and secure the cloth to the container with, for example, a rubber band
(4) leave the container in a (hopefully warm), undisturbed spot until a kombucha mushroom forms. This may take 2-3 weeks. :)