welcome to you brew kombucha this is
your guide to growing your own Scobie so
in my previous video on how to acquire a
Scobie I talked a bit about why I don't
really recommend growing your own Scobie
from a bottle of kombucha that you buy
at the store and my reasoning behind
that is largely because a lot of
store-bought kombucha brands process
their kombucha in ways that are not as
pure as homemade kombucha is whether
they admit to it or not brands that say
that their kombucha is raw and
unflavored may actually be pasteurized
and may have other ingredients that are
not present in a homebrew the truth is
that even though the label on that
kombucha bottle says that it's raw and
unflavored they may add yeast inhibitors
they might dilute that kombucha and they
may actually pasteurize it to prevent to
prevent the bottle from continuing to
ferment at the store which is a
reasonable thing for a commercial
kombucha producer to do but when you're
making a homemade kombucha you don't
need to worry about any of all that so
homemade kombucha is nine times out of
ten gonna be way more pure than anything
that you buy off the supermarket shelf
but I have gotten a lot of questions
from home brewers who are curious about
growing their own Scobie and don't just
want to buy one from an online source or
get one from a friend so I decided to
put it to the test could I successfully
grow a Scobie from a bottle of from a
bottle of readily accessible
store-bought kombucha and the answer
actually is yes you can so the process
actually took about seven weeks from
start to finish and all I did was I took
a plain raw unflavored bottle of
kombucha that I got from the store and I
put it in a mason jar and then I covered
it with a cotton cloth similar to the
type of cotton cloth that I usually use
to brew my batches of kombucha and then
I just left it in a corner of my living
room that's literally all I did you
might see some sites out there that
recommend adding more tea and more sugar
to that kombucha to give the starter tea
something to eat and that's fine I
didn't find it necessary for my purposes
just because I wanted the kombucha to
ferment and concentrate on its own
before I diluted it with anything else
like sweet tea
and it worked out just fine so after
about seven weeks the two cups that I
started with actually concentrated down
to just a cup of liquid and I got a
Scobie that was around three quarters of
an inch in thickness that I then used
both Scobie and starter tea to brew a
half gallon batch of kombucha I will
note that you don't really have to wait
seven weeks until that starter tea is
concentrated and acidic enough for you
to use it in a batch of kombucha most
people recommend just waiting about a
month or so but I really wanted to make
sure that that starter tea was as strong
and as fermented as possible before I
introduced it to a batch of kombucha
just to make sure that I was setting it
up for success and I wasn't and I wasn't
leaving it up to chance to see if it was
gonna acidify things properly so I do
want to remind you when I say leave it
alone in a corner for a few weeks I do
mean leave it alone because I was super
curious about the process I ended up
kind of peeking under under the cotton
cloth to see how it was progressing and
I actually caused my Scobie formation to
sink down to the bottom so as I've
mentioned in other videos it doesn't
really matter if your Scobie formation
sinks but it did make it harder for me
to know whether or not it was fermenting
properly so I ended up leaving it a
couple weeks longer than I really wanted
to just to make sure that that Scobie
the new Scobie growth on top could get
nice and thick if you want to see the
step by step process of me actually
growing my kombucha scoby I took a bunch
of photos as I was doing it if you're on
Instagram you can search for the hashtag
ybk grows a Scobie no spaces and you'll
see all the photos that I took as I was
growing my Scobie so I can affirm that
if you do want to grow your own Scobie
this is a perfectly viable way to do it
so I hope this was helpful if you have
any questions feel free to comment down
below you can always find way more
resources and tips and tricks at you
brew kombucha com and if you're on
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following me go ahead and follow me
happy brewing
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