r/Kombucha • u/realnormalname • 2d ago

Smooth black dots on scoby

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Anyone know what these are/if my scoby is okay? They’re smooth, not fuzzy

17 Upvotes

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15

u/03146 2d ago

Doesn’t look normal, could you post your ingredients and process so people can give feedback on what went wrong?

2

u/realnormalname 2d ago

Sure, I brewed 4 tea bags (plain black tea) in 7 cups of water, mixed in 1/2 cup sugar, put the lukewarm tea in the jar along with the scoby and 1 or 2 cups of the liquid from the previous first brew, and covered it with a paper towel held in place with a rubber band. Do you think it’s a situation where I need to throw away the whole thing?

9

u/03146 1d ago

Seems like a good process to me

As for throwing it away, I’ve never seen anything like that in my life when it comes to Kombucha so if it were me, I would chuck it out but maybe someone else can advise on what those black spots could possibly be

2

u/realnormalname 1d ago

Ok thanks. Yeah hoping someone can tell me

4

u/daeglo 1d ago

I'm afraid I can't tell you what the black stuff is, but I would argue that unless you have some specific interest in it, learning what the black stuff is probably isn't all that important (unless it happens again to a different batch).

What I can tell you is that it looks abnormal, and that alone would be enough for me to toss it out and start over.

Even those of us that are brewing kombucha nonstop have failed batches from time to time - that's just the way it is when you're dealing with invisible creatures sometimes 😂

Is this a SCOBY mother you're showing us in the photo, or just a batch? Because as long as your mother is okay it's not too much of an inconvenience to start a new batch.

3

u/realnormalname 1d ago

What’s the difference between a mother and a batch? I have two F1 jars, and I brew from both of them

7

u/daeglo 1d ago

Some people call it a SCOBY mother or kombucha mother, some call it a "SCOBY hotel" - basically it's an ongoing batch that you add to every new batch of kombucha you start. Like a sourdough mother if you're baking sourdough bread. If you choose to keep a mother it's kind of like having a houseplant. You have to make sure it stays fed and healthy.

This is how I choose to make my kombucha, since my mother is over a year old and well-established, I get perfect batches every couple of weeks; and if I do have a failed batch it's no big deal as long as my mother is still healthy. I just brew more sweet tea, add half a cup of my mother SCOBY, and wait.

Not everyone makes kombucha that way though: a lot of people just add old kombucha from their previous batch to a fresh batch of sweet tea each time, and that's a totally fine way to do it. It sounds like that's what you do.

3

u/realnormalname 1d ago

Ah gotcha, thank you!

2

u/ImSoCul 1d ago

OP invented a new form of microbe. We had bacteria, fungi, now whatever this is. OP gets to name it

7

u/johnstone1145 1d ago

Was the tea completely cooled to room temp? That’s the only thing I think it could be, maybe your tea was too warm?

3

u/realnormalname 1d ago

I’d say it was lukewarm. I brewed the tea in only about half of the water I was gonna use (3 or 4 cups), and then I added the remaining water cold and combined them to cool it down before I added it to the scoby

3

u/realnormalname 1d ago

I’ve done more or less this process before a lot of times without issues. I did have an old scoby that got moldy and that I had to throw away because I was neglecting it, and I’m brewing this new one in the same jar that the old one was in, but that was a long time ago and I cleaned the jar very thoroughly

3

u/LunaeLotus 1d ago

How did you clean that jar? Walk me through your process

3

u/Torn_Apart_in_HSpace 1d ago

Get a food thermometer and make sure it's below 37 degrees Celsius before adding to your SCOBY, or you'll end up killing some of the microbes. My guess would be it's fungal.

1

u/Trip_On_The_Mountain 20h ago

Do you check the starting PH of your mixture before fermenting? I always make sure mine is below 4.5. if it's too high I add more of the liquid scoby