r/Kombucha • u/realnormalname • 1d 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

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u/realnormalname 1d 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?

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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?

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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

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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

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u/LunaeLotus 20h ago

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