2w ago

What's wrong with my kombucha?

I recently brewed my first batch of kombucha, and it turned out great, but I was disappointed with the yield. I took the new scoby, transfered it and some kombucha to a new jar, and filled it with more tea. My original jar looks very healthy and happy, but my new jar looks strange. Is this normal, or should I throw it out and start again?

This is the original, healthy batch for comparison.

4 comments

I haven’t made Kombucha but I’ve made milk kefir and for milk kefir it takes a couple cycles for the grains (equivalent of the scoby) to start growing and looking healthy after they’ve been sitting a while or their environment is changed (like a new brand of milk).
How long has the batch with the new scoby been fermenting? It has sugar to eat? I’d probably leave it be and see if the scoby starts to perk up.
- It's been fermenting for 1 week. My first batch developed a healthy stoby by this time and was ready to drink after 11 days. It should have plenty of sugar to eat.
  I'll give it more time and see if it improves
The brown scum on the first two images could just be tannin from black tea. You can peel this/ the stained layers off the scoby. You can avoid it next time by not letting the tea "stew" i.e. removing the tea bag sooner (you might also need to use a water filter).
You can increase the yield with a bigger container. It needs to have a wide mouth to maximise the amount of surface exposed to air relative to the volume of liquid. I personally find my kombucha too acidic after a week so need to dilute it in a closed secondary fermentation (to fizz up) which doubles the yield.
- I'll try that. I'll peel off the brown layer and give it more time.