Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Bubbles, Bubbles & More Bubbles!

Yippee! I have the perfect batch of Kombucha brewing thanks to my gifted SCOBY from Vanessa. The brew is moving, the SCOBY is nearly lifting off the surface of the tea due to the formation of beautiful carbon dioxide. Look at this picture I took last night of the bubbles forming (left) and then the photo from this morning (right). Those bubbles have even expanded since I took the picture.

One little bubble on the right is fizzing and I keep seeing them pop up every few seconds from the bottom. Who knew this science experiment would be so much fun, but I guess since I am sitting here with the bottles on my desk I can't help but report every change.

My original batch mother is creating some bubbles too, but much smaller and the new baby SCOBY is growing pretty slowly and quite thin as pictured here. I am curious how much size matters.
My bottled Kombucha is pretty darned good and adding the ginger sure brought some fizz and reduced the sugar as fermentation continued. The cranberries helped too, but I noticed more fizz in the bottles with ginger. I have two bottles left and one is my test bottle with only Kombucha. I don't want to drink it--it's special. I want to hold onto it FOREVER.

Ok, this is getting weird. Here is a picture that shows the gifted culture, which came from a narrower bottle, hiding under the new baby that has grown on top (did I mention the bubbles?).
I need to give these SCOBY original's names; as they reproduce this is going to get very confusing!

1 comment:

Kim said...

I live in South Austin and my dh and I discovered Bhudda's Brew at the downtown farmer's market, after learning about Kombucha from a knitter who blogs. After 10 bottles it got expensive, and we searched how to make it ourselves. One of the doctors I work for gifted me a SCOBY as he was so excited to learn I loved it!! We have our first batch ready to bottle tomorrow and I can't wait!!

I have a pic of my smaller gifted SCOBY with a big baby on top of it like your pic, it made me laugh.