Kombucha Journal- Almost tossing out the baby with the bath water

Today was D-day, time to remove the cloth off the jug, to see how the week-long fermentation had transpired.

“What the!” I hear my wife exclaim. “There is a layer of froth on top! Gross, it looks like mould!”

Then I advise her to scoop it away with a spoon.

“What! It’s hard! What have we done!?” With spoon in hand, she starts probing at the solidified mass.

“Oh no! It’s sinking. What do I do?”

“Um, we can scoop it out later.” I suggest.

“We’re so going to make ourselves sick.”

Then we proceed to pour the 1L of our brew into 3 glass bottles, cap them and place them into the fridge to go through a second fermentation.

It smells like Kombucha, and it’s starting to be effervescent, so that looked pretty promising.

So with a cup left in the jug, I suggest to get the spoon to scoop out and throw out the scum which had formed on top.

“Um, I’m going to google what it is.” My wife suggests. And thank goodness, as that “scum” was Toby! Our Scoby!

Have to admit, that was kind of weird, Toby came to us only the size of a marble, how did it turn into a thin disc which covered the entire surface of the jug? So lucky we didn’t throw him out, we could have ‘tossed out the baby with the bath water!’

But our second brew has been topped up, and one more week to wait for our first batch to reach a state where we can drink it!