Do Kombucha SCOBYs/Pellicles Expire?

I just received a copy of your logbook. It’s terrific! I’m in the middle of my first ferment now. I was able to grow my first Scoby to use. I’m 82and fermentation is my new hobby. I make pickles, sauerkraut, sourdough bread etc. Your book is a great addition to my fermentation library. I would recommend it to all your viewers.

So the russians used kombucha a lot during the USSR era and post soviet. In North America it only became popular 2-3 years ago or so. FRom what I rememeber about reusing the pellicle is that my parents used to wash it evry once in a awhile in warm water, take the upper old layer and throw it out or give it to friends. So basically the scoby would grow bigger each time and they would keep washing it and taking the older layers off. They kept the original pellicle for ages!

Yikes, I’m really overdoing it! I start with 5 cups of starter tea (because my drainage spigot is a bit is high on my fermentation jar) and the pellicle from the previous batch. I add 11 cups of sweet tea to total one gallon. With a constant 80 degree fermentation (in a cooler with two warming mats on a timer), I get a batch every five days, regardless of the season, and a nice, new, thick pellicle every batch. I have a power meter on the mats and the electricity costs pennies a batch. Learned a ton from you, YBK! Thx!

So HELPFUL!! Recently, I'm not been bothering with a pellicle. Your input give me reason to try different things. Currently 2 years brewing and having no real issues, just good brew. Your channel is part of my success.

Pellicles give good acidic flavor to soups and meat. Store them sliced in the freezer and use them when needed

Just going to add something that most here already know. Make sure you stir your fermented brew before taking the starter tea out. I forgot 2 batches ago and just happened to be increasing my batches into 2 separate brews. I didn’t have a lot of starter tea, but had lots of pellicles. It did not help. The gallon batch struggled into 10 days and was not very fermented. But the 1/2 gallon was pretty robust, so I mixed the two for my 2nd fermentation and luckily it came out incredible. So it’s definitely the starter tea that’s doing the “heavy lifting”. My brews generally don’t take more than 7 days

Thank you for the video. Very informative. The scoby i have was about 3 years old. I put it in new tea since the color was very light tan. The container spells very acidic and has 2.5 ph. I have had it in the container about 1 week now. It has no signs of mold growing. The liquid did have a lot of thin layers growing on it not sure if they were new scoby trying to form.

My hens go crazy for my old scobys. I just cut them up into 1/2 or 1/4 inch chunks. I'm sure it's really healthy for them.

Have you tried the scoby jerky or scoby candy yet? It's like having an endless supply of jerky base instead of using meat. Candy is like fruit rollups or gummies. Would love to see you do a video on these. Love your channel.

Great video and makes a lot of sense. Every few batches or so, I like to clean my Scoby hotel so I use this as an opportunity to throw out the darker ones and replace them with some of the most recent ones I'm not going to use. I used to keep a bunch pellicles in the hotel but since I run a 4 x 1 gallon system (3 brewing + 1 hotel), I found they absorbed a lot of the starter tea over time (or just took up overall capacity with their density) so now I only keep about 4-5 max. Luckily I've never experienced mold or a bad brew but since fresh ones are always being created, I no longer feel the need to hoard them lol.

Another very interesting and helpful video. I have now been brewing Kombucha for a few months after watching all of your video's. Thank You :)

I have placed two scoby’s in 8” x 10” chamber bag with 250 ml of starter tea and chamber vacuum sealed and placed in refrigerator until I make my next batch. For my first batch I used mixture of black tea and green tea. I am waiting for carbonation after bottling, flavour of unflavoured kombucha batch tasted nice. Black tea I used was Yorkshire Dales tea and green tea I used was Sencha Tea. My first batch size was about 2.3 litres.

I love your channel. I'm new to this. So informative!

Great advice as always!

Great info. Thanks for the education!😁

Lovely presentation, thank you

You are fantastic, thank you so much.

Wow I blinge watch all your videos, new to kombucha world, just wondering where do you get your jars?

I use two jars and need two scoby each time I make a new batch of kombucha so from the scoby hotel I take 3-4 scoby that I put in one jar and 3-4 others in the second jar. Don’t have enough liquid to keep the scoby in the hotel while the new kombucha is on it’s way to be done.

How long will raw kombucha from the first ferment last in the fridge? If I encounter an issue with my brew, I would prefer to restart with my own kombucha instead of store-bought.