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SCOBY DIY: Kombucha 101

Yesterday, I wrote about what kombucha is and how I came to love it. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing what brewing kombucha looks like in my home and how you can start brewing as well. You can find all of the posts in the four-part series here. When you’re brewing kombucha, the first thing you need is a SCOBY, or symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast..

There are several different ways to obtain a SCOBY. If you have friends who brew, they probably have extras and can give you one. If not, you can always buy one on the many kombucha sites out there (or, if you’re brave, on Craigslist. For real.). When I first started brewing, I decided to make a DIY SCOBY for a few reasons.

First, I didn’t have any friends who were brewing kombucha at the time, so that option wasn’t available to me. Also, since I was new to brewing kombucha, I didn’t want to guess at which retailers would provide a quality SCOBY. I was interested in seeing how the whole process took place, from start to finish, so I decided to make my own.

You need only a few ingredients and materials to make a SCOBY. When making kombucha and the SCOBY, you will need some mature kombucha to drive the process. This is similar to the way that any fermented product, like sourdough, is made. You can use a bottle of unflavored kombucha for this. Stay tuned over the next two weeks for more posts on setting up a kombucha brewing system and bottling and flavoring kombucha. By then, your SCOBY should be ready to go! 



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