My New Friend

After two and a half hours of being sloshed around in the car, Scoby made it home. His unoriginal name comes from SCOBY, or Symbiotic Colony of Yeast and Bacteria. My research suggests to me that normally, the yeasts and bacteria that are present in a SCOBY don’t live together. However, they do in this case for reasons that haven’t been entirely identified. Unfortunately, my research also tells me that other things can inhabit a SCOBY that you don’t want. Molds are one of them (we’ll get to that a bit later). Since G. reached into the jar and pulled Scoby from his mother with bare hands, I was a little paranoid about sanitation. Did she wash her hands? Yes, of course. But I figured that somehow, I had screwed something up in the process that would permit something malicious to infect my brew and, consequently, me. So I set Scoby up in a dark spot next to my microwave and let him sit. I mixed up a batch of Scoby food (on a side note, if a Scoby eats the food, is all that stuff on the bottom of the bowl called “Scoby doo?” Booo, I know.) and poured it into the jar. What’s in Scoby food, you ask? Well, I shall tell you. 

First, I boiled 4 cups of water. I then added 1.5 teaspoons of loose black tea (I used Irish Breakfast for this. It was the only plain black tea I had on hand since I generally buy all sorts of mixed flavors.) and I let it brew quite strongly. It sat in the water for about 15 minutes. I then added 1/2 cup of white sugar, which I had to take from my grandmother upstairs since I never buy the stuff. If, like me, you’re concerned that the white sugar you put into it will all be eventually ingested by you, the drinker, you can rest somewhat easy. My research tells me that the sugar is actually eaten by the yeasts in the SCOBY and converted into alcohol. It’s true that kombucha does have some alcohol in it, around .5 to 1.5 %, which is really quite low since beer has on average between 4 and 6% with a few that are out of that range. In any case, I added the sugar, stirred till it was dissolved, and let it sit until it cooled to room temperature. I then added it to Scoby’s jar and watched him grow.  I decided that if I was going to have a pet, he was going to need a name. It was at this point that I named him Ramirez. I was now officially stuck with, in addition to my multiple cats, dog, and fish, an entirely new pet that I was semi-afraid of. Welcome, Ramirez, to my household.