Santos Lives!

You may note that I’m insistent on putting all these guys into glass. The acidity of kombucha makes it unsafe to put into plastic because it could leach the chemicals into the liquid. In addition, it reacts poorly to metal. Not long ago I did a second ferment (more on that later) and whatever touched the metal lid of the jar turned black as it spilled to the counter. Therefore, I would recommend only using glass. I have found a few recommendations that certain types of food-grade plastics are OK, as are metals, but my other research as well as my experience tells me that sticking to glass is really the safest option. 

Since I wasn’t expecting the birth of Gonzalez so soon, I decided to keep him in the small jar as an experiment in keeping a culture in a sort of stasis. I fed him a bit and wanted to see if he would perk up. I noticed that he was growing a new culture on the top and it was, in fact, quite a bit whiter than Gonzalez. I was told by another brewer that you want your mother’s to be nice and white and that it’s a sign of health. I don’t know that Gonzalez will ever be used for a full brew, but he’s still going strong in the jar. 

After a few days, I noticed that Santos was getting a small film on his upper surface. Initially, I was keeping him near my indoor lettuce crop, but read that they should be kept nowhere near plants for fear of infecting them with any types of pollens/molds. Since I only keep them covered with paper towels, I don’t expect that they’re protected from everything airborn. I do double and sometimes triple the towels for extra protection, but I haven’t quite stepped up to getting any sort of micron filters for them just yet. Perhaps that will be a future precaution. In any case, I moved Santos to a new spot near the heater in my front room and left him on the shelf. I noticed something odd growing in there after the first day but wasn’t sure what it was. It wasn’t quite green and it didn’t look like mold but it really looked strange. My research told me that it might be excess yeast. I was afraid I was going to have to scrap the whole thing. I went back to Madison and for a few days and when I returned home, Santos had a fully formed SCOBY on the top. It had expanded to the sides of the jar and was quite large and perfectly white and smooth, with no holes. (Ramirez had developed a few holes where the carbon dioxide needed to escape.) I had shown the photo to another brewer in Madison who said that it was likely yeast and I could ignore it. For a second opinion, I showed it to the brewer that I know who is insistent upon cleanliness and he also declared that “kombucha ocassionally does strange things and that it’s likely yeast.” He said that next time, I can scoop it out of there. I wish I had, because now it’s still visible on the underside of my perfectly white Santos Scoby and it bugs me a little. Since Santos has no holes in him, I occasionally have to move him around to release the bubbles that are forming on his underside and pushing him up to the top, floating him off of the tea brew. I’m not sure yet if this is good or bad, but I’ll assume bad if he’s up in the air and out of his brew. He’s bubbling away, though, which is a good sign of fermentation success. Congratulations, Santos, on your growth thus far!