Fermentaholics ORGANIC Kombucha SCOBY With Twelve Ounces of Starter Tea - Live Starter Culture - Makes A One Gallon Batch - 1.5 Cups of Strong Mature Starter Tea - Brew Your Own KombuchaUSDA Organic

UPDATE 3/8/18: Still going strong. I'm swimming in extra scobys now. Very very healthy starter scoby from this seller, can't compliment this company enough on the high quality of their product. Since I wrote my original review, I've seen a lot of other people's scobys and they are UGLY. Very thin layers, stained dark brown, with gross black yeast strings, sitting in blackish brown liquid. SUPER gross looking. Fermentaholic's scoby is nothing like that - they are clean, healthy looking, creamy colored and thick. Mine doesn't make many yeast strings at all, just some sediment on the bottom. All my baby scobys have turned out to be beautiful and healthy looking as well, just follow the instructions included exactly. I've also read that using green tea instead of black tea helps keep your scoby from getting stained and becoming darker, so my typical mixture is 50/50 green tea and black tea (3 green tea bags, 3 black if you use the proportions in the instructions). However, my best batch yet was when I used 100% green tea (6 green tea bags) - it was pleasantly floral and sweet, with just a hint of tartness, not the aggressive sour and tannic flavor of typical kombucha. From my research, green tea works just as well as black for a scoby food source, and my scobys have been much prettier when I do batches with green tea, so try it!Last thing, I've been making so much kombucha that once in awhile I won't have time to refresh the liquid and a batch will ferment too long and become kombucha vinegar. It's not necessary to throw this out at all - there's tons of recipes online that substitute apple cider vinegar for kombucha vinegar, and I've found my over fermented kombucha to be super handy when I need vinegar in a pinch (ie. salad dressing). This may freak some people out, but I've even tried using my kombucha vinegar as a hair rinse (diluted down with cooled chamomile tea), and it worked amazingly as a clarifying shampoo and even took care of some flakes that I've been getting from the dry winter weather. If you have color treated hair, it will strip out your color. However, I really liked that my hair was so clean, volumized, and shiny the next day. I actually got several compliments about having a "hair model" day. For my method: Brew a cup of chamomile. Drink a third of the cup as you wait for it to cool. When cool, replace the third with your kombucha vinegar (1 part kombucha vinegar, 2 parts chamomile tea). After shampooing, dump this on your head, concentrating on the scalp (careful, it might get in your eyes and ears). Rinse well (I rinsed several times because I was afraid I'd smell like vinegar later). Condition as you would normally. While your hair is wet, the kombucha smell might follow you around, but it dissipated when it dried (I had several people smell me to confirm).Best of luck with your kombucha!! If you're buying it here, you made the right choice. I can confirm it's an excellent source.--------------------------Oh this worked out great!! I read the reviews here that said these scobys come with a full cup of the kombucha starter liquid so that when you add it into your gallon of sweet tea, it will end up the perfect ph (instead of you having to add vinegar in to adjust the ph like other kombucha sets on Amazon that don't come with enough of the liquid). As a first time kombucha brewer, I was willing to pay a little extra to ensure the ph was correct from the get go, and I'm happy to report back that this worked great. I highly recommend buying your scobys from here if you are a beginner like I was. Just to be safe, I did test the ph with some ph test strips and it was in the perfect range! Instructions are very clear and simple. My scoby was about the size of a hockey puck. I could actually see several layers already existing in the scoby I got in the mail and from what I read, I'm sure it was probably thick enough to separate the layers and give to a friend. I didn't since I was new at this and didn't want to mess with it. It definitely moved around in my gallon jug in the first week - some days floating on top, some days stuck to the bottom, some days drifting on it's side. You're dealing with something that's alive, people. Just let it do it's thing. After only one fermentation cycle, I saw the beginnings of a new scoby forming at the top of my jug so this culture does seem very healthy. I was impressed. My first batch tasted about right to bottle after about 10 days (I live in San Francisco so fermentation times might be longer since it's a little cooler here).

Great Kombucha starter. My kombucha is going strong and it gives all the information that is needed. I did by ph testing strips but I don't really feel it's necessary but that's personal preference. I would purchase again! Very happy with this scoby and tells you exactly what to do to get a great tasting kombucha!

Worked perfectly. Just as I had hoped

arrived fast, package was bloated due to the bacteria loving the shipping heat. it settled down the 2 days i had to wait before use. Ive had it a month and had kambucha going the whole time. Super easy to use.Dump sorba package into a very clean dry glass container, add strained boiled and cooled tea/sugar mixture (we use I liter volume of filtered water in a french press to 6 sachets of tea and 2 tbs of sugar).cover with very clean dry cheesecloth with rubber band sewn in. store out of sunlight and bustle. learn your ambient temperature of the area you store in. ours is whatever the house heat/ac is set at. so around 73. if your house is colder you may need a heating pad.They say to wait weeks but that was too long and went into vinegar phase. which was fine, we use that vinegar on our salads.Taste frequently with plastic spoon and pour off into another vessel when you like the taste and keep that in the fridge to drink. make another batch of tea/sugar to feed the sorba, add it to a new very clean vessel and start the process over again. for us its ready for use after 2 days. for this reason we have to sometimes put the fermentation sorba vessel in the fridge to slow it down. We dont bother with the carbonation end phase, we also dont bother with flavorings of the endproduct.we drink it daily. always have at least a liter in the fridge ready to go. will need plastic fine strainer if you use loose tea, or use sachets in a french press to skip the straining hassle. plastic funnel, digital thermometer to test when its cool enough to be added to fermentation bottle. cheesecloth covers, glass vessels. i find the smaller glass 2 qt canniing jars better for our use, we dont need gallons of kambucha in our house. we always are able to pull off a liter for use and keep a liter fermentingthe sorba is looking very healthy and clean. key is to use clean vessels, funnels, spoons and cheese cloths each time you 'feed' the sorba with a new batch. keep covered and out of the way and sun.

I don’t really have anything fancy to make this, just used this starter, black tea and a jar. It turned out fantastic. Really easy to use.

The product worked as expected—I was able to successfully brew my own batch of kombucha, which is great. However, I was concerned about the instructions on the label. It recommends using vinegar to adjust the pH level, but many reputable kombucha brewing sources specifically advise against using vinegar, as it can introduce unwanted bacteria or alter the flavor profile.This contradiction left me wondering whether the starter tea included with the product already contained vinegar. A little more transparency or clarification from the manufacturer would be really helpful here. Overall, it’s a decent starter, but the mixed messages around safe brewing practices are worth noting.

This scoby is a gramma to many many scoby babies. I don't even know what to do with them! Lol