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).

Healthy, nice-sized Scooby with plenty of starter. Easy and precise instructions. (Follow the directions precisely! They work!) I'm on my second batch of kombucha and the Scoby has grown enough that I can already double the amount I'm brewing. Thank you for a quality kit!I've been making kombucha for several years using a Scoby from a friend. But I lost this original Scoby recently. So sad! I tried to make my own Scoby and then tried a kit from the health food store. No luck with either.But this kit has plenty of starter and a big chunk of Scoby! Yea!!! I'm back in homemade kombucha again!

This was a great kombucha starter. The scoby was very healthy and kicked off a brand new batch of kombucha. Five batches later, I'm still going strong. I just followed the instructions on the packaging and it all went great. I was concerned there wasn't going to be enough liquid but I was wrong.

FYI, I maintained and brewed kombucha continuously for five years until a long trip without tending it ended the scoby. So, I think I can claim to know kombucha.The scoby and starter came in a heavy duty, machine sealed plastic bag. When I opened it up, my first impression was this was a pretty skimpy scoby. It was thin to the point of being almost transparent. Back when I was going strong brewing ‘buch, I would give away scoby layers that were clean, white and a half-inch thick. So I wasn’t super impressed. However, everything looked OK, and smelled right, so I brewed my tea and put it to work.I’m writing this review immediately after bottling my first batch of kombucha made with this scoby and starter. I prefer to put my kombucha in sealed bottles and let it sit for a few days to make it fizzy. So I haven’t had a full glass of it, but I sampled it before bottling, and it seems like the real stuff.I started with a whole gallon of tea, which was a lot for only 12 ounces of starter. I usually do two cups (16 oz) of mature kombucha for every gallon of sweet tea. However, today is fifteen days later, and I have a batch that was ready to bottle, and the starting (purchased) scoby is thicker, plus I have a new, thin scoby that covered the mouth of my 1 gallon tea jug.All in all, I’d buy from this seller again.BTW, I use four decaf green tea bags, and three family size decaf ice tea bags for each gallon I brew. See my picture for the types of bottles I use.