How To Make A SCOBY Hotel
How To Make SCOBY Hotel
If you have brewed kombucha, jun, or vinegar for any amount of time you will know how SCOBYs can accumulate quite quickly. What can you do with all those SCOBYs? LOTS! You can make SCOBY jerky, face masks, grind them and add them to soil for plants, and share them with friends and family.. Your imagination is your limit. Here is a way to store those SCOBYs until you can decide what to do with them. It’s called a SCOBY hotel and its fairly easy to build and maintain. If you dont have a SCOBY you can find a variety here.
Your SCOBY hotel will grow a SCOBY on the surface. Even though the directions below say to fully submerge SCOBYs in the liquid, you will want to leave this new SCOBY where its at. This seals the hotel. If the SCOBY grows really thick you can push that baby down into the liquid and another will grow in its place.
You can also do this for jun SCOBY’s and Vinegar Mothers.
Here is what you will need:
Large Jar ( I like the half gallon mason jars.)
Tight weave breathable cloth (think coffee filters) and a rubber band.
*Don’t use cheesecloth. The weave is nowhere near tight enough and bugs will burrow and find their way into your SCOBY hotel.
Extra SCOBYs (remove some but not all of the yeast strands to keep the delicate balance)
Sweet tea that you usually feed your SCOBYs
Strong starter from your last batch
You can do this one of two ways. I’ve personally done both and have fared pretty well.
Option 1
Add cooled sweet tea to the jar. (Make sure the tea has cooled to room temperature.)
Fill with starter liquid. You want to use 1 cup of starter per gallon of sweet tea. (Some use a ratio of 50% strong starter/ 50% sweet tea. Either is fine.)
Add the SCOBYs (You want to make sure the SCOBYs are fully submerged in the tea.)
Cover with a tight weave breathable cloth and secure with a rubber band.
That’s it!
Option 2
You follow basically the same procedure as option one but omit the sweet tea and use strong starter liquid from your last batch for all the liquid in your hotel. Home brewed kombucha tends to be on the weaker side so there is still some sugar for the SCOBYs to eat but eventually they will go into full hibernation mode.
How to maintain your hotel
Every once in a while you will need to clean house. You will want to feed your SCOBYs and either clean the jar or replace with a fresh jar. To feed your resident SCOBYs just pour off some of the liquid and follow the procedure in option 1.
How often you do this depends on the person. Some feed their SCOBY’s once a month, every 3 months, 6 months or even longer. If the jar looks like its lost quite a bit of fluid its time to do some house cleaning!