On a recent Tuesday morning while plugging away at work, I took my first Instagram break of the day. I scrolled past #transformationtuesdays, schnauzers, and friends eating lunch, until one photo stopped me. “It’s Apple Cinnamon Ginger Kombucha season,” the caption read. Six swing-top glass bottles were arranged on a table, all filled with amber liquid and topped off with sliced apples. My fingers couldn’t type fast enough as I tapped out my reaction in a comment: “[praise hands emoji] where can I get a recipe for dis?”
At $3 to $5 a bottle, kombucha isn’t cheap. As I write this, I have six empty bottles of GT’s Original Kombucha on my dresser. Not only are those bottles a reminder that I’m a slob, but also that I’ve spent about $30 on kombucha this week.
I have Williamsburg rent to pay. I have a 401k. I have a boyfriend in Washington, D.C., to visit. I have Madewell bags to buy. But I don’t have $120 per month to spend on those tasty bottles of effervescent enlightenment. I decided it was time to go the DIY route and start making my own.
My kombucha-brewing friend responded to my comment a few hours later with an email and her personal recipe. I found most of the ingredients and supplies on Amazon Prime, and with free two-day shipping, I figured I’d be drinking my own homemade kombucha by the weekend. But as I was compiling my order, I noticed there was one ingredient I didn’t recognize. It sounded more like a Pokemon than something that goes in kombucha: SCOBY, or Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast. You can’t make kombucha without it. My friend had been gifted one from her mother, so I had to figure out on my own how to procure a SCOBY.
My first thought was to look online, and like most everything else these days, SCOBYs can be purchased from the convenience of one’s own couch. The problem: One SCOBY costs $30, which is six bottles of kombucha — pass.
After a little more research, I learned I could grow my own SCOBY from the live cultures in a bottle of store-bought kombucha, along with a little bit of sugar and tea. The process would take weeks, but I decided I was up to the challenge, so I spent the rest of the day affirming my decision by telling anyone who would listen that I was going to grow a SCOBY. “A what?” my confused co-workers asked. “It’s a live culture that ferments tea into kombucha,” I said with authority, despite doing nothing more than regurgitating information I read on mommy blogs during my lunch break.
On my way home from work that day, I made my regular kombucha stop at the deli and raced to my apartment to birth my SCOBY. I grabbed a large mason jar that previously served as a friend’s wedding reception centerpiece, and I dumped the kombucha inside. I added some freshly brewed sweetened tea, which is “food” for the SCOBY, and seconds later I saw a little blob floating at the top of the jar. My SCOBY! My new best friend, my baby. “Good luck,” I whispered as I covered the jar with cheesecloth. My roommate gave me some serious side-eye as I paraded the jar into my bedroom and stuffed it in the back corner of my bookshelf.
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I had read that I was supposed to wait at least a week before checking on Scoby (now an affectionate pet-name rather than acronym). But after five days, I couldn’t wait any longer, so I peeled off the cheesecloth and peered inside. There it was: the translucent film on the surface of the liquid. It was exactly as the blogs had described. Scoby was growing!
Early Scoby!
A few days later, with Scoby still far from being mature, I hopped on a bus to D.C. for a five-day trip I had been planning for weeks. Being there, I thought, would at least keep me from staring longingly at that jar, which had become a nightly ritual.
But while I was in D.C., something odd started to happen: I missed my Scoby. It was as if I had left my puppy with the neighbors, worried something might happen to it. No, Scoby wasn’t exactly a living, breathing companion, of course. But it was someone — something? someculture? — I knew it would be waiting for me to get home from my long trip. Just like a puppy.
Scoby didn’t jump on me or bark excitedly at me when I got back to my apartment, but when I opened the jar I felt … relieved to see it. In the five days I was gone, the translucent film had developed into a thick, milky disc floating at the top of the jar. Which sounds disgusting, but was just what Scoby was supposed to be. With a few simple ingredients, a little care, and a lot of patience, I grew a living thing that will serve me for months to come on my kombucha journey.
Mature Scoby!
I’m still glad I saved that $30 by foregoing a mail-order SCOBY, but I’m even happier that I made a new friend, even if it is just a blob of bacteria.
