percypat

Ok, I'm scaling the KombuchaKamp recipe for about 5 litres so that'll be 8 teabags and 1 and 1/3 cups of sugar. If there's no fizz after 2nd fermentation you can bet I'll be upping the tea though! I'll try and snap hubby for you

Ok, so Hannah at KombuchaKamp reckons 4-6 teabags per gallon of water ... Bump it up to 18 teabags? Holy moly I have extra-strength teabags chez moi ... I reckon 12 might be a good starting point. Argh, so excited to see what happens. If it's true, tea sales will go up everywhere! (Well, we're all situated anyway). Ha, I'll try and tempt him. I know where he'll be. Hovering behind my shoulder pulling faces and making "ew" noises. He;ll have a lovely time just doing that!

Noooo, keep going. I've actually been facilitating a bit of SCOBY migration down here. On sunny days I've taken the jar to the laundry which gets more sun (making sure it sits out of direct sunlight) so that it can enjoy the warmer room. Then in the evening when I'm cooking it comes back to the kitchen. I think that may have helped it along.

Have we really figured out the fizz secret? So Nadia, 6 TABLESPOONS of tea? For a 6 litre jar? How many bags is that, I wonder? Thanks ladies! I might brew up now and let it sit for the rest of the day, Scobes can move house tonight. Then hubby can be there to wrinkle his nose when I touch it.

Yay, I love showing off pictures! Jars, SCOBYs and cats. This is definitely my favourite thread. My brewing jar has a 6 litre (about 1.5 gallon) capacity. Any recommendations for amounts of water, sugar and tea bags? I'll be using black tea.

Argh! For reals? I didn't think it was thick enough! BREWING STARTS, BUT!!!

I wish I had cute doggies to post pictures of We've never lived somewhere where we can have a pet, and on occasion I will trot out "if we don't get a cat soon, I will die". As hubby pointed out to me the other day, I've been saying this for 10 years. Death is probably not imminent. Anyway, here is my pet substitute. Does it look ok? The edge on one side has decided to do some underwater diving. This one shows the surface better: The surface is so bumpy I thought maybe it is going through puberty and I should start expecting backchat and slammed doors. Who needs a cat anyway?

Will I get tut-tutted at for taking another picture of my SCOBY? Its surface is very ... uneven ... and all the pictures I see usually feature nice smooth SCOBYs. I am worried my pet is some kind of mutant

I wouldn't mind one actually, I think they're beautiful (but creepy) creatures. We have no idea where we'll go when I've finished my PhD though, might entail leaving Oz if I find a post elsewhere and I don't imagine a snake would be the easiest pet to take with you. Probably easier than a SCOBY though! Ha!

I'll make hubby go to a pet shop with me on the premise of finding a heating pad. Then I can look at some kitties at the same time. Though if we start looking at reptile keeping things, he'll probably decide he wants a snake.

I'll try pulling the blinds across a bit, failing that it can always go in a cupboard. My kitchen doesn't get any sun at all and I'm worried the whole project will come to a screeching halt now that the cold is setting in!

Ooh ooh, there is a beautiful Rekorderlig cider with vanilla and cinnamon. They call it Winter Cider and you can drink it hot or cold. I might have to try that flavouring if I ever get to the point where I can brew (impatient Sophie!). Though someone else can try heating it up first

Me too! He's adorable. We just had the coldest night of the year here in Perth. Not conducive for SCOBY growing. I think my baby might have to move camp to the laundry - that side of the house gets a lot more sun. If the cloth completely covers the jar, is it ok for it to be in sunlight?

Oh no no no! That was so not the intention! I guess sometimes the forums feel a bit US-centric, so when a few of us metric-users come long we get a bit overexcited and cocky. Taking off my big britches right now

Because it's confusing for my very non-mathematical brain But you're right, there are much better things to think about/discuss

For sure. But really ... base 10 makes a lot of sense!

That's where I got mine from! I got this one here: http://www.maxwellandwilliams.com.au/mw/maxwell-williams-storage-canisters-jars-candy-jar-6-litre-lh6549.asp $19.95 full price, but I had to have it because I'm terrible at waiting for things.

Merci Napoleon! (Kind of).

You guys must get bigger jars than we do I was picturing this teeny little jar in my head because that's the size I always see apple sauce sold in here! I just had to run the numbers through a converter because I can only do metric. Those jars would be a bit under half a gallon each? I don't know what the ideal size is either! I saw someone saying their jar was 1 or 1.5 gallon here somewhere so I found a jar that size too, but maybe I am just greedy and want lots of kombucha! (Actually, there's no maybe about it!).

Maybe that's the price of getting lovely fizzy kombucha? The occasional sacrifice of a dress? Since you're ordering a scoby, won't that mean you'll start brewing your first batch straight away? Will an applesauce jar be big enough? Heh, I found a Kombucha sub-reddit on reddit.com and I've seen some pics of MONSTER scobies on there!

SCOBY bragging! Not nearly so impressive as Nadia's dad's doubling its size in record time, but I had a peek today (1 week since I started growing it) and it is completely covering the surface of the liquid. Starting to really thicken up in the spots where it was first visible. (Still thin overall though). Hubby asking more questions about SCOBY behaviour, wrinkles nose and says it's disgusting, then asks how long we have to wait before we get our first batch. That's my boy.

That's a good idea. And if the same questions do keep popping up, a bit of collating could always be done later - just taking what's said in the thread by our experts. I don't mind doing that kind of thing if that's helpful. (I'm always looking for excuses to have a break from reading/writing).

We could ask? Or we could do our own. I'm sure if we all thought about the questions we have (or had for you experienced brewers), we'd have a pretty solid list of questions. I, for one, have many.

Either that, or we just discovered where Nadia gets her pixie dust from

Not that I'm anywhere near that stage, but if you can sell them, why wouldn't you? Pics of Nadia's SCOBYstand at the markets please!