Weird Science

I have been knitting exclusively on a secret test-knit shawl for Trisha, so no new knitting pictures to share, but I do have pictures of Science.

Remember this?  The wee little ort of kombucha culture in the top right?  It just looks like a dark, whispy blob.

 

I covered the dish with a towel and put it on top of the refrigerator and forgot about it for two weeks, and when I came back to it, it had turned into a proper SCOBY.

Meet Sam.

(please ignore the following: random water bottle, crumpled paper towel, ugliest green countertops ever in the world)

 

He’s still young, so he’s pretty thin and translucent, but if I can get him to work through a few batches of kombucha, he should grow up and get big and strong, and won’t look so flimsy.

For now, he’s living in a big jar or sweet tea, nomming away at the sugar and fermenting the tea.

(please ignore my messy counter)

 

When I first put him in, he sank to the bottom pretty quickly, but within a few days he had floated back to the top.  About a week into the process, I took a long-weekend trip to visit Christine (yay!).  Before I left, there was a thin film on top of the tea, and while I was gone, Sam must have been hard at work, because there is now a pretty impressive baby SCOBY growing on his back.

I’ll give the tea another 5-7 days to ferment, since I want Sam to eat as much of the sugar as he can so that the end result will be a nice, tart kombucha.  At this point, it looks pretty promising that it will turn out!