Bacteria Fun Time

So what does a microbiologist do when they miss their bacteria?  They grow some!!!! No I'm not making a lab in my basement, I'm making Kombucha.  I love the stuff, maybe its because I'm a microbiologist and all those happy bacteria make me happy or maybe because it just taste good.  Since no one sells it Leavenworth I would have to drive to KC to get it at 3.95 a bottle I wasn't going to "stock up" on it.  I followed a recipe on growing my own SCOBY from a bottle of the "plain" stuff.  Its not hard.  Don't buy the "clear" ones, or the "enlightened" flavored ones.  I got a bottle of plain old GT's and dumped the whole thing in.  It took a long while to get it growing, 4 weeks about.  I'm sure in that time I could have ordered one already grown and gotten a big batch already to go.  But I'm a freakin' microbiologist damn it, I'm growing it my damn self!

After 4 weeks of growing it up, I transferred it to a fresh round of tea, and let it go for about a week.  Then transferred that to pint lidded jars with a bit of fresh flavored tea, and let that go at room temp for a few days.  Then into the fridge.  In the mean time the SCOBY was growing again.  And then I repeated the process.  This time I tried some juice for the second fermentation.  I haven't tried those yet but they look good.  Round three is hanging out in my office (it stays quite warm up here so until winter hits hard this is the bacti lab too).