The Continuing Saga of SCOBY Leather

by ⋅ 3 Comments

The blended SCOBY fruit roll-up leather experiment is finally more or less dry. It took hours and hours in a 120 degree Fahrenheit oven before the water was driven off, and the resulting leather seems strong and beautifully semi-translucent.

Blended SCOBY Leather

Not sure what exactly we’ll do with it, other than maybe subdivide it for various experiments. Meanwhile, I took a look at the SCOBY net experiment, and was surprised to find that a nice pellicle had formed above the net, and that it had grown through the net at the edges.

SCOBY in a Mat

I decided to flip it over to see if another layer might grow on top, and then we’ll maybe press it flat to dry, encasing the hemp net between the layers of leather?

Flipped

For future experiments, it would probably be best to find a way to suspend the net right at the surface of the tea and sugar mixture, so that the pellicle becomes more integrated into the net. Maybe a purpose built, adjustable frame that can be moved up or down to account for liquid loss?

SCOBY Mush to SCOBY Leather

by ⋅ 1 Comment

Inspired by this process for turning SCOBY into fruit leather…

…we decided to prototype a process to turn some mature SCOBY into mush, dry it in a form, and look at the material properties of the finished product. We borrowed a blender and rinsed and blended up a not insignificant quantity of SCOBY, adding a little bit of water to keep things moving.

Max Mixes

We weren’t able to find exactly the right vessel, so we improvised, building little dam made of wood to get to the size we wanted.

SCOBY Mush

The material is surprisingly coherent, and the dam acted as a bit of a liquid separator.

The Product

The form filled, we stuck it in the oven at 200 degrees Fahrenheit (the lowest the oven in the nutrition classroom will go), and it’s gently baking even as I’m writing this.

20180829_160708

In related news, we modified the fermentation chamber, adding a heat mat to see if we can improve the growth rate of the pellicle by increasing the temperature a bit. The mat has a fixed temp, and as it turns out that temp is too high, so we’ll need to look into adding a thermostat to reign that in a bit. Eventually, we plan to construct an Arduino-based, temperature controlled growing chamber that will will log data to a Web-accessible database, but that’s a few weeks out.

2018-08-29_04-38-56

SCOBY Net

by ⋅ 1 Comment

Boiled up the hemp twine crocheted mat (which when wet smells strongly of goat)…

Boiled Hemp Twine Smells Like Goat

…then used the t-shirt press to flatten it out…

Heat Press = Goat Steam

…and suspended it at the surface of a fresh batch of kombucha.

Suspended

We covered the whole business in a cloth, and put it into the brewing shelf. Not sure at all what might happen, but the hope is that the bacteria and yeast will colonize the twine and produce cellulose all around, encasing the mat in SCOBY goodness.