How to Create a Kombucha SCOBY Hotel (to Store Extra SCOBYs)

Each time you make a batch of kombucha, the SCOBY spawns a new colony. This colony forms at the top of the liquid in the container, and since your SCOBY is already floating at the top, the new colony will usually settle on top of the older SCOBY and create a new layer. That’s why SCOBYs grow thicker each time you use them.
Some people just maintain one SCOBY “mother” and move it to a new brewing jar as soon as the old batch is done. They’ll frequently peel away the older layers from the bottom, where the yeast tends to build up, and leave the newest “baby” layer on the top. While this generally keeps the SCOBY healthy, there’s no backup in case of emergency, and if the SCOBY dies, you’d have to buy a new SCOBY to get started again.
If you have space, a better option is to set up a “SCOBY hotel” where you can store the SCOBYs you’re not using for your current batch.
Why Create a SCOBY Hotel?
Every time you brew a new batch of Kombucha, you end up with an extra SCOBY. Eventually, you will need to do something with those extra SCOBYS. A Scoby Hotel is the best place to store them. Another reason you want a SCOBY Hotel is that you always have a fresh source of backup SCOBYs.
Some reasons why:
- you brew a batch of contaminated moldy kombucha and need to start with NEW Scobys that are untainted
- you want to experiment with making Kombucha Coffee, kombucha without caffeine, experiment with different sugar types (maple syrup, brown sugar, molasses, etc), try out different exotic teas, or just experiment without worrying
- your current SCOBY dies and you need to replace it
How to Build a SCOBY Hotel
The first thing you need to do is FIND a container that will become your ‘hotel.’
Step 1: Find a Container for your Hotel
The container you choose for your SCOBY hotel needs to be:
- large enough to hold the SCOBYs and the liquid to cover them (recommend a 2 gallon jar)
- made out of glass so you can monitor the SCOBYs’ health visually
- easily covered with material that allows good airflow (jar should have a wide top area)
If you’re already using gallon glass jars for brewing kombucha, you can set one aside for your SCOBY hotel. Some people use other containers, like glass mixing bowls or crock pots, but glass jars have an advantage over both: the size of the jar keeps the SCOBY from growing wider than the jars you normally use, and the glass lets you quickly spot any problems like mold or foreign objects in the liquid.
My recommendation here for the best jar for a SCOBY hotel is the awesome Anchor Hocking Montana 2-1/2-Gallon Jar, Brushed Metal Lid that’s $20 bucks on Amazon. At two gallons, it’s big enough to hold quite a few SCOBYs for a long while.
Step 2: Add in Sweat Tea, Starter, and SCOBY/s
Once you have selected your jar:
1) Make sure the jar is clean and dry, and that there is no residual soap scum that will harm the SCOBYs. You can rinse out the jar with distilled white vinegar to get rid of any remaining soap residue.
2) Have your starter and sweet tea ready. Use old kombucha tea with a pH of around 2.5 for the starter, or add distilled white vinegar to plain kombucha tea until the pH is correct. Brew a batch of sweet tea using black or green tea and organic white cane sugar, the SCOBY’s preferred foods. Don’t use herb tea, honey, or any other ingredients. Make a mixture that is half sweet tea and half starter liquid.
3) Pour an inch or two of liquid in the jar, add the SCOBY (or SCOBYs) on top, and then fill the jar with the rest of the liquid. There should be at least twice as much liquid in the jar as SCOBY mass.
4) Cover the jar with the same type of thin fabric that you normally use when brewing kombucha, and secure the material around the top of the jar.
If this sounds like the process for making a batch of new kombucha well, it is! It’s exactly the same process, except you are dumping in your extra SCOBYs into the hotel jar and it will likely contain quite a few SCOBYs (I’ve had 15 or more in a single jar!) and, unlike your regular batches, you won’t be adding NEW sweat tea for 1 to 2 months periods.
Step 3: Store the Hotel in Shaded, Cooler Area
Once you have your SCOBY hotel created as in the steps above, it’s time to STORE your hotel. Two things to consider here, the temperature of the location and how shaded from the sun it is.
Best SCOBY Hotel Temperature?
You can keep your SCOBY hotel at cool room temperature, in a place where it’s relatively dark, with good airflow, and out of the way of any possible contaminants (tobacco smoke, excess dust, moldy fruit, houseplants, etc.). You should find a place where you’re not going to have to move the jar around too much.
Since you want the SCOBYs in the hotel to be more dormant than active, a cooler temperature is better than room temperature. In fact – though there are people who argue against this – you can actually store your SCOBY hotel in the refrigerator. Long-term storage at temperatures below 45F can harm the SCOBY though, so a better place would be in a basement or pantry that stays around 50F to 55F. That’s cool enough to keep the SCOBY dormant, but not so cold to hurt it.
Best Scoby Hotel Location?
Keep the SCOBY hotel out of direct sunlight. If the container is in a warm place, that just means that the SCOBY will be active, and you’ll have to replace the sweet tea and clean the hotel more often. However, direct sunlight will burn the SCOBY and harm the colony. So whatever you do, place it in a location out of the direct sun — preferably in a closet somewhere. Don’t place it near garbage, smoke, fruits, or plants lest you end up with a MOLD infestation.
Maintaining the SCOBY Hotel
Like any ‘hotel’ a bit of maintenance is required from time to time to ensure your Kombucha cultures remain healthy and viable for years to come. Kombucha is quite hardy and can survive for long periods of dormancy, but it still needs to be maintenance once in a while.
1) Top Up Kombucha Hotel with Fresh Sweet Tea Every or Raw sugar (every 4-6 weeks)
You can leave your scoby hotel sitting for months at a time — your SCOBYs in it will go into stasis mode when the sugar runs low — however, at some point the culture does need to eat again. If you leave the SCOBY hotel long enough without a re-feed, your SCOBYs will die.
Refilling your kombucha hotel with food for the SCOBYs is pretty simple — just add in a cup or two of sugar to the mix. This will add a supply of food for your SCOBYs. Keep in mind your tea mixture will get lower and lower as it evaporates in time, so you will need to top that up once in a while as well. Alternatives, instead of adding raw (white) sugar, you can add in more sweet tea to the mix ‘topping it up’. Add this food every six weeks to eight weeks.
After a few months of this though (say after 12 weeks or doing this TWICE), you will want to replace the old sweet tea with a brand new batch of it, remove excess yeast buildup at the bottom, and trim some of the thicker SCOBYs. Count on doing this ‘complete refill and clean’ every 2 or 3 months, just to keep your SCOBY hotel in good order.
How Long Can Your Scoby Hotel Survive Without Fresh Tea?
While I recommend you replace about 80 percent of the SCOBY Hotel liquid with fresh sweat tea every 2 or so months (or at least add in 1 cup of sugar if you don’t want to change the tea), it’s possible that if you just leave your SCOBY HOTEL alone the SCOBY’s will be fine in 4 to 6 months, even without any refill. This is especially true if it’s cooler (cold = scoby is less active). I’ve heard of a few cases where people left a SCOBY in a jar for a year and the SCOBY was still usable.
2) Clean and Refill Your SCOBY Hotel (every 8 to 12 weeks)
This is sort of a spring cleaning of your SCOBY hotel.
You need to do this every 8-12 weeks just to keep your SCOBYs healthy. I recommend if you add sugar or top up your hotel with sweet tea, you do this refill and cleaning after you add sugar or top up with sweet tea for the SECOND TIME. That’s roughy means you will do this every 2 or 3 months. In between that, you will be topping up the SCOBY hotel with fresh tea or adding sugar — once or twice. More is better than less, obviously — so just use my guidelines as a rule of thumb. If it makes you feel more comfortable, do this every month or two months.
While it’s possible you can just abandon your SCOBYs for 6 months or a year by just leaving them in a jar, your cultures may degrade. Healthy SCOBYs mean better tasting, healthier Kombucha.
The Cleaning and Refilling Process
Both live and dead microorganisms from the colony will begin to accumulate at the bottom of the jar over time. Many of these will be the brownish yeast cells that you normally see in kombucha. By cleaning out your SCOBY hotel regularly, you can keep the balance of yeast and bacteria in the correct proportion. You should clean your hotel every six weeks at a minimum, or whenever you see a large amount of material at the bottom of the jar. To clean the hotel, you’ll need:
- a clean glass bowl large enough to hold the SCOBYs
- another clean bowl large enough to hold the liquid from the hotel
- clean cloths to cover the bowls
- extra kombucha tea (unflavored)
- distilled white vinegar
- a fresh batch of brewed sweet black tea
Be sure to wash your hands well before handling the SCOBYs.
As you take each SCOBY out of the hotel, examine it to make sure that it doesn’t have any dead or moldy spots. You can use a stainless steel knife to trim off any ragged edges, if you like. You can also cut or peel off the lower layers that are darker and have yeast strands hanging off them. These are the oldest and least active layers. Keeping the SCOBY to a thickness of about 1 inch will help keep the colony in good shape. If your SCOBY is thicker, you can divide the SCOBY into two pieces.
Put each SCOBY into the clean glass bowl as you finish, and pour a little kombucha over it. Cover the bowl with a clean cloth to keep out dust and insects.
Step 1: Filter the Liquid (removes Yeast Strands)
Carefully pour the liquid out of the hotel through a strainer into the other clean bowl, and cover it with a clean cloth.
You’ll notice strands of the SCOBYs will remain in the mesh material you use to filter — these will be the SCOBY yeast strands (or parts of the SCOBY itself). You can save some of these to use for other purposes (like Kombucha sourdough starter, for example).
Filtering the liquid basically helps remove extra yeast from the SCOBY Hotel (see the REMOVING YEAST section below).
You’ll use some or all of this liquid you filtered through to make the 50/50 mixture of starter culture and sweet tea when you put the SCOBYs back in the hotel. If you have extra, you can use it as the starter culture for a new batch of kombucha tea
Step 2: Clean the Jar
Use hot water to rinse out the jar. If the bottom and sides of the jar are coated with some of the dead microorganisms, and they’re not coming off with a simple rinse, then use a mild soap to scrub the jar, and rinse again with hot water.
Do a final rinse with distilled white vinegar to sterilize the jar.
Step 3: Open the Scoby Hotel Again
Note, if you have some really thick SCOBYs that take up the full top surface of the jar or occupy a significant portion of the space in the jar, you’ll want to trim and think out some of the SCOBYs (see the Trimming SCOBY section below).
Mix equal amounts of the starter liquid and the fresh sweet black tea and pour some of it into the cleaned hotel, then put the SCOBYs back in and cover them with the rest of the mixture. If your SCOBYs fill up more than two-thirds of the jar, it’s better to create a second hotel for the extras, rather than trying to cram them all into one place.
If you have too many SCOBYs and don’t know what to do with them, you can look on line for the kombucha brewing forums in your area, and see if there’s anyone out there who wants a SCOBY (there will be). You can also use extra SCOBYs in a variety of interesting ways. And remember to keep a few for yourself – just in case.
Note, depending on how old your hotel is, you may need to perform additional maintenance as below.
Removing Extra Yeast from SCOBYs
Yeast is important to your culture, but too much of it can cause an imbalance. Remember that SCOBY is a symbiotic relationships between bacteria and yeast. Too much of one creates an imbalance.
You’ll see the yeast strands often hanging from the bottom of your SCOBYs. The strands often fall and accululate at the bottom of the jar. In time, the yeast can build up quite a bit and too much of it can cause an imbalance in the ratio of bacteria to yeast.
Once in a while, you should clean out extra yeast from your Hotel.
How to Trim and Thin-Out Your SCOBYs
You’ll find that the SCOBYs will grow very thick inside the hotel jar. The longer your SCOBYs sit, the bigger and thicker they will grow. Too many thick SCOBYs can block out the oxygen from from the top part to the bottom areas of the jar. Thus, it’s a good idea to trim down some of your SCOBYS so there’s an equal distribution of oxygen in the jar.
Here’s how to do it:
1. Take the top layer of SCOBY from the jar
2. Peel the layers apart. Sometimes you can peel multiple layers off. If you RIP parts of it, don’t worry — you are not hurting the SCOBY. If you can’t peel the layers by hand, take a knife or sizzors, sterilize it with vinegar, then trim the SCOBY — either cut it horizontally or vertically. The goal here is to tim it so it’s thinner.
3. Any extra parts you cut off from the main bunch, you can toss away. By the end of your trimming, you should have multiple thinner scobys, or a couple different ones you cut in half (half the width they were), or a single much thinner SCOBY.
Note: you can use trimmed pieces of SCOBY as new scobies for kombucha brew if you want to.
Using Your SCOBY HOTEL
It’s pretty simple, put any excess scobys you produce INTO your SCOBY HOTEL
Put Extra Scobys into Hotel
What I do is I brew my batch, take the extra scoby (usually the mother but sometimes the baby) and toss it into my SCOBY Hotel jar. When the new batch fineshes and I end up with another baby, I toss the mother into the hotel. I keep on doing this.
Note, you can to ensure your SCOBYs stay their healthiest, rotate between active SCOBYs and SCOBY HOTEL Scobys, just to make sure the SCOBYs are all getting used and exposed to fresh tea and sugar on a regular basis.
Rotate Existing Scobys from Hotel with Fresh Ones
Most people keep two or more SCOBYs in reserve, rotating them out as needed to make tea. The SCOBYs in the hotel are usually more dormant, while the one(s) being used to ferment the tea are in active mode. By rotating the SCOBYs you’ll give them a chance to rest, but also a chance to be active regularly, which will keep the whole colony in better shape.
Hi Ben,
I just want to thank you for your detailed photos and information about scobys! I am now certain that my baby scoby is developing normally, and I will soon have a healthy brew. I searched the internet for this information, and your site is the best. Thank you!! –Donna
Hi Donna — thanks for the comment!
Awesome to hear your SCOBY is doing well. Take good care of it and it will last you a lifetime! Enjoy your Kombucha!
Best
Ben
I found early evidence of some mold circles on the tip of my baby Scott. They were faintly green but not fuzzy that I could tell. I folded the scoby (it was thin) and threw it out. I have 3 scobys in the same jar that I left in after other brewings. They look fine. Can I use them?
I’ve heard of people washing moldy scobys and then reusing them with no further issues. If the other SCOBYs are under the surface, they may be ok. However, it’s still risky — mold can get into the SCOBY itself and even if washed off, make a reappearance in future batches.
If you do want to keep the other SCOBYS, try in a new batch, but keep it isolated from any other SCOBYs you have. If there’s no issue with the next brew, then you are safe.
Thanks for sharing all the information on starting & maintaining at scoby hotel. I am about to start my third batch of kombucha & was interested in how to keep an extra scoby.
Glad you find the info useful!
Best
Ben
could you keep a hotel in the frig to really slow down the fermentation process? seems like you have to replace the tea more infrequently doing this? Thanks.
Don’t put it in the fridge.
For the yeast and bacteria to keep active, you want to somewhere at least between 59-63 degrees (which is warmer than your fridge). At this temperature, your Kombucha will still ferment, though slowly. If you have a SCOBY hotel, then this means you won’t need to refill for months (3-4 months even). This is the ideal temperature for long term storage.
A fridge is a bad idea because it goes below 50 degrees (fridges range from between 30-40 degrees F). At below 50 degrees, no fermentation happens and as a result your brew may develop mold since there are no culture activity to prevent it.
So no, don’t put in the fridge.
Read this: http://kombuchahome.com/temperature-affects-kombucha-flavor/
Where do you suggest to keep the SCOBY hotel? I’m in an apartment and do not have a cool basement. I have an outdoor storage closet and now that the summer heat has passed, would that be an OK spot?
Hi Leigh, I think the best place for it would simply be in your kitchen cupboard. After a week or so you can screw a lid onto the glass jar that the SCOBYs are in. If they are in a slight state of dormancy, they will not need to extra oxygen. This way you won’t have a smell of vinegar in your kitchen.
My apartment gets quite warm in the summer. Right now it’s 90 degrees, and since I don’t have central air conditioning or a basement, I don’t have access to a cooler place for my SCOBY. Will this warm temperature just make the SCOBY more active, or could it actually harm it?
It won’t harm your SCOBY – the warmer weather will just mean your SCOBY culture (specifically the yeasts) become far more active and will ferment faster.
See our articles: http://kombuchahome.com/how-to-brew-kombucha-high-temperatures
and
http://kombuchahome.com/warm-weather-kombucha-scoby-care/
I’ve let my hotel sit for several months while we took a break from brewing. I’d like to clean it and put fresh tea in, but I’m not sure how much of the liquid from the hotel, if any, to keep and add to the fresh hotel. After several months, and being very new to this, I’m worried the liquid is not good anymore? Also, how long should I wait for the fresh hotel to sit before I use starter liquid from it to start a fresh batch of tea?
Thank you for your site, it’s been very helpful!
Liquid never goes bad! The longer you leave Kombucha to ferment, the more sour it becomes. At some point, you get what’s called ‘Kombucha vinegar.’ If it’s too sour, you won’t likely want to drink it, but you can use it for other purposes (cleaning, making salad dressing, etc). One of the things you can use long-fermented Kombucha (or in this case old Kombucha SCOBY hotel liquid) is as potent starter for your next batch of Kombucha or your new scoby hotel.
A SCOBY hotel is simply just making a FRESH batch of sweet tea, adding in starter, and putting a pile of SCOBYs in to the jar and letting it sit around for a long while. It’s exactly the same as making a regular batch of Kombucha — but in this case, you don’t take out the scobies (well not for a long time). And to renew it, you simply pour in new sweet tea every few months.
So, simply take 2 or 3 cups of your old SCOBY hotel liquid and use that as the new starter for your next SCOBY kombucha brew OR your new scoby hotel.
Seven years my SCOBYS sat in a bucket with a screw lid on and no new nourishment. Made tea and cut off a chunk to start with no liquid from bucket and went perfect. Who knows but this culture seems tough.
That’s impressive. I’ve heard of a year, even a couple years, but never 7 years! That’s amazing, but as long as there is still liquid to keep the SCOBY most, I can believe it could last that long. The culture goes into complete hibernation if there are not enough ‘resources’.
Thanks for that information!
Ben
If you make a scoby hotel with all new baby ones and let it sit for awhile and feed them will they eventually form to make one big scoby? What’s the best way to basically make another mother? Or is it from feeding a new baby one in its own jar and letting it grow overtime? I haven’t found this info anywhere so I appreciate your advise thanks.
Just take a baby scoby and start brewing as regular with it. In a few cycles, it will become a nice thick mother. ‘BIG’ mothers are usually the result of many babies just attaching on over time.
Yes, the baby ones may end up attaching and forming a giant SCOBY. If you want a ‘brand’ new mother. Then take one of the newest babies, put it into as seperate container and brew a few cycles. It will thicken out and enlarge. Eventually, it will also form extra scobies.
That totally makes sense thank you so much for sharing!! So for some mothers that are the result of the babies attaching to each other is this way best achieved by leaving the new babies with the orginal mother or if you were to take new baby scobys from different mothers and put these babys in a container would they eventually form as one big scoby?
You can put baby scobies from different ‘mother’ cultures into the same jar. While some of the scobys may stay distinct, ‘new’ cultures will form at the top, sourcing from ALL the scobies in the jar. Remember, a SCOBY is simply a matrix of yeast + bacteria held together by cellulose. You could put a bunch of scobies into a blender, mash them up, put the result back into a jar, and in a cycle or two, you’ll get another SCOBY forming at the top of the tea.
Thanks for that information! I was saving my babies in a jar hoping to find out what to do with them! Now I know.
Great to know thank you thank you! I’m so happy to be a follower to this site and now I feel a little more confident to brew. cheers!
In your display pictures you show rinsing off the SCOBY under tap water. I thought only distilled water or previously boiled water was to be used for direct contact with SCOBY’s. Also you show trimming the SCOBY with a stainless steel knife; again I thought only plastic or glass was to be in contact with SCOBY.
No. SCOBY’s will do fine with contact to stainless steel. Knives, forks, bowls — just touching your SCOBY to these won’t at all harm it. You can even brew kombucha in a stainless steel container, if you wish (stainless steel is non reactive). You don’t want to expose it to any other kind of metal though.
There are no issues with cutting up a SCOBY with a stainless steel knife or poking it with a stainless steel fork.
I generally recommend using GLASS (not plastic or stainless steel) to brew Kombucha, just because there’s it does not affect the taste while plastic or stainless steel can leave a bit of an extra, unwanted taste.
I use distilled water, but you can use Tap water too, as long as you remove the chlorin.
The truth is that SCOBYs are quite hardy organisms. They won’t die easily.
Such good info. Thank you. Could you please tell me what made my last batch of KT taste salty…I do appreciate your help…
Salty, that’s a strange one. It shouldn’t be salty — if anything, tart.
I’d say make sure your sugar ratios are proper (and you didn’t add salt by mistake).
Sorry, I can’t give you a good reason why it would be salty.
Thank you for your advice. I have some smaller scobies that I want to hotel while the babies that have formed in my larger vessel get thicker. I have a small one that is very dark… you mention these are less effective. Should I throw it away do you think?
Darker can mean the scoby has more yeast or might be older. I wouldn’t say it’s less effective. But if you have too many SCOBYs, throw away the older ones rather than the newer ones.
Cheers
Ben
Very interesting site! I have made several batches and started a Hotel. I am experimenting and put the Hotel and brewing batch in the cupboard… No light, put I use that cupboard every day. Should that me enough air movement?
That should be fine — an out of the way, darker area with decent airflow is ideal
Should the Hotel have a screw on cover? or Does it need to breathe?
Put a cloth over it — you want some oxygen, though it’s possible for your SCOBY to survive without oxygen too. However, typically you will have a cloth lid cover your hotel.
I make Kombucha once a fortnight. However I am heading o/s for 5-6 weeks. I may or may not be getting a house sitter. I have a good place to store a kombucha hotel. Do you think it will be okay for this amount of time without any care? Feel like i’m leaving my small child alone lol.
Absolutely. I’ve left Kombucha for 4-5 months.
Just make a SCOBY hotel with a big jar (2-4 gallon one) full of fresh sweet tea. You can leave your SCOBYS in it for months with no problem
Ben, thank you for your excellent and thoughtful tutorial. Only recently, a girlfriend turned me on to Kombucha, but I am already hooked. It is sure to be a lifelong favorite. As with everything, I am interested in fully understanding the effects of my eating and lifestyle decisions on my body. Ultimately, I will encorporate Kombucha as an adjunct protocol for my clients. To this end, if you have resources–regardless of how detailed, geeky or even metaphysical they may be–that I may study to become an expert on the physiological, health and perhaps even Spiritual effects of this seemingly healthy beverage, will you please share them with me? With Gratitude, Tia Jolie
Hi, thanks for the comment!
I’ll have to make a resource page on the site with these type of links very soon ( I don’t have any right away at hand to give you just yet!)
Won’t storing the scoby hotel between 50-60F cause mold? Or does that just apply to when you’re actually brewing kombucha. I’m a total newbie but have read that it should be kept at room temp; my room temp is always cold at 60F and often times a bit less. Would I need a heat mat or lid to prevent any mold from growing in the scoby hotel?
If you try to BREW a new batch from sweet tea, yes, mold will form since the bacteria and yeasts will be very inactive and other stuff can take hold.
IF you have an already fermented brew (or say a SCOBY hotel), you can store your SCOBYs at the temperature and you probably won’t have any issue. But this works because there is already a strong culture there.
I found a dead very small “sugar” ant in my Kombucha. I could not remove it. Will this spoil my Kombucha?
No. Some small ants have a strong pungent smell — if anything this might affect the flavor if there are too many. But just one, no.
As long as you are ok with it, shouldn’t be an issue (healthwise).
A friend gave me a baby scoby. It’s been in the fridge for about 36-48 hrs with about 2 cups of brewed tea. I am taking it home today and was ready to brew tonight. I read that it shouldn’t have been put in the fridge, is there anything I should do to it before brewing? Let it come back to room temperature for a period of time?
It won’t kill your SCOBY if it’s in the fridge for a short period of time — especially after the fermentation has taken place. But when first fermenting it (day 1-10), putting it in the fridge for a few days may hinder the growth scoby, allowing mold to take root. When I’ve tested this by putting a fermenting booch into the fridge, mold always forms.
So if it’s been in few a few days, best to start again. You might be able to reuse the scoby though, depending on how long it was in the fridge. The brew though, toss and start again
[…] Info about scoby hotels: http://kombuchahome.com/how-to-create-a-kombucha-scoby-hotel-to-store-extra-scobys/ […]
Thanks for that information! I was saving my babies in a jar hoping to find out what to do with them! Now I know.